Object Individuation or Object Movement as Attractor? A Replication of the Wide-Screen/Narrow-Screen Study by Means of (a) Standard Looking Time Methodology and (b) Eye Tracking
We report a replication experiment of a mechanized version of the seminal wide-screen/narrow-screen design of Wilcox and Baillargeon (1998) with 9.5-month-old infants ( ). Two different methodologies were employed simultaneously: (a) the standard looking time paradigm and (b) eye tracking. Across conditions with three different screen sizes, the results from both methodologies revealed a clear and interesting pattern: the looking times increased as a significantly linear function of reduced screen sizes, that is, independently of the number of different objects involved. There was no indication in the data that the infants made use of the featural differences between the different-looking objects involved. The results suggest a simple, novel, and thought-provoking interpretation of the infants’ looking behavior in the wide-screen/narrow-screen design: moving objects are attractors, and the more space left for visible object movement in the visual field, the longer are infants’ looks. Consequently, no cognitive interpretation may be needed. 1. Introduction Object individuation refers to the process of deciding the number of distinct objects present in a given scenario (for reviews, see [1, 2]). In a now seminal paper, Xu and Carey [3] provided evidence that 10-month-old infants could only successfully individuate objects if they were given unequivocal spatiotemporal information about the number of objects present, whereas featural information was insufficient. Shortly after, Wilcox and Baillargeon [4] argued that the results obtained by Xu and Carey [3] could have been a consequence of the cognitively demanding design employed, rather than a general inability to use featural information when attempting to individuate objects. In order to substantiate their claim, Wilcox and Baillargeon [4] devised a simpler version of the design originally used by Xu and Carey—the so-called wide-screen/narrow-screen design. In the wide-screen/narrow-screen design, infants are presented with a basic design in which an object (e.g., a green ball) moves behind a screen. At the moment when one would expect the ball to reappear on the other side of the screen, a different-looking object (e.g., a red box) appears. The box stops at an outer location, rests for a brief period, and then returns behind the screen from which the ball reappears on the other side. This sequence continues until trial termination. Two different conditions are involved: a wide-screen condition, where the screen is of sufficient width to hide both objects at the same time (the expected condition) and a
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