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Updated: Jan 16, 2026

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task
Published on: June 1, 2015
Exploring size-action and number-action associations in infancy
Gisella Decarli1, Ludovica Veggiotti2, Maria Dolores de Hevia2
1Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Italy.
Abstract:
In the last decades, a growing body of research has assessed the link between numerical and action processing. However, this relationship has not been widely explored in the early stages of development. In this study, we aimed to investigate the number-action mapping during infancy with a novel action and to extend previous research by examining both size-action and quantity-action mappings. In the context of our study, 'size' is related to the perceptual attribute of how big or small an object appears and 'quantities' are connected to the numerical aspect, representing the number of items in a set. Using the habituation technique, 7-month-old infants were presented with videos of a character performing mouth openings directed towards objects of different sizes (Experiment 1; N = 40; 14 females) or quantities (Experiment 2; N = 40; 18 females). The findings suggest that infants are sensitive to the congruency of the pairings, highlighting the early presence of both number-action and size-action mappings.
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