Three studies examined two-year olds' understanding of novel terms for objects that they are already familiar with under another name. The studies found that the new term was most likely to be treated as a second basic-level name for the category to which the object belonged. (MDM)

In 2 experiments, 15- and 21-month-old infants were presented with a target object and asked to select an object taxonomically or thematically related to the target object. The target object was introduced with or without a novel nonsense noun. Results indicated that novel nouns focused infants' attention on taxonomic relations. (MDM)

Examines infants' ability to detect correlations among feature categories of the type that one might expect to be useful in forming natural object categories. (PCB)

Visual preference procedures were used to investigate development of perceptually based subordinate-level categorization in 3- to 7-month-old infants. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that 3- to 4-month-olds did not form category representations for photographic exemplars of subordinate-level classes of cats and dogs (i.e., Siamese vs. Tabby,…

Three experiments examined the changes in category representation that take place when children use exemplars for tasks other than classification. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6- and 10-year-old children learned to classify exemplars of a novel category and then used the same exemplars in an inferential prediction task. In a subsequent classification…

Despite a large body of research demonstrating the kinds of categories to which infants respond, few studies have directly assessed how infants' categorization unfolds over time. Four experiments used a visual familiarization task to evaluate 10-month-old infants' (N=98) learning of exemplars characterized by commonalities in appearance or…

Second graders, fifth graders, and adults participated in two experiments designed to study the effects of sorting on subsequent recall of unrelated words. (Author/CW)

A study of the use of multiple form dimensions in pattern classification by children in Grades 2 and 5, and adults. Reliability of classification, number and saliency of features selected, and accuracy with which they were used all implied continuous development of perceptual skills. (Author/ED)

Two experiments investigated the role of the sorting-presentation procedure in promoting organized recall in second grade children. (Author/JMB)

Examined the relationship between two components of class inclusion (hierarchical classification and quantification of inclusion) and investigated the effects of methodological modifications. Subjects were nine girls and nine boys each from first, second, and third grades. (Author/JMB)

Studies children's inductive inferences in order to investigate the development of the expectation that members of a category share unforeseen properties. Results indicate that preschoolers drew more inferences based on category membership than on perceptual appearances. (PCB)

When 96 mothers and 46 fathers of 6- or 13-month-old infants independently generated behavioral cues they believed contributed to their perception of their infant's recent easiness/difficultness, few systematic differences were found between easy and difficult infants, 6- and 13-month-olds, males and females, and firstborn and later-born.…

Investigates the ability of four-, seven-, and ten-month-old infants to perceive and base novelty responses on correlations among perceptual attributes in a category-like context. In a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, ten-month-old infants clearly responded on the basis of the correlation among attributes, while four- and seven-month-old…

Three-, four-, five-, and 24-year-olds were exposed to continuum of new objects: category boundaries became less fuzzy with age; verbal justifications of category decisions were idiosyncratic or uninterpretable in youngest children, but by five years children referred to specific visual features; and fuzzy categories became less sensitive with age…

Three experiments examined role of lexical-form class in preschoolers' establishment of word-to-object mappings in referentially ambiguous situations. Results indicated that preschoolers were most likely to reject two words for the same object if both were proper names, and were less likely to reject if both were adjectives or if one was proper…