Manual exploratory behaviors during object interaction that form the basis of tool use behavior, are mostly qualitatively characterized in terms of their frequency and duration of occurrence. To fully understand their functional and clinical significance, quantitative movement characterization is needed alongside their qualitative analysis.…

This study investigates the acquisition of integrated object manipulation and categorization abilities through a series of experiments in which human adults and artificial agents were asked to learn to manipulate two-dimensional objects that varied in shape, color, weight, and color intensity. The analysis of the obtained results and the…

This research examined the development of adaptive generalization in infants' object-directed actions. Infants ages 9 and 12 months participated in an object manipulation task with stimulus objects from 2 categories that differed in shape and weight and that bore a consistent shape or weight correspondence. Weight differences between…

Motor affordances have been shown to play a role in visual object identification and categorization. The present study explored whether working memory is likewise supported by motor affordances. Use of motor affordances should be disrupted by motor interference, and this effect should be larger for objects that have motor affordances than for…

Five experiments investigated the importance of shape and object manipulation when 12-month-olds were given the task of individuating objects representing exemplars of kinds in an event-mapping design. In Experiments 1 and 2, results of the study from Xu, Carey, and Quint (2004, Experiment 4) were partially replicated, showing that infants were…

The present study assessed the functional organization of action semantics by asking subjects to categorize pictures of an actor holding objects with a correct or incorrect grip at either a correct or incorrect goal location. Overall, reaction times were slower if the object was presented with an inappropriate posture, and this effect was stronger…

Two experiments examined the flexibility and stability with which children and adults organize locations into categories on the basis of object relatedness. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults learned the locations of 20 objects belonging to 4 categories. Displacement patterns revealed that children and adults used object cues to organize the…

An extensive body of research claims that labels facilitate categorisation, highlight the commonalities between objects and act as invitations to form categories for young infants before their first birthday. While this may indeed be a reasonable claim, we argue that it is not justified by the experiments described in the research. We report on a…

Examined infants' categorization using object manipulation tasks that involved objects that were models of animals, vehicles, or furniture. Objects were normal, had anomalous moving parts (such as a dog with wheels), or had different textures. Found that 14- to 22-month olds attended to the parts and structural configuration of objects, but not to…

Discussed are results of studies of the cognitive development of 2- and 3-year-old children which suggest that the mind makes gains in the ability to think as gains in language development are made. "Thinking" in this context refers to the judgments children made as they selected objects and maneuvered them into one arrangement or…

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)

Two experiments used object-manipulation tasks to examine whether one- to two-year-olds form superordinate-like categories by attending to object parts. Findings indicated that 14- and 18-month-olds behaved systematically toward categories with different, but not matching, parts. Without part differences, none formed superordinate categories.…

Examines the issue of object sorting in early infancy. Forty-eight infants at 6, 9, and 12 months were presented with eight sets of small, manipulable objects. At six months, selective manipulation was absent; at nine months, 94 percent of the infants sequentially touched similar objects and at 12 months 100 percent did so. (Author/DB)

A MAIN PROBLEM ARISING IN THE STUDY OF CATEGORIZING BEHAVIOR IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN BY MEANS OF SORTING PROCEDURES WAS THAT PERFORMANCE APPEARED TO BE VERY MUCH A FUNCTION OF THE CHILD'S COMPREHENSION OF THE PARTICULAR VERBAL INSTRUCTIONS EMPLOYED BY THE EXPERIMENTER IN PRESENTING THE TASK. THE SPECIFIC AIMS OF THE FIRST STUDY WERE TO INVESTIGATE…

Two experiments show that action alters the shape categories formed by 2-year-olds. Experiment 1 shows that moving an object horizontally (or vertically) defines the horizontal (or vertical) axis as the main axis of elongation and systematically changes the range of shapes seen as similar. Experiment 2 shows that moving an object symmetrically (or…