Auditory object enumeration - preliminary evidence of parallel auditory subitizing

The present study aimed to investigate participants' capacity to subitize auditory objects presented in parallel and to determine the subitizing range for auditory stimuli. The findings suggest the existence of a limited ability to enumerate auditory objects presented in parallel, which may be indicative of an auditory subitizing mechanism. Subitizing ranges for auditory objects were estimated to be around three. Additionally, in the present paper we propose a new model for parallel auditory subitizing, drawing from the attention framework in visual enumeration as outlined by Chen et al. (2022; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104753). The presented model posits that auditory subitizing relies on auditory object individuation in parallel presentation and auditory event individuation in sequential presentation (and sequential auditory subitizing accordingly).