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The Cat is out of the Bag: The Joint Influence of Previous Experience and Looking Behavior on Infant Categorization
Author(s) -
KovackLesh Kristine A.,
Horst Jessica S.,
Oakes Lisa M.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1080/15250000802189428
Subject(s) - categorization , psychology , gaze , developmental psychology , task (project management) , categorical variable , cognitive psychology , representation (politics) , joint attention , linguistics , psychoanalysis , philosophy , management , machine learning , autism , politics , computer science , political science , law , economics
We examined the effect of 4‐month‐old infants' previous experience with dogs, cats, or both and their online looking behavior on their learning of the adult‐defined category of cat in a visual familiarization task. Four‐month‐old infants' ( N = 123) learning in the laboratory was jointly determined by whether or not they had experience with pets at home and how much they shifted their gaze back and forth between the stimuli during familiarization. Specifically, only infants with pets at home who also exhibited high levels of switching during familiarization remembered the individual cat exemplars or formed a summary representation of those cats. These results are consistent with recent theorizing about the processes of how infants' categorical representations are formed, and provide new understanding into how infants' categorization unfolds over time.