Infants flexibly use different dimensions to categorize objects.
A sequential-touching task was used to investigate whether 14-month-old infants can rapidly change how they categorize a set of objects, recognizing new groupings of objects they had previously categorized in a different way. When presented with a collection of objects that could be categorized by shape (balls vs. blocks) or material (soft vs. hard), infants who showed stable performance on a superordinate-level categorization task or who had larger receptive vocabularies exhibited flexible categorization; they categorized the objects by material as well as by shape. Infants who rarely responded to the superordinate-level categorization task or who had smaller receptive vocabularies, in contrast, categorized primarily by shape. Thus, flexible categorization is related to development in other cognitive domains.
Ellis
Ann E
AE
Department of Psychology, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 50112, USA. ellisa@grinnell.edu
Oakes
Lisa M
LM
D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods