Examining the Effect of Category-Training on 11-Month-Olds’ Property Generalizations
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2018-08-08
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Abstract
The ability to form category-property links allows infants to generalize a property from one category member to another. In the present studies, I examined whether orienting infants to the demands of the task, through categorization training, would facilitate 11-month-old infants’ property extensions when familiarized with a single exemplar of a novel animal category. In Experiment 1, 11-month-olds (N = 32) were trained with two familiar animal-sound pairings (i.e., dog-bark, cat-meow), and tested on their learning and generalization of novel animal-sound associations. Across two conditions, Experiment 2 familiarized 11-month-olds (N = 58) to one familiar (i.e., dog-bark) and one novel animal-sound pairing. Conditions differed in their presentation of familiarization trials (i.e., random or blocked). Infants were also tested on their learning and extension of the animal-sound associations. In both studies, infants did not demonstrate learning of the original animal sound pairing, nor generalization of the sound property to new members of the animal categories. These results indicate that categorization training did not facilitate 11-month-olds’ ability to learn or generalize a novel animal-sound association, when familiarized with a single exemplar.
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Zepeda. M. S. (2018). Examining the effect of category-training on 11-month-olds’ property generalizations (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/32832