Infants’ use of category knowledge and object attributes when segregating objects at 8.5 months of age (original) (raw)
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Visual Cognition, 2005
Three experiments investigated category formation based on real-world encounters with objects and how that category knowledge functioned as a top-down influence on infants' scene processing. 5-month-old infants received various experiences with exemplars of an object category and then were shown a display containing 2 adjacent novel objects, 1 of which was a novel exemplar of the category. If infants recognized this novel exemplar, they could use category information to determine the boundary between the 2 objects. Only infants who experienced object exemplars in situations that closely mimicked everyday infant experiences with objects successfully parsed the display. Results suggest that regularities in the contexts where infants experience similar objects help infants link their experiences and form object categories that can be used to segregate novel scenes. These results shed light on the real-world process of infant knowledge base formation and on how infants use their knowledge base to segment real-world scenes.
What Does It Look Like and What Can It Do? Category Structure Influences How Infants Categorize
Child Development, 2005
Despite a large body of research demonstrating the kinds of categories to which infants respond, few studies have directly assessed how infants' categorization unfolds over time. Four experiments used a visual familiarization task to evaluate 10-month-old infants' (N 5 98) learning of exemplars characterized by commonalities in appearance or function. When learning exemplars with a common function, infants initially responded to the common feature, apparently forming a category, and only learned the individual features with more extensive familiarization. When learning exemplars with a common appearance, infants initially learned the individual features and apparently only formed a category with more extensive familiarization. The results are discussed in terms of models of category learning.
Object Function and Categorization in Infancy: Two Mechanisms of Facilitation
Infancy, 2006
Does function facilitate categorization by focusing infants' attention generally on all commonalities among objects or specifically on functionally relevant properties? After familiarization to a novel category, 18-month-olds selected another category member from a pair of previously unseen test objects. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants chose globally-similar over functionally-similar and novel test objects. Functionally-similar and novel test objects were chosen equally. These data suggest that function facilitates categorization through a general attention enhancing mechanism. However, when functions were more uniquely and transparently tied to object properties in Experiments 3 and 4, infants chose functionally-similar over novel test objects. Globally-and functionally-similar test objects were chosen equally. Therefore, a specific attention enhancing mechanism also sometimes supports categorization. Object function 3 OBJECT FUNCTION AND CATEGORIZATION IN INFANCY: TWO MECHANISMS OF FACILITATION How do infants successfully organize the world into meaningful categories? Decades of research devoted to answering this question attests to its significance and complexity. This legacy of research has not been in vain.
Infants' object examining: Habituation and categorization
Cognitive Development, 1991
The visual habituation paradigm has dominated the study of infant object discrimination and categorization. A more active task, object examining, was used in two studies to explore early discrimination and categorization, and to validate previous findings. The object-examining task combined active exploration of real objects with some aspects of a habituation-dishabituation paradigm. The first study explored simple discrimination. Six-and 10-month-old infants were familiarized with a single object and then tested with two novel objects. The results indicated that at both ages, infants showed clear discrimination among objects. The second study explored infant categorization and revealed that when both 6and 10-month-old infants were familiarized with a category of objects, they responded to novel objects in terms of their categorical membership. These results converge with previous findings obtained by using more traditional methods, and demonstrate the utility of an object-examining task for the exploration of cognitive abilities in the first year of life. Finally, a comparison of two different measures of attention used in this task, examining and looking, revealed that examining time was a better measure of active processing of information about objects than was looking time. For over a decade, the primary method for studying infants' categorization has been the visual habituation paradigm. Using this technique, investigators have found that by the second half of the first year of life infants respond to categories of objects such as stuffed animals (Cohen & Caputo, 1978), faces (Cohen &
Basic-level category discriminations by 7- and 9-month-olds in an object examination task
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2003
This study examines 7-and 9-month-oldsÕ ability to categorize cats as separate from dogs, 10 and dogs as separate from cats in an object examination task. In Experiment 1, 7-and 9-month-11 olds (N ¼ 30) familiarized with toy cat replicas were found to form a category of cat that in-12 cluded novel cats but excluded a dog and an eagle. In Experiment 2, 7-and 9-month-olds 13 (N ¼ 30) familiarized with toy dog replicas were found to form a category of dog that included 14 a novel dogs and a novel cat but excluded an eagle. These results mirror those of 3-to 4-month-15 olds tested with visual preference methods and stand in contrast to previously reported object 16 examination results. Analyses of the distribution of features in the exemplars used to familiar-17 ized infants suggest that, like the 3-to 4-month-olds, the 7-and 9-month-olds in these studies 18 form categories within the task, and on the basis of feature distributions. 19
Effects of prior experience on 4.5-month old infants' object segregation
Infant Behavior and Development, 1998
Adults bring to bear at least three types of object knowledge-configural, experiential, and physical knowledge-when segregating displays. Prior research suggests that young infants lack configural knowledge: they do not expect similar surfaces to belong to the same units and dissimilar surfaces to distinct units. The present research asked whether young infants could make use of another type of object knowledge, experiential knowledge, when organizing displays. In the first experiment, 4.5month-old infants were familiarized with a stationary display composed of a yellow cylinder lying next to a tall, blue box. In the test events, a gloved hand grasped the cylinder and pulled it a short distance to the side; the box either moved with the cylinder (move-together condition) or remained stationary (move-apart condition). The infants tended to look equally at the move-apart and the movetogether events, as though they were uncertain whether the cylinder and box constituted one or two
Hold your horses: How exposure to different items influences infant categorization
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2007
We investigated how exposure to pairs of different items (as compared to pairs of identical items) influences 10-month-old infants' (N = 79) categorization of horses versus dogs in an object-examining task. Infants responded to an exclusive category when familiarized with pairs of different items, but not when familiarized with pairs of identical items (Experiment 1), even when the frequency of exposure to each item was controlled (Experiment 2). When familiarized with pairs of identical items, infants failed to show evidence of memory for the individual exemplars (Experiment 3). Reducing the retention interval between presentations of different items in the identical pairs condition facilitated infants' recognition of an exclusive categorical distinction (Experiment 4). These results are discussed in terms of how exposure to collections of different items, and how opportunities to compare items, influences infants' categorization. Every day people categorize as an efficient and effective way of organizing newly acquired information. Because infants are constantly exposed to new information, the ability to form categories may be especially important for them. Indeed, a large number of studies over the last 25 years has shown impressive categorization abilities in infancy (
Object names and object functions serve as cues to categories for infants
Developmental Psychology, 2002
Can object names and functions act as cues to categories for infants? In Study 1, 14-and 18-month-old infants were shown novel category exemplars along with a function, a name, or no cues. Infants were then asked to "find another one," choosing between 2 novel objects (1 from the familiar category and the other not). Infants at both ages were more likely to select the category match in the function than in the no-cue condition. However, only at 18 months did naming the objects enhance categorization. Study 2 shows that names can facilitate categorization for 14-month-olds as well when a hint regarding the core meaning of the objects (the function of a single familiarization object) is provided.