Poster #14 - Children Map One to Four onto Parallel Individuation: Evidence from the Attentional Blink

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Before they learn how counting defines whole number concepts (i.e., before they learn the “cardinal principle”), children the world over learn the meanings of the number words for 1 to 3 or 4. To uncover what could be some of the building blocks of these concepts, researchers have studied the origins of the meanings of these words. Children could learn these meanings by mapping them onto non-verbal numerical representations from two early developing systems, namely “Parallel Individuation” (PI) and/or the “Approximate Number System” (ANS; Mou & vanMarle, 2014). The nature of these mappings has been studied in several ways (Le Corre & Carey, 2007; Gunderson, Spaepen & Levine, 2015; vanMarle et al., 2015). While the results obtained thus far arguably favor the view that children map the words for 1 to 4 onto PI, either alone or together with the ANS, they are somewhat ambiguous.
The nature of the mappings between non-verbal numerical representations and the words for 1 to 4 can be studied by testing the effects of the manipulation of attention on verbal numerical estimation. Indeed, multiple studies have shown that PI requires attention but the ANS does not (Burr, Anobile & Turi, 2011; Hyde, 2011). These effects were studied in adults. For example, Burr, Turi and Anobile (2010) found that when adults’ attention is diverted away from the perception of objects with the attentional blink (AB), the coefficient of variation or COV (SD/Mean) of their verbal estimates of 1 to 4 increases significantly, but that of their estimates of 6 to 10 remains the same, suggesting that they have mapped the words for 1 to 4 onto PI. These effects of the manipulation of attention on estimation have still not been studied in young children. Thus, to clarify the nature of the origins of the meanings of the words for 1 to 4, the present study adapted Burr and colleagues’ AB paradigm to five-year-olds.
Nineteen Mexican and Chilean participants (age range = 4;6 to 6;2) saw streams consisting of 10 letters (presented one at a time), 1 to 10 circles, and a white noise mask, presented in that order. All stimuli were presented for 150 milliseconds, followed by a 30 millisecond grey screen. After each stream, participants reported a target letter and the number of circles they had seen. The target letter was either the sixth or the eight letter so that the circles were presented 720 ms (i.e., after the AB) or 360 ms (i.e., during the AB) after it. Our participants were able to estimate, both during and after the AB (Figure 1). Importantly, the AB caused a significant increase in the COV of estimates of 1 to 4, but did not affect estimates of 6 to 10 (Figure 2). These results strengthen the view that PI is part of the origins of the meanings of the words for 1 to 4. We will also present evidence that children map these words onto the ANS too, but only after they learn the cardinal principle.

 

Authors

• Mathieu Le Corre, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
  Presenting Author

• David Apablaza Yevenes