To have and to hold: looking vs. touching in the study of categorization

Frontiers in Psychology

Lynn K. Perry¹ 

关键词: categorization;    novel noun generalization;    manual exploration;    context;    looking;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00178

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In order to make sense of the “blooming, buzzing, confusion” of a world where no two objects or events are ever exactly identical, infants form categories of perceptually distinct items that can be treated equivalently. The study of categorization often arises from one of two motivations: (1) to examine the mechanisms by which infants learn to treat distinct objects/events as equivalent (e.g., how an infant comes to name two different animals dog) and (2) to examine the current state of an infant's knowledge (e.g., does an infant have a category of dog?). As an illustration, consider Quinn et al.'s (1993) study. After habituating to different dog pictures, 3- and 4-month-olds do not dishabituate to cats. However, after habituating to cats, they do dishabituate to dogs. If we were examining the current state of knowledge, what should we conclude? Unless we want to suggest these infants are participants in Schrödinger's thought experiment (1935)—they both have and do not have a cat category—we cannot say anything conclusive. Instead, the results reveal something important about the mechanisms of categorization. Quinn et al. (1993) showed variability between category members affects the exclusivity of the categories infants form. This example demonstrates that studying whether infants have a category misses the crucial point that categories are neither things that people have in their heads nor that exist in the world; but rather categorization is a process (see also Oakes and Madole, 2000; Samuelson and Smith, 2000; Samuelson et al., 2007).

【 授权许可】

CC BY