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Correlated attributes and categorization in the first half‐year of life
Author(s) -
Bhatt Ramesh S.,
Wilk Amy,
Hill Debra,
RoveeCollier Carolyn
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.10164
Subject(s) - categorization , psychology , feature (linguistics) , concept learning , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , linguistics , philosophy
In two experiments with 36 human infants, we asked whether 3‐ and 6‐month‐olds could use correlations between attributes of individual objects to categorize. Infants learned to kick to move block mobiles that simultaneously displayed two categories defined by the figures displayed on them: the colors of the figures and the colors of the blocks. Two features were correlated, and the third varied across categories. Only 6‐month‐olds categorized novel category exemplars that preserved the original feature correlations (Experiment 1A), but both 3‐ and 6‐month‐olds discriminated feature recombinations that broke the original correlations (Experiment 1B). When category exemplars were presented successively, 6‐month‐olds also learned the feature correlations and used them to categorize (Experiment 2), but their performance was less robust. Infants' superior learning when stimuli were presented simultaneously may reflect “unitization,” a learning disposition unique to immature infants. These experiments reveal that infants' ability to use correlated attributes to categorize emerges months earlier than previously thought. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 44: 103–115, 2004.