Do Object Arrangements Affect Young Children’s Subitilizing? an Eye Tracking Study

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Cognitive Processes

Abstract

Subitizing is the ability to enumerate a small set of objects rapidly and accurately. Despite extensive research on subitizing in various domains, it remains a puzzle how children’s subitizing develop. Understanding subitizing from a developmental perspective is important because it first develops in early childhood (Benoit, Lehalle, & Jouen, 2004; Starkey & Cooper, 1995). Young children have smaller subitizing range than older children or adults (Maylor, Watson, & Hartley, 2011; Krajcsi, et al., 2013; Jansen, et al. 2014). But the nature of this development has not yet been previously investigated. In the present study, we tried to clarify whether the subitizing deficit of young children resulted from a general slowing in the access to magnitude representation, or the resort to a back-up counting strategy even for small object sets, using eye-tracking methodology. This study also allows us to investigate the role of pattern recognition in children’s development of subitizing and counting by manipulating the arrange of objects.

A total of 60 children (age 3.42-6.42) took part in the experiment. They were tested with a computerized enumeration task. Each trial began with a fixation cross appearing for 500ms at the center of the screen, followed by presentation of dots which remained on the screen until the subjects answered or indicate he/she did not know the answer. The experimenter pressed the button corresponding to the stated number or on the question mark in the absence of a response. By pressing the response key, the dots disappeared and a backward mask was displayed for 500ms followed by the next trial. A 3(age: 3-4, 4-5, and 5-6 years) *3(arrange of dots: dice, line, random) *6(numeriosity: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) mixed experimental design was adopted. Participants’ enumeration error rates, recreation time, and eye movements data were collected by an EyeLink remote eye-tracking device.

The results showed that the arrangement of objects played a less role in young children’s subitizing than in their counting. Both subitizing and counting ability development with age (Fig. 1). Four-year-old children have higher error rates and need significantly more dwell time, more fixation counts than 5- and 6-year-old when they enumerated dots for dice and random arrangements (ps<.01), while the average fixation duration of 4-year old for dice and random arrangements were significantly longer than 6-year old (ps<.01) and it was no significant difference with 5-year old. For line arrangement, the average fixation duration of three age groups were no significant difference between each other (Fig. 2). These results suggested that young children usually used a counting strategy, even when responding to small sets of objects. The pattern cognition had more effects in big object set for older children and the turning point might be 4-5 years old.

Authors

• Qiong Xia, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU)
  Presenting Author

• Jiayan Zhong, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xiang Wang, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU)
  Non-Presenting Author