This study examined the ability of children to classify fruit and flower odors. We asked four groups of children (4-11 years of age) and a group of adults to identify, categorize, and evaluate the edibility, liking, and typicality of 12 fruit and flower odors. Results showed an increase in interindividual agreement with age for the taxonomic…

We investigated whether 6- and 7-year-olds and 9- and 10-year-olds, as well as adults, process object dimensions independent of or in interaction with one another in a perception and action task by adapting Ganel and Goodale's method for testing adults ("Nature", 2003, Vol. 426, pp. 664-667). In addition, we aimed to confirm Ganel and Goodale's…

We investigated the impact of perceptual and categorical relatedness between a target and a distracter object on early referent identification in infants and adults. In an intermodal preferential looking (IPL) task, participants looked at a target object paired with a distracter object that could be perceptually similar or dissimilar and drawn…

We respond to the commentary of Franklin, Wright, and Davies ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102", 239-245 [2009]) by returning to the simple contrast between nature and nurture. We find no evidence from the toddler data that makes us revise our ideas that color categories are learned and never innate. (Contains 1 figure.)

The current study examined the abilities of children (6 and 8 years of age) and adults to freely categorize and label dynamic bodily/facial expressions designed to portray happiness, pleasure, anger, irritation, and neutrality and controlled for their level of valence, arousal, intensity, and authenticity. Multidimensional scaling and cluster…

We comment on Goldstein, Davidoff, and Roberson's replication and extension ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102", 219-238 [2009]) of our study of the effect of toddlers' color term knowledge on their categorical perception (CP) of color ("Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 90", 114-141 [2005]). First, we discuss how best to…

Two experiments studied the impact of the nature of information available at different processing levels on differences in haptic (tactile) and in visual, free classification development. Found that exploration characteristics (involving simultaneous versus independent processing of stimulus dimensions) and presentation of the stimulus dimensions…

A set of studies examined infant categorization of the orientation of visual stimuli by establishing a categorization function for the orientation continuum; attempted to determine a perceptual boundary between "oblique" and "vertical"; and explored the relationship between discrimination abilities and the perceptual boundary.…

Infants 7 to 8.5 months of age successfully differentiated 2 spectral structures in the context of variations in fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration. Subjects' performance with nonarbitrary categories could not be attributed to memorization of the familiarized set. (RH)

Infants respond categorically to color. However, the nature of infants' categorical responding to color is unclear. The current study investigated two issues. First, is infants' categorical responding more absolute than adults' categorical responding? That is, can infants discriminate two stimuli from the same color category? Second, is color…

An experiment with 4-, 7-, and 18-year olds investigated classifications of multidimensional objects to test whether the valuing of identity as a classification criterion occurs early in development; the distribution of attention to multiple relations increases with development; and the role of separate, component relations in solving…

This study measured the feature selection and classification ability of 213 children between the ages of four and sixteen through an analysis of their sorting performance from a developmental point of view. (CM)

Four experiments utilizing the familiarization-novelty preference procedure examined whether 3- and 4-month-olds could form categorical representations for cats versus dogs from the perceptual information available in silhouettes. Findings indicated that general shape or external contour information centered about the head was sufficient for…

Researched the possibility that four- to six-year-old children are competent and systematic classifiers, at least making classifications by overall similarity. In three experiments, young children classified various sets of multidimensional stimuli that could be organized into catagories by overall similarity or by diminsional attributes. Children…

Reflects on Needham's findings on infants' object recognition and segregation. Examines the role for perceptual bias in explaining infant performance, places Needham's studies in historical perspective, and assesses their theoretical significance. Discusses the merits of positing different kinds of information sources for object segregation, and…