In Experiment 1, we showed that performance dropped with 11 branches compared to 6 branches, thus providing evidence that children detect and use the information provided by the one-to-one correspondence between branches and puppets. However, owing to the small sample size, the performance of this group alone did not reveal whether subset-knowers are at

all able to reconstruct large exact numbers of objects, when one-to-one correspondence cues are not informative. We thus administered the 11-branch condition to the participants of Experiment 2 as well, in an effort to increase the sample. Here we present the data pooled for all participants in Experiments 1 and 2. The 11-branch condition was identical to Experiment 1 (no transformation), selleck except that the sets of 5 or 6 puppets were now placed on a tree with 11 branches, thus making a difference of one puppet harder to detect. Children received two trials in the 11-branch condition (one with 5 puppets, one with 6 puppets), after completion of the two trials of Experiment 1 or 2. In total, 36 subset-knowers (16 female, mean age 34.08 months,

32:06–35:26) contributed data for both set sizes (5 and 6 puppets): 13 participants from Experiment 1, 13 participants from the puppet addition/subtraction condition in Experiment 2, and 10 participants from the branch addition/subtraction condition in Experiment 2. Fig. 6 presents children’s performance in this experiment. There was no difference between the subgroups Selleck Lumacaftor of children who had

previously participated in different experiments or conditions ( ps>.24,ηp2s<.09 for the main effect and interaction involving Subgroup) so the data were pooled across these experiments and conditions. Children’s performance http://www.selleck.co.jp/products/forskolin.html was opposite in direction to the correct pattern: they searched longer in the trial in which no puppet should have remained in the box (5-puppet trial) than in the trial in which one puppet should have remained (6-puppet trial), F  (1, 33) = 4.4, p   = .043, ηp2=.12. This seemingly counterintuitive result appears to be an effect of the feedback received on the first trial: on the second trial, children tended to align their searches with this feedback. Hence, children tended to search less after a first trial with 5 puppets, in which no further search was warranted (3072 ms searching with 5 puppets followed by 887 ms searching with 6 puppets); in contrast, the searching time increased slightly after a first trial with 6 puppets, in which the feedback had shown one puppet to be missing (1467 ms searching with 6 puppets followed by 1874 ms searching with 5 puppets). This pattern resulted in an interaction between Set Size and Trial Order, F  (1, 34) = 5.7, p   = .023, ηp2=.14.