title: Categorization of dynamic realistic motion events: Infants form categories of path before manner.
abstract: Acquiring verbs and prepositions requires categorization of spatial relations. This study examined whether a ground object differentially influences 13- to 15-month-old English-learning infants' categorization of a figure's path (e.g., around; Experiment 1) and manner (e.g., hopping; Experiment 2) of motion in non-linguistic dynamic realistic events. Furthermore, we tested whether categorizing path is "easier" than categorizing manner. Results revealed that infants categorized path only in the presence of a ground object, validating Talmy's definition of path. In contrast, infants categorized manner only in the absence of a ground object. Finally, infants categorizing path showed stronger novelty preferences than those categorizing manner, supporting a primacy of path. Infants showed sensitivity to event components lexicalized in relational terms.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA. Electronic address: konishih@msu.edu.
authors.forename: Haruka
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Konishi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA.
authors.forename: Shannon M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Pruden
authors.affiliation: School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
authors.forename: Roberta Michnick
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Golinkoff
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USA.
authors.forename: Kathy
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hirsh-Pasek
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception
keywords: Categorization; Event processing; Infants; Manner; Path; Spatial relations