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What Does It Look Like and What Can It Do? Category Structure Influences How Infants Categorize
Author(s) -
Horst Jessica S.,
Oakes Lisa M.,
Madole Kelly L.
Publication year - 2005
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/j.1467-8624.2005.00867.x
Subject(s) - categorization , psychology , concept learning , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , feature (linguistics) , function (biology) , task (project management) , cognition , linguistics , neuroscience , philosophy , management , evolutionary biology , economics , biology
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 =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.