title: Seeing the unseen: Second-order correlation learning in 7- to 11-month-olds.
abstract: We present four experiments with the object-examining procedure that investigated 7-, 9-, and 11-month-olds' ability to associate two object features that were never presented simultaneously. In each experiment, infants were familiarized with a number of 3D objects that incorporated different correlations among the features of those objects and the body of the objects (e.g., Part A and Body 1, and Part B and Body 1). Infants were then tested with objects with a novel body that either possessed both of the parts that were independently correlated with one body during familiarization (e.g., Part A and B on Body 3) or that were attached to two different bodies during familiarization. The experiments demonstrate that infants as young as 7months of age are capable of this kind of second-order correlation learning. Furthermore, by at least 11months of age infants develop a representation for the object that incorporates both of the features they experienced during training. We suggest that the ability to learn second-order correlations represents a powerful but as yet largely unexplored process for generalization in the first years of life.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States.
authors.forename: Yevdokiya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yermolayeva
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States. Electronic address: rakison@andrew.cmu.edu.
authors.forename: David H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Rakison
mesh_terms: D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual
keywords: Cognition; Correlation; Infancy; Inference; Learning