Early Inductive Reasoning: Examining 11-Month-Olds' Abilities
Abstract
Induction is a fundamental aspect of human learning and reasoning, allowing individuals to generalize beyond what is known to new instances and situations. The present studies investigated inductive reasoning in 11-month-olds. In three experiments, infants were familiarized with animal-sound pairings (e.g., Animal1 [red]-Sound1). Following familiarization, infants’ acquisition of the original pairing and their ability to generalize the sound property to a new member of the familiar category (e.g., Animal2 [blue]-Sound1) were assessed. The results revealed that infants acquired the original animal-sound pairing, but did not generalize the sound property to a new member of a familiar category. Thus, infants formed one-to-one animal-sound mappings, but did not show evidence of category-based inferences.
Description
Keywords
Cognitive, Developmental
Citation
Vukatana, E. (2013). Early Inductive Reasoning: Examining 11-Month-Olds' Abilities (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25768