Browsing by Author "Switzer, Jessica"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemOpen AccessA Bat is Not a Bird: Infants’ Use of Distinct Labels to Guide Inductive Reasoning(2015-07-27) Switzer, Jessica; Graham, SusanThis study examined infants’ use of distinct labels to guide inductive reasoning. Sixty-five 14- to 16-month-olds were presented with target objects that possessed a non-obvious sound property, followed by test objects that varied in shape similarity (inductive inference task). Infants were also administered a working memory and an inhibition task, and parents completed a vocabulary questionnaire. Results revealed that when objects were not labeled, infants generalized the property to the high- similarity objects only. When the target and test objects were labeled with distinct labels, infants 15-months and older inhibited their generalization of the property to the high- and low- similarity objects. Performance on the inductive inference task was related to age, but not to working memory, inhibition or vocabulary. Our findings suggest that infants 15-months and older use distinct labels to carve out distinct categories, even when objects are highly perceptually similar.