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Newborns' Perceptual Categorization for Closed and Open Geometric Forms
Author(s) -
Turati Chiara,
Simion Francesca,
Za Lara
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1207/s15327078in0403_01
Subject(s) - categorization , novelty , perception , psychology , similarity (geometry) , cognitive psychology , visual perception , task (project management) , preference , simple (philosophy) , communication , mathematics , artificial intelligence , social psychology , computer science , image (mathematics) , statistics , neuroscience , philosophy , management , epistemology , economics
This study explored newborns' ability to perceive perceptual similarities between different exemplars of 2 broad classes of simple shapes: closed and open geometric forms. Three experiments were carried out using a visual paired‐comparison task. Evidence showed that, after familiarization either to closed‐shaped or to open‐shaped forms, newborns manifested a novelty preference for a novel‐category rather than for a familiar‐category exemplar (Experiment 1). This result could not be explained either as a consequence of the newborns' inability to discriminate between instances of the same category of simple geometric forms (Experiment 2), or as a consequence of a spontaneous preference for the novel‐category exemplars (Experiment 3). Overall, findings revealed that newborns are able to form broad categories of distinguishable geometric shapes by relying on the shapes' perceptual similarity.