Small numerosity advantage for sequential enumeration on RSVP stimuli: an object individuation-based account

Cheng, Xiaorong; Lin, Chunyan; Lou, Chunmiao; Zhang, Weiwei; Han, Yaqian; Ding, Xiangling; Fan, Zhao

doi:10.1007/s00426-019-01264-5

Cited by 5 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…In contrast, with only 100 ms, the individuation process (and updating of numerical information in memory) would presumably not yet be finished by the time a new item arrived, leading to errors even within the subitizing range. The current findings are compatible with those of Cheng et al (2019), who investigated sequential presentation paradigms for individuation and observed a more flexible allocation of resources. The relatively fixed temporal window for object individuation found here could serve as the basic building block for enumeration operations.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…It is interesting to compare the time course found here, for simultaneous presentation of stimuli, to studies using sequential presentations of items (Anobile, Arrighi, & Burr, 2019;Cheng et al, 2019). In a recent study, Cheng et al (2019) varied the rate of presentation of items, with the processing window of each item (before it was replaced by another item) ranging from 100-400 ms (100, 300, and 400 ms were tested). When items were presented every 100 ms, participants made a high number of errors, even within the subitizing range.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Moreover, we aimed to more directly compare the results of Experiment 1a and 2, in which exact numerical responses were reported for individuation (in Expt 1a) and estimation (in Expt 2). To this end, we calculated the accuracy coefficient (AC) and the variation coefficient (VC; Cheng et al, 2019) for the numerical judgments in each experiment (see Eqs. 1 and 2).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Enumerating the forest before the trees: The time courses of estimation-based and individuation-based numerical processing

Melcher

Huber-Huber

Wutz

2020

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Ensemble perception refers to the ability to report attributes of a group of objects, rather than focusing on only one or a few individuals. An everyday example of ensemble perception is the ability to estimate the numerosity of a large number of items. The time course of ensemble processing, including that of numerical estimation, remains a matter of debate, with some studies arguing for rapid, “preattentive” processing and other studies suggesting that ensemble perception improves with longer presentation durations. We used a forward-simultaneous masking procedure that effectively controls stimulus durations to directly measure the temporal dynamics of ensemble estimation and compared it with more precise enumeration of individual objects. Our main finding was that object individuation within the subitizing range (one to four items) took about 100–150 ms to reach its typical capacity limits, whereas estimation (six or more items) showed a temporal resolution of 50 ms or less. Estimation accuracy did not improve over time. Instead, there was an increasing tendency, with longer effective durations, to underestimate the number of targets for larger set sizes (11–35 items). Overall, the time course of enumeration for one or a few single items was dramatically different from that of estimating numerosity of six or more items. These results are consistent with the idea that the temporal resolution of ensemble processing may be as rapid as, or even faster than, individuation of individual items, and support a basic distinction between the mechanisms underlying exact enumeration of small sets (one to four items) from estimation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Enumerating the forest before the trees: The time courses of estimation-based and individuation-based numerical processing

Melcher

Huber-Huber

Wutz

2020

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…These theoretical considerations suggest that object individuation is cognitively demanding. This is also supported by empirical findings suggesting that object individuation in adults requires selective attention (Burr et al, 2010) and competes for cognitive resources with working memory during tasks involving both simultaneous enumeration (Piazza et al, 2011) as well as sequential enumeration (Cheng et al, 2019). Together with reasons of parsimony, this suggests that infants' behavior in individuation tasks should not be regarded as evidence for their ability to individuate objects.…”

Section: Critique Of the Of Systemsupporting

confidence: 52%

Why Not Just Features? Reconsidering Infants’ Behavior in Individuation Tasks

2020

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It counts as empirically proven that infants can individuate objects. Object individuation is assumed to be fundamental in the development of infants' ontology within the objectfirst account. It crucially relies on an object-file (OF) system, representing both spatiotemporal ("where") and categorical ("what") information about objects as solid, cohesive bodies moving continuously in space and time. However, infants' performance in tasks requiring them to use featural information to detect individuation violations appears to be at odds with the object-first account. In such cases, infants do not appear to be able to develop correct expectations about the numerosity of objects. Recently, proponents of the objectfirst account proposed that these individuation failures result from integration errors between the OF system and an additional physical reasoning system. We are going to argue that the predictions of a feature-based physical-reasoning (PR) system are sufficient for explaining infants' behavior. The striking predictive power of the PR system calls into question the relevance of the OF system and, thereby, challenges the assumption that infants can individuate objects early on.

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“…Although most previous research on numerosity perception utilized simultaneously presented arrays of items, there is evidence that sequential numerosity (i.e., where numerosity is conveyed by a sequence of items presented over time) is subject to subitizing as well (e.g., Cheng et al, 2021;Anobile, Arrighi, & Burr, 2019;Repp, 2007). In this case, although variations exist from study to study likely because of how the threshold of subitizing is defined or how the stimuli are delivered (Anobile et al, 2019;Camos & Tillmann, 2008), subitizing seems mostly limited to one to four items, similarly to simultaneously presented numerosities (e.g., Cheng et al, 2021). However, the nature of the system supporting errorless subitizing remains unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decoding of EEG Signals Shows No Evidence of a Neural Signature for Subitizing in Sequential Numerosity

Fornaciai

Park

2021

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Numerosity perception is largely governed by two mechanisms. The first so-called subitizing system allows one to enumerate a small number of items (up to three or four) without error. The second system allows only an approximate estimation of larger numerosities. Here, we investigate the neural bases of the two systems using sequentially presented numerosity. Sequential numerosity (i.e., the number of events presented over time) starts as a subitizable set but may eventually transition into a larger numerosity in the approximate estimation range, thus offering a unique opportunity to investigate the neural signature of that transition point, or subitizing boundary. If sequential numerosity is encoded by two distinct perceptual mechanisms (i.e., for subitizing and approximate estimation), neural representations of the sequentially presented items crossing the subitizing boundary should be sharply distinguishable. In contrast, if sequential numerosity is encoded by a single perceptual mechanism for all numerosities and subitizing is achieved through an external postperceptual mechanism, no such differences in the neural representations should indicate the subitizing boundary. Using the high temporal resolution of the EEG technique incorporating a multivariate decoding analysis, we found results consistent with the latter hypothesis: No sharp representational distinctions were observed between items across the subitizing boundary, which is in contrast with the behavioral pattern of subitizing. The results support a single perceptual mechanism encoding sequential numerosities, whereas subitizing may be supported by a postperceptual attentional mechanism operating at a later processing stage.

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Small numerosity advantage for sequential enumeration on RSVP stimuli: an object individuation-based account

Cited by 5 publications

References 66 publications

Enumerating the forest before the trees: The time courses of estimation-based and individuation-based numerical processing

Enumerating the forest before the trees: The time courses of estimation-based and individuation-based numerical processing

Why Not Just Features? Reconsidering Infants’ Behavior in Individuation Tasks

Decoding of EEG Signals Shows No Evidence of a Neural Signature for Subitizing in Sequential Numerosity

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