Infants’ intermodal perception of numerosity in an experimental study with objects and socially salient stimuli

PDF
Published: Oct 15, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/psy_hps.23697
Keywords:
Infant development Intermodal perception Face-voice perception Detection of numerosity
Vasiliki Tsourtou
Abstract

In the present cross-sectional experimental study we investigated infants’ early ability to intermodally detect numerosity of visual-auditory object-like and social stimuli. We assumed that presentation of face – voice stimuli would distract infants’ attention from detection of numerical invariant. Seventy-eight infants (aged 5, 7 and 9 months) participated in four experimental Conditions (simultaneously projected pairs of identical objects, non-identical objects, objects projected together with familiar face and objects projected together with unfamiliar face). Visual stimuli in each trial varied in numerosity (1 -2 / 1-3 / 2 -3) and they were accompanied by piano sounds or voice sounds also varying in numerosity (one, two or three sounds in La tonality). By means of preferential looking technique, we measured infants’ fixation of attention to the visual stimulus that numerically matched with the sound. When object-like stimuli were projected, infants –except 5-month-old boys –tended to intermodally detect numerical invariant. Shape similarity of the objects facilitated infants’ intermodal detection of numerosity. When socially salient stimuli were co-presented with object-like stimuli, infants preferred to look at the face, ignoring numerosity of the auditory stimulus. Nor sound quality (piano vs. voice) neither familiarity of the face (mother’s face vs. stranger woman’s face) affected infants’ perception. Although intermodal detection of perceptual cues is a primary function of both face and number perception, each one of these perceptual systems seems to follow a different developmental path.

Article Details
  • Section
  • RESEARCH PAPERS
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The journal PSYCHOLOGY adopts a Platinum open-access policy. Submission, processing or publication costs are waived by the Hellenic Psychological Society. Papers published in the journal PSYCHOLOGY are licensed under a 'Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International' licence. The authors reserve the copyright of their work and grant the journal the right of its first publication. Third-party licensees are allowed to use the published paper immediately after publication as they wish, provided they retain the defined by the license copyright formalities, regarding the reference to its author(s) and its initial publication in the journal PSYCHOLOGY. Moreover, any adjusted work should be shared under the same reuse rights, so with the same CC license.

Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
References
Antell, S.E. & Keating, D.P. (1983). Perception of
numerical invariance in neonates. Child Develop -
ment, 54, 695-701. Assel, M., Landry, S., Swank,
P., Smith, K. &
Bahrick, L. E. (2001). Increasing Specificity in
Perceptual Development: Infants’ Detection of
Infants’ intermodal perception of numerosity in an experimental study 411
Nested Levels of Multimodal Stimulation. Journal
of Experimental Child Psychology, 79, 253-270.
Baillargeon, R. (1994). Physical reasoning in young
infants: Seeking explanations for impossible
events. British Journal of Developmental
Psychology, 12, 9-33.
Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An Essay on
Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Benoit, L., Lehalle, H. and Jouen, F. (2004). Do young
children acquire number words through
subitizing or counting? Cognitive Development,
(3), 291-307.
Bijeljac-Babic, R., Bertoncini, J. & Mehler, J. (1991).
How do four-day-old infants categorize
multisyllabic utterances? Developmental Psycho -
logy, 29, 711-721.
Cohen, L.B. & Marks, K.S. (2002). How infants
process addition and subtraction events.
Developmental Science, 23 (1), 113-118.
Connellan, J., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S.,
Bakti, A. & Ahluwalia, J. (2000). Sex differences in
human neonatal social perception. Infant
Behavior and Development, 23 (1), 113-118.
Cooper, R. G. (1984). Early number development:
Discovering number space with addition and
subtraction. In C. Sophian (Ed.), Origins of
Cognitive Skills (pp. 157-192). Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Dehaene, S. (1997). The Number Sense. How the
Mind Creates Mathematics. NY: Oxford University
Press.
Dehaene, S., Spelke, E., Pinel, P., Stanescu, R. &
Tsivkin, S. (1999). Sources of mathematical
thinking: behavioral and brain-imaging evidence.
Science, 284 (5416), 970-974.
Ekman, P. (1982). Emotion in the Human Face.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Feigenson, L., Carey, S. & Spelke, E. (2002). Infants’
discrimination of Number vs. Continuous Extent.
Cognitive Psychology, 44, 33-66.
Feigenson, L. (2011). Predicting sights from sounds:
-month-olds’ intermodal numerical abilities.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110,
-361.
Franchak, J. M., Kretch, K.,S., Soska, K.C. & Adolph,
K.E. (2011). Head-mounted eye tracking: A new
method to describe infant looking. Child
Development, 82 (6), 1738-1750.
Frank, M.C., Vul, E. & Johnson, S.P. (2009).
Development of infants’ attention to faces during
the first year. Cognition, 110, 160-170.
Gelman, R. & Gallistel, C.R. (1978). The Child’ s
Understanding of Number. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Gibson, E. J. (1969). Principles of Perceptual Learning
and Development. NY: Appleton.
Golombok, S. & Fivush, R. (1994). Gender
Development. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond Modularity. A
Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science.
Massachusetts: MIT.
Klahr, D. & Wallace, J. (1976). Cognitive development:
An information processing view. Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum.
Kobayashi, T., Hiraki, K. Mugitani, R., & Hasegawa, T.
(2004). Baby arithmetic: one object plus one
tone. Cognition, 91, 23-34.
Koechlin, E., Dehaene, S., & Mehler, J. (1998).
Numerical transformations in five-month-old
human infants. Mathematical Cognition, 3, 89-
Langton, S.R.H., Watt, R.J., & Bruce, V. (2000). Do the
eyes have it? Cues to the direction of social
attention. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4 (2), 50-
Lewkowicz, D. J. (2000). The development of
intersensory temporal perception: an epigenetic
systems/limitation view. Psychological Bulletin,
, 281-308.
Macleod, H., Morse, D., & Burford, B. (1993).
Computer support for behavioral event recording
and transcription. Psychology Teaching Review,
, 212-216.
McCullagh, P. & Nelder, J.A. (1989). Generalized
Linear Models. London: Chapman & Hall.
Meck, W.H. & Church, R.M. (1983). A mode control
model of counting and timing processes. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior
Processes, 9, 320-334.
Mix, Κ., Huttenlocher, J., & Levine, S.C. (2002).
Multiple cues for quantification in infancy: Is
number one of them? Psychological Bulletin, 128
(2), 278-294.
Mix, K., Levine, C., & Huttenlocher, J. (1997).
Numerical abstraction in infants: another look.
Developmental Psychology, 33 (3), 423-428.
Mondloch, C. J., Lewis,T.L., Budreau, D.R., Maurer,
D., Dannemiller, J.M., Stephens, B.R., & Kleiner-
Gathercoal, K.A. (1999). Face Perception during
Vasiliki Tsourtou
Early Infancy. American Psychological Society, 10
(5), 419-422.
Moore, D., Benenson, J., Reznick, J.S., Peterson, M.,
& Kagan, J. (1987). Effect of auditory numerical
information on infants’ looking behaviour:
contradictory evidence. Developmental Psycho -
logy, 23, 665-670.
Patterson, M. & Werker, J. (2002). Infants’ Ability to
Match Dynamic Phonetic & Gender Information in
the Face & Voice. Journal of Experimental Child
Psychology, 81, 93-115.
Prechtl, H.F.R. & O’Brien, M.J. (1982). Behavioral
states of the full-term newborn: The emergence of
a concept. In P. Stratton (Ed.), Psychobiology of
the Human Newborn. NY: Wiley.
Sherrod, L. R. (1979). Social cognition in infants:
Attention to the human face. Infant Behavior and
Development, 2, 279-294.
Simion, F., Leo, Turati, C., Valenza, E., & dalla Barba,
D. (2007). How face specialization emerges in the
first months of life. In C. von Hofsten & K.
Rosander (Eds.), Progress in Brain Research,
, 169-185. Elsevier, B.V. [http://dx.doi.org/
1016/S0079-6123(07)64009-6].
Simion, F., di Giorgio, E., Leo, I, & Bardi, L. (2011).
The processing of social stimuli in early infancy:
From faces to biological motion perception. In O.
Braddick, J. Atkinson & G. Innocenti (Eds.),
Progress in Brain Research, 189, 173-193.
Elsevier B.V. [DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-444-53884-
00024-5].
Simon, T. J., Hespos, S. J., & Rochat, P. (1995). Do
infants understand simple arithmetic? A
replication of Wynn (1992). Cognitive Develop -
ment, 10, 253-269.
Simon, T. J. (1997). Reconceptualizing the origins of
number knowledge: A “non-numerical” account.
Cognitive Development, 12, 349-372.
Spelke, E.S. & Cortelyou, A. (1981). Perceptual
aspects of social knowing: looking and listening
in infancy. In M.E. Lamb & L.R. Sherrod (Eds),
Infant social cognition: empirical and theoretical
considerations. NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Asso -
ciates.
Spitz, R.A. (1959). A genetic field theory of ego
formation. Madison, CT: International Universities
Press.
Starkey, P. & Cooper, R. (1980). Perception of
numbers by human infants. Science, 210, 1033-
Starkey, P., Spelke, E.S., & Gelman, R. (1983).
Detection of intermodal numerical correspon -
dences by human infants. Science, 222, 179-181.
Starkey, P., Spelke, E.S., & Gelman, R. (1990).
Numerical abstraction by human infants.
Cognition, 36, 97-127.
Stern, D.N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the
infant. NY: Basic Books.
Tomasello, M. (1995). Joint attention as social
cognition. In C. Moore & P. J. Dunham (Eds.),
Joint attention: Its origins and role in development
(pp. 103-130). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Trick, L. M. & Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1994). Why are small
and large numbers enumerated differently? A
limited-capacity preattentive stage in vision.
Psychological Review, 101, 80-102.
Tronick, E.Z. (1989). Emotions and emotional
communication in infants. American Psychologist,
(2), 112-119.
Uller, C., Carey, S., Huntley-Fenner, G., & Klatt, L.
(1999). What representations might underlie
infant numerical knowledge? Cognitive
Development, 14, 1-36.
Valentine, D., Edelman, B., & Abdi, H. (1998).
Computational and neural network models of
face processing. Journal of Biological Systems,
(2), 1-7.
Van Loosbroek, E. & Smitsman, A. (1990). Visual
perception of numerosity in infancy. Develop -
mental Psychology, 26 (6), 916-922.
Walker- Andrews,A. (1994). Taxonomy for intermodal
relations. In D.J. Lewkowicz & R. Lickliter (Eds.),
The development of intersensory perception:
Comparative perspectives (pp. 39-55). Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Werner, H. (1948). Comparative psychology of mental
development. NY: International Universities Press.
Wynn, K. (1992). Addition and subtraction by human
infants. Nature, 358, 749-750.
Wynn, K. (1998a). Numerical Competence in Infants.
In C. Donlan (Ed.), The Development of Mathe -
matical Skills (pp. 3-25). London: Psychology
Press.
Wynn, K. (1998b). Psychological foundations of
number: numerical competence in human
infants. Trends in Cognitive Science, 2 (8), 296-
Xu, F. & Spelke, E. S. (2000). Large number
discrimination in 6-month-old infants. Cognition,
, 1-11.