Individuation of object parts in aging

Research on enumeration with isolated objects has indicated that young and older adults can report up to three elements with similar efficiency (subitizing effect). Recent studies on subitizing in young adults have shown that individuation occurs over parts of an object as efficiently as over physically disconnected objects, suggesting that spatial separation is a sufficient requirement for efficient individuation. Do young and older adults share this sufficient requirement? In two experiments, we tested for the presence of subitizing in an enumeration task with a varying number of distinct objects and object parts. In Experiment 1, results indicated the presence of a bilinear function (with an inflection point between 3 and 4 elements, a proxy for subitizing) in the response speed of young and older adults, and in both stimulus conditions. In addition, the enumeration slope in older participants was steeper for object parts than for objects in the subitizing range, possibly due to perceptual degradation (e.g., in contour detection). The pattern found generalizes to other stimuli (Experiment 2), thus highlighting the robustness of the present findings. Overall, the results indicate that while some perceptual factors (such as contour detection or curvature polarity) may hamper subitizing speed of older individuals relative to young adults, the subitizing span remains at approximately three to four elements for multiple objects and object parts in both young and older adults. Thus, individuation of multiple objects and object parts is a mechanism relatively resistant to aging.