title: The emergence of perceptual category representations in young infants: a connectionist analysis.
abstract: There has been recent interest in the idea that principles governing learning in connectionist networks can form the basis for an alternative understanding of developmental processes (Elman, Bates, Karmiloff-Smith, Johnson, Parisi, & Plunkett, 1996). The present paper can be viewed as a case example of the usefulness (and limitations) of connectionist modeling for the study of infant cognition. Specifically, the paper reports on a series of connectionist models designed to analyze the factors responsible for the emergence of global-level and basic-level category representations in young infants. The models (1) simulated the formation of global-level and basic-level representations, (2) revealed a global-to-basic order of category emergence, (3) uncovered the formation of two distinct global-level representations-an initial "self-organizing" perceptual global level and a subsequently "trained" arbitrary (i.e., nonperceptual) global level, and (4) displayed a gradual transition from perceptual global-level to perceptual basic-level representation with increasing exposure to training stimuli. Hypotheses for empirical investigations of category development in infants that follow from the modeling efforts are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington and Jefferson College, Washington, PA 15301, USA. pquinn@vms.cis.pitt.edu
authors.forename: P C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Quinn
authors.forename: M H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Johnson
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007858:Learning; D008960:Models, Psychological; D014796:Visual Perception