The ability to determine how many objects are involved in physical events is fundamental for reasoning about the world that surrounds us. Previous studies suggest that infants can fail to individuate objects in ambiguous occlusion events until their first birthday and that learning words for the objects may play a crucial role in the development of this ability. The present eye-tracking study tested whether the classical object individuation experiments underestimate young infants’ ability to individuate objects and the role word learning plays in this process. Three groups of 6-month-old infants (N = 72) saw two opaque boxes side by side on the eye-tracker screen so that the content of the boxes was not visible. During a familiarization phase, two visually identical objects emerged sequentially from one box and two visually different objects from the other box. For one group of infants the familiarization was silent (Visual Only condition). For a second group of infants the objects were accompanied with nonsense words so that objects’ shape and linguistic labels indicated the same number of objects in the two boxes (Visual & Language condition). For the third group of infants, objects’ shape and linguistic labels were in conflict (Visual vs. Language condition). Following the familiarization, it was revealed that both boxes contained the same number of objects (e.g. one or two). In the Visual Only condition, infants looked longer to the box with incorrect number of objects at test, showing that they could individuate objects using visual cues alone. In the Visual & Language condition infants showed the same looking pattern. However, in the Visual vs Language condition infants looked longer to the box with incorrect number of objects according to linguistic labels. The results show that infants can individuate objects in a complex object individuation paradigm considerably earlier than previously thought and that linguistic cues enforce their own preference in object individuation. The results are consistent with the idea that when language and visual information are in conflict, language can exert an influence on how young infants reason about the visual world.

确定物理事件中涉及多少物体的能力是推理我们周围世界的基础。先前的研究表明，婴儿在满一岁之前可能无法在模糊的遮挡事件中区分物体，并且学习物体的单词可能在这种能力的发展中起着至关重要的作用。目前的眼球追踪研究测试了经典的物体个体化实验是否低估了幼儿个体化物体的能力以及单词学习在这个过程中的作用。三组 6 个月大的婴儿 (N = 72) 在眼动仪屏幕上并排看到两个不透明的盒子，因此看不到盒子的内容。在熟悉阶段，两个视觉相同的物体从一个盒子中依次出现，两个视觉上不同的物体从另一个盒子中出现。对于一组婴儿，熟悉是沉默的（仅视觉条件）。对于第二组婴儿，物体带有无意义的词，因此物体的形状和语言标签表明两个盒子中的物体数量相同（视觉和语言条件）。对于第三组婴儿，物体的形状和语言标签存在冲突（视觉与语言条件）。在熟悉之后，发现两个盒子包含相同数量的对象（例如一个或两个）。在仅视觉条件下，婴儿在测试中看着物体数量不正确的盒子的时间更长，这表明他们可以单独使用视觉线索来区分物体。在视觉& 语言状况婴儿显示出相同的外观模式。然而，在视觉 vs 语言条件下，根据语言标签，婴儿在物品数量不正确的盒子上看的时间更长。结果表明，婴儿可以比以前认为的更早地在复杂的客体个体化范式中个体化客体，并且语言线索在客体个体化中强化了他们自己的偏好。结果与当语言和视觉信息发生冲突时，语言会影响幼儿对视觉世界的推理方式的观点是一致的。结果表明，婴儿可以比以前认为的更早地在复杂的客体个体化范式中个体化客体，并且语言线索在客体个体化中强化了他们自己的偏好。结果与当语言和视觉信息发生冲突时，语言会影响幼儿对视觉世界的推理方式的观点是一致的。结果表明，婴儿可以比以前认为的更早地在复杂的客体个体化范式中个体化客体，并且语言线索在客体个体化中强化了他们自己的偏好。结果与当语言和视觉信息发生冲突时，语言会影响幼儿对视觉世界的推理方式的观点是一致的。