{"pk":50177,"title":"Units of representation: Children's perception of number in the \"connectedness illusion\"","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The developmental and evolutionary origins of abstract number reasoning have long been debated. Central to this debate is the underlying unit: whether the quantitative reasoning observed in infants and animals necessitates truly numeric object-level representation or can instead be inferred from covarying low-level spatial frequency. Recent studies with adults rely on the \"connectedness illusion\" to dissociate cardinality from spatial frequency, suggesting object-level representation is fundamental. However, whether these representations exist early in development remains underexplored.\nWe use the connectedness illusion to test whether 3–6-year-old children enumerate objects or spatial frequency. Children complete a non-symbolic comparison task modeled after He et al. (2009). On 50% of trials, two dots are connected by a line, forming a \"barbell.\" Results show that, like adults, children underestimate connected displays despite instructions to ignore the connections. These findings suggest that object-level representations, rather than low-level spatial frequency, underlie children's quantitative reasoning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Cognitive development; Perception; Representation; Psychophysics"}],"section":"Member Abstracts with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4fb0x764","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Eloise","middle_name":"","last_name":"West","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of British Columbia","department":""},{"first_name":"Darko","middle_name":"","last_name":"Odic","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of British Columbia","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/50177/galley/38139/download/"}]}