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Parsing Items into Separate Categories: Developmental Change in Infant Categorization
Author(s) -
Younger Barbara A.,
Fearing Dru D.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8624.00022
Subject(s) - psychology , categorization , habituation , novelty , developmental psychology , stimulus (psychology) , language development , cognitive psychology , social psychology , linguistics , philosophy , psychotherapist
Three experiments report developmental change in infants' tendency to parse exemplars into separate categories. In Experiment 1, a familiarization‐novelty preference procedure was used. Fifty‐four 4‐, 7‐, and 10‐month‐old infants were familiarized with members of two basic‐level animal categories (cats and horses) and tested with novel members of the familiarized categories and with members of a third category (dogs). In Experiment 2, a habituation‐dishabituation procedure was used. Forty‐eight 7‐ and 10‐month‐old infants were habituated to examples of both male and female faces and tested with novel gender‐typical and gender‐ambiguous faces. In both experiments, 10‐month‐old infants appeared to form differentiated categories, whereas younger infants formed a single category to include the range of items presented during familiarization. Experiment 3 ruled out a priori stimulus preferences as an explanation for the 10‐month findings in Experiment 2.