Toddlers can adaptively change how they categorise:Same objects, same session, two different categorical distinctions

Horst, Jessica S, Ellis, Ann E, Samuelson, Larissa K ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9141-3286, Trejo, Erika, Worzalla, Samantha L, Peltan, Jessica R and Oakes, Lisa M (2009) Toddlers can adaptively change how they categorise:Same objects, same session, two different categorical distinctions. Developmental Science, 12 (1). pp. 96-105. ISSN 1363-755X

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Abstract

Two experiments demonstrate that 14- to 18-month-old toddlers can adaptively change how they categorize a set of objects within a single session, and that this ability is related to vocabulary size. In both experiments, toddlers were presented with a sequential touching task with objects that could be categorized either according to some perceptually salient dimension corresponding to a taxonomic distinction (e.g. animals vs. vehicles) or to some less obvious dimension (e.g. rigid vs. deformable). In each experiment, children with larger productive vocabularies responded to both dimensions, showing evidence of sensitivity to each way of categorizing the items. Children with smaller productive vocabularies attended only to the taxonomically related categorical grouping. These experiments confirm that toddlers can adaptively shift the basis of their categorization and highlight the dynamic interaction between the child and the current task in early categorization.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: child development,child language,concept formation,discrimination learning,female,form perception,generalization (psychology),humans,infant,male,psychological tests,vocabulary
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2015 14:01
Last Modified: 21 Oct 2022 02:34
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/55204
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00737.x

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