title: Ten-Month-Old Infants' Reaching Choices for "more": The Relationship between Inter-Stimulus Distance and Number.
abstract: Animals and human infants discriminate numerosities in visual sets. Experiments on visual numerical judgments generally contrast sets in which number varies (e.g., the discrimination between 2 and 3). What is less investigated, however, is set density, or rather, the inter-stimulus distance between the entities being enumerated in a set. In this study, we investigated the role of set density in visual sets by 10-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, infants were offered a choice between two sets each containing four items of the exact same size varying in the distance in between the items (ratio 1:4). Infants selected the set in which the items are close together (higher density). Experiment 2 addressed the possibility that this choice was driven by a strategy to "select all in one go" by reducing the size and distance of items. Ten-month-olds selected the sets with higher density (less inter-stimulus distance) in both experiments. These results, although bearing replication because of their originality, seem consistent with principles in Optimal Foraging in animals. They provide evidence that a comparable rudimentary capacity for density assessment (of food items) exists in infants, and may work in concert with their numerical representations.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Criminology and Sociology, Kingston University, Kingston-upon-Thames Surrey, UK.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Uller
authors.forename: Callum
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Urquhart
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Berntsen
keywords: density assessment; infancy; number; representation