One important function of categories is to permit rich inductive inferences. Prior work shows that children use category labels to guide their inductive inferences. However, there are competing theories to explain this phenomenon, differing in the roles attributed to conceptual information vs. perceptual similarity. Seven experiments with 4- to…

Historically, accounts of object representation and perceived similarity have focused on intrinsic features. Although more recent accounts have explored how objects, scenes, and situations containing common relational structures come to be perceived as similar, less is known about how the perceived similarity of parts or objects embedded within…

A theory is presented to explain the perception of partially occluded objects and illusory figures, from both static and kinematic information, in a unified framework. This detailed theory of unit formation accounts for most cases of boundary perception in the absence of local physical specification. (SLD)

Eliminative connectionism as a theory of how humans generalize universal relationships to unfamiliar instances cannot account for the way universals are extended to arbitrary items. The discussion shows that the class of eliminative connectionist models currently in vogue cannot extend universals outside the training space. (SLD)

Studied how nonnatural entities are represented by examining concepts of God of 145 college students in three experiments. In story processing tasks, students often used an anthropomorphic God concept that was inconsistent with their stated theological beliefs. The tendency to anthropomorphize may be generalizable to other agents. (SLD)

Experiments with 251 male and 280 female college students demonstrated that subjects' representations of the water levels in a tilted container could be influenced by problem presentation. Subjects who did not appear to know that water remains horizontal were attempting to solve an object-relative, rather than environment-relative, problem. (SLD)

Category theory concept of a commutative diagram was used to construct a model of the way in which symbolic processes are applied to problem solving. It was shown that several different levels of thought can be distinguished within the basic model. Two experiments testing the theory are reported. (Author/RD)

The conceptual categories that children have developed in their second year were studied in five experiments using object manipulation tasks. Subjects included 152 children from 18 to 31 months of age. These very young children had formed global conceptions of many domains of objects. (SLD)

To determine whether different long-term memory representations are necessary for verbal and visual material, subjects studied faces composed of visual features or verbal facts composed of concepts. Findings showed interference between verbal and pictorial information, and supported the ACT theory that pictorial and verbal materials are stored…

Eight experiments were conducted to examine 3- and 3.5-month-old infants' responses to occlusion events. The results revealed two developments, one in infants' knowledge of when objects should and should not be occluded and the other in infants' ability to posit additional objects to make sense of events that would otherwise violate their…

Studied whether the language spoken affects the way subjects think about time in 3 experiments involving: (1) 26 English-speaking and 20 native Mandarin-speaking college students; (2) 25 bilingual students; and (3) 70 native English speakers. Results suggest that language is a powerful tool for shaping thought about abstract domains and habitual…

An analysis of the quantitative processes underlying conservation of quantity is presented. Models of three quantitative operators--subitizing, counting, and estimation--are derived from adult performance in quantification tasks, and some features of the operators are described. The emergence of conservation is described in terms of the…

Four studies tested the hypothesis that collection structures are easier than classes in numerical reasoning tasks. With perceptual input constant, the collection labels in contrast to the class labels promoted children's insight into certain numerical principles and facilitated the use of these principles in a variety of numerical tasks.…