Work

Six-Month-Old Infants' Categorization of Containment Spatial Relations

Year: 2003

Type: article

Abstract: Six-month-old infants' ability to form an abstract category of containment was examined using a standard infant categorization task. Infants were habituated to 4 pairs of objects in a containment relation. Following habituation, infants were tested with a novel example of the familiar containment relation and an example of an unfamiliar relation. Results indicate that infants look reliably longer at the unfamiliar versus familiar relation, indicating that they can form a categorical representation of containment. A second experiment demonstrated that infants do not rely on object occlusion to discriminate containment from a support or a behind spatial relation. Together, the results indicate that by 6 months, infants can recognize a containment relation from different angles and across different pairs of objects.

Source: Child Development

DOI: 10.1111/1467-8624.00562

Authors: Marianella Casasola, Leslie B Cohen, Elizabeth Chiarello

Institutions: Cornell University, The University of Texas at Austin

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Awards: G2089059843, INFANT VISUAL INFORMATION PROCESSING