title: Early differentiation within the animate domain: are humans something special?
abstract: This report investigates whether preverbal infants distinguish between humans and mammals within the animate domain. In Experiment 1, 3 groups, aged 7, 9, and 11 months (N = 58), participated in an object-examination task. Infants were presented with 10 different three-dimensional toy models from one category (humans or mammals), followed by an exemplar from the other category. All groups habituated to the familiarization stimuli and dishabituated to the out-of-category item. In Experiment 2, 2 groups of infants, aged 5 and 7 months (N = 40), participated in a familiarization-novelty preference task. Four pairs of color photos of objects from the same category were presented twice, and then infants received a test pair that included one new object from the already-familiar category and one out-of-category item. Infants habituated only to humans, and 7-month-olds, but not 5-month-olds, dishabituated to the out-of-category exemplar. Implications for the development of categorical thinking during the first year of life are discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany. sabina.pauen@uni-tuebingen.de
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pauen
mesh_terms: D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D002666:Psychology, Child