Baby arithmetic: one object plus one tone.

Abstract

Recent studies using a violation-of-expectation task suggest that preverbal infants are capable of recognizing basic arithmetical operations involving visual objects. There is still debate, however, over whether their performance is based on any expectation of the arithmetical operations, or on a general perceptual tendency to prefer visually familiar and complex displays. Here we provide new evidence that 5-month-old infants recognize basic arithmetic operations across sensory modalities. Using a violation-of-expectation task that eliminated the possibility of the familiarity and complexity preference, 5-month-old infants were presented alternatively with two types of arithmetical events: the expected, correct outcomes of operations (1 object+1 tone=2 objects and 1 object+2 tones=3 objects) and the unexpected, incorrect ones (1 object+2 tones=2 objects and 1 object+1 tone=3 objects). Results showed that subjects looked significantly longer at the unexpected events than at the expected events, suggesting that infants are able to recognize basic arithmetic operations across sensory modalities.