Learning to form a spatial category of tight-fit relations: how experience with a label can give a boost.
Two experiments explored the ability of 18-month-old infants to form an abstract categorical representation of tight-fit spatial relations in a visual habituation task. In Experiment 1, infants formed an abstract spatial category when hearing a familiar word (tight) during habituation but not when viewing the events in silence or when hearing a novel word. In Experiment 2, infants were given experience viewing and producing tight-fit relations while an experimenter labeled them with a novel word. Following this experience, infants formed the tight-fit spatial category in the visual habituation task, particularly when hearing the novel word again during habituation. Results suggest that even brief experience with a label and tight-fit relations can aid infants in forming an abstract categorical representation of tight-fit relations.
Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. mc272@cornell.edu
Marianella
M
Casasola
Jui
J
Bhagwat
Anne S
AS
Burke
D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D002666:Psychology, Child; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012660:Semantics; D013028:Space Perception; D013067:Speech Perception; D014825:Vocabulary