We tested 6- and 8-month-old White and non-White infants (N = 53 total, 28 girls) from Northern California in a visual search task to determine whether a unique item in an otherwise homogeneous display (a singleton) attracts attention because it is a unique singleton and "pops out" in a categorical manner, or whether attention instead…

This study explores how 7-month-old infants categorize graphical images varying in basic perceptual features by using a fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) task. Most participants were Caucasian and their parents had a higher education, but the family's socioeconomic background was mixed. Experiment 1 (N = 23) tested brain responses to…

Accurate perception of emotional (facial) expressions is an essential social skill. It is currently debated whether emotion categorization in infancy emerges in a "broad-to-narrow" pattern and the degree to which language influences this process. We used an habituation paradigm to explore (a) whether 14- and 18-month-old infants perceive…

Infants are curious learners who drive their own cognitive development by imposing structure on their learning environment as they explore. Understanding the mechanisms by which infants structure their own learning is therefore critical to our understanding of development. Here we propose an explicit mechanism for intrinsically motivated…

Humans are often exposed to music beginning at birth (or even before birth), yet the study of the development of musical abilities during infancy has only recently gained momentum. The goals of the present study were to determine whether young infants (ages four to seven months) spontaneously moved rhythmically in the presence of music, and…

Although it is generally accepted that labels facilitate categorization in infancy, recent evidence suggests that infants and young children are more likely to process visual input when presented in isolation than when paired with nonlinguistic sounds or linguistic labels. These findings suggest that auditory input (when compared to a no-auditory…

Vidic and Haaf (2004) questioned the idea that infants use head information to categorize cats as distinct from dogs (Quinn & Eimas, 1996) and argued instead that the torso region is important. However, only null results were observed in the critical test comparisons between modified and unmodified stimuli. In addition, a priori preferences for…

Investigated 3-month-olds' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static and dynamic attributes. Found that regardless of viewing static or dynamic displays, infants showed habituation to varying exemplars from the same category, dishabituated to an exemplar from a novel category, and showed a novelty preference for a novel-category…

The addition of idiosyncratic features to individual members of an artificially constructed category enhanced specific item memory among 13 month olds, but not among 10 month olds. Discussion of findings focuses on their theoretical implications and the nature of the age difference. (RH)

Describes connectionist model showing exclusivity asymmetries when categorizing visual stimuli, similar to pattern shown by infants. Examines asymmetries in terms of an associative learning mechanism, distributed internal representations, and statistics of feature distributions in the stimuli. Details test of model with infants, finding that…

Examined representation of pictorial exemplars of humans by 3- and 4-month olds. Results demonstrated an asymmetry regarding the exclusivity of categorical representations formed for humans and non-human animals. Categorical representations for humans included exemplar information, whereas categorical representation for non-human animals was based…

Five experiments used a categorization habituation-of-looking paradigm to investigate infants' categorization of animals and vehicles based on static versus dynamic attributes of stimuli (color images versus dynamic point-light displays). Findings showed that 6-month-olds categorize animals and vehicles based on static and dynamic information, and…

Two studies examined whether infants' category discrimination in an object-examination task was based solely on an ad hoc analysis of perceptual similarities among the experimental stimuli. Findings indicated that 10- to 11-month- olds' responses varied systematically only with the presence of a category change, but not with the degree of…

Two experiments investigated whether preverbal infants distinguish between humans and mammals. Study 1 found that 7-, 9-, and 11-month-olds distinguished humans from mammals in an object-examination task. Study 2 found that 7-month-olds but not 5-month-olds showed evidence for category discrimination with the 2-dimensional color photos of toy…

The relation between perceptual organization and categorization processes in 3- and 4-month-olds was explored. The question was whether an invariant part abstracted during category learning could interfere with Gestalt organizational processes. A 2003 study by Quinn and Schyns had reported that an initial category familiarization experience in…