ERIC Number: EJ1468616
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-May
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1363-755X
EISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
Available Date: 2025-04-07
Crossing the Boundary: No Catastrophic Limits on Infants' Capacity to Represent Linguistic Sequences
Natalia Reoyo-Serrano1; Anastasia Dimakou2; Chiara Nascimben1; Tamara Bastianello1; Daniela Lucangeli1; Silvia Benavides-Varela1,2
Developmental Science, v28 n3 e70015 2025
The boundary effect, namely the infants' failures to compare small and large numerosities, is well documented in studies using visual stimuli. The prevailing explanation is that the numerical system used to process sets up to 3 is incompatible with the system employed for numbers >3. This study investigates the boundary effect in 10-month-old infants presented with linguistic sequences. In Condition 1 (2 vs. 3), infants can differentiate small syllable sequences (2 vs. 3), with better performance for the 2-syllable sequence, which imposes a lower memory load. Condition 2 (2 vs. 4) revealed that infants are capable of discriminating across bounds, with relatively higher performance for the 4-syllable sequence, possibly encoded as one large ensemble. This study offers evidence that, when processing linguistic sounds, infants flexibly deal with small and large numerical representations with no boundaries or incompatibilities between them. Simultaneously encoding units of different magnitudes might aid early speech processing beyond memory limits.
Descriptors: Infants, Language Acquisition, Speech Communication, Language Processing, Memory, Syllables, Cognitive Ability, Phonology
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Data File: URL: https://osf.io/z7rwf/?view_only=d292e517f38341ce9a4c333727bc04bd
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; 2Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Padova, Italy