We explore different ways in which the human visual system can adapt for perceiving and categorizing the environment. There are various accounts of supervised (categorical) and unsupervised perceptual learning, and different perspectives on the functional relationship between perception and categorization. We suggest that common experimental…

Evidence that learning rule-based (RB) and information-integration (II) category structures can be dissociated across different experimental variables has been used to support the view that such learning is supported by multiple learning systems. Across 4 experiments, we examined the effects of 2 variables, the delay between response and feedback…

Working memory is crucial for many higher level cognitive functions, ranging from mental arithmetic to reasoning and problem solving. Likewise, the ability to learn and categorize novel concepts forms an indispensable part of human cognition. However, very little is known about the relationship between working memory and categorization. This…

Recently, Redford (2010) found that monkeys seemed to exert metacognitive control in a category-learning paradigm. Specifically, they selected more trials to view as the difficulty of the category-learning task increased. However, category-learning difficulty was determined by manipulating the family resemblance across the to-be-learned exemplars.…

Disentangling bottom-up and top-down processing in adult category learning is notoriously difficult. Studying category learning in infancy provides a simple way of exploring category learning while minimizing the contribution of top-down information. Three- to 4-month-old infants presented with cat or dog images will form a perceptual category…

Six experiments were reported which examine the young child's ability to compare included and nonincluded sets. Subjects were children from nursery and primary schools in Edinburgh. (Author/MP)

Examines developmental change in 4- 7- and 10-month-old infants' perceptions of correlations among attributes to determine whether relational information plays a role in abilities ranging from the perception and recognition of a simple pattern to the formation of a category. (HOD)

Reinterprets Jeannie R. Aschkenasy and Richard D. Odom's findings (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology; v34 n3 Dec 1982) on perceptual and cognitive development. The increasing dimensionalization of stimulus relations rather than the increasing detectability or influence of stimulus differences is argued. (BJD)

Development of the ability to classify auditory patterns was studied at grades 2, 6, 10, and 12 and at adult age levels. Both accuracy and feature use in classification were consistent across age; the age changes that did occur appeared to be due to differences in perception rather than process. (JMB)

Two studies explored the hypothesis that young children perceive integrally some stimuli that older children perceive separably. In both experiments, kindergarten, second- and fifth-grade children were required to classify sets of stimuli that varied in size and brightness. (SB)

In four experiments, younger children and adults showed greater perceptual sensitivity and more extensive conceptual labeling for difference relations than for identity relations. Younger and older children demonstrated consistent dimensional selectivity in tasks involving free classification and the estimation of differences. (Author/BG)

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)

Responds to Mandler's critique of authors' view of infant categorization. Maintains that their view of infant categorization is not characterized by a shift from one type of category to another but by gradual changes in the kinds of information infants can use in forming categories. Clarifies position regarding a single categorical process using…

Very little cognitive development research has been done among African children, and most of the completed studies have relied on "translated" versions of Western test materials that are inappropriate to the African milieu. This paucity of research has had two affects: (1) rural African children have been represented as somewhat less…

The hypothesis that overall-similarity relations structure both adults' and children's classifications of heterogeneous objects (objects that differ in a variety of ways) was supported in two experiments. When objects varied simultaneously on many dimensions, adults and children constructed classifications that maximized within-category similarity…