Learning categories by touch: on the development of holistic and analytic processing.
The development of holistic and analytic processing often studied in the visual domain was investigated in haptics. Children 3 to 9 years of age and adults had to categorize haptic exemplars that varied systematically in four attributes (size, shape, surface texture, and weight). The subjects could learn the categories either analytically--that is, by focusing on a single attribute--or holistically--that is, in terms of overall similarity. The data show that even the youngest children learned the haptic categories far more often in an analytic mode than in a holistic mode. Nevertheless, an age trend was observed, referring to the attributes that the analytic learners used for their categorization. The children preferred substance-related attributes, especially surface texture, whereas the adults preferred structure-related attributes, especially shape. Thus, it appears that analytic and/or holistic processing in category learning develops in a similar manner in the visual and haptic domains.
Schwarzer
G
G
Department of Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany. gudrun.schwarzer@uni-tuebingen.de
Küfer
I
I
Wilkening
F
F
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000145:classification*; D008297:Male; D014110:Touch; D014796:Visual Perception