Objects in a social world: Infants’ object representational capacity limits are shaped by objects’ social relevance

“Catastrophic” set size limits on infants’ capacity to represent objects: A systematic review and Bayesian meta‐analysis

“…However, unlike adults, they may be unable to strategically attend to only a subset of the objects when their object representational capacities are overwhelmed. Indeed, when sets are structured to facilitate perceptual or conceptual grouping of objects into subsets, infants are better able to represent sets of four objects, and no longer display the signatures of catastrophic representational failures (e.g., Feigenson & Halberda, 2008;Kibbe & Feigenson, 2016;Rosenberg & Feigenson, 2013;Stahl & Feigenson, 2014, 2018Stahl et al, 2023; see also Wang & Feigenson, 2019; for review, see Kibbe & Stahl, 2023). However, others have suggested that infants' object representations may persist in a graded or faded fashion, and failures thus are indicative of representational fuzziness due to task demands rather than a complete loss of a discrete object representation (e.g., Munakata, 2001).…”

“…When infants are tasked with tracking one, two, or three objects in a single location, infants appear able to do so quite robustly (Feigenson & Carey, 2003Feigenson et al, 2002;van de Walle et al, 2000;Wynn, 1992). By contrast, when infants are tasked with tracking more than three objects in a single location, infants appear to be unable to keep track of even a subset of the objects that they were tasked with representing (Barner et al, 2007;Feigenson et al, 2002;Zosh & Feigenson, 2015; see also Kibbe & Stahl, 2023), a phenomenon which is often referred to as a "catastrophic" set size limit, or a catastrophic failure to remember multiple objects that are hidden from view (e.g., Feigenson & Carey, 2005;Zosh & Feigenson, 2009).…”