Newborns' perceptual categorization for closed and open geometric forms

Abstract

This study explored newborns' ability to perceive perceptual similarities between different exemplars of 2 broad classes of simple shapes: closed and open geometric forms. Three experiments were carried out using a visual paired-comparison task. Evidence showed that, after familiarization either to closed-shaped or to open-shaped forms, newborns manifested a novelty preference for a novel-category rather than for a familiar-category exemplar (Experiment 1). This result could not be explained either as a consequence of the newborns' inability to discriminate between instances of the same category of simple geometric forms (Experiment 2), or as a consequence of a spontaneous preference for the novel-category exemplars (Experiment 3). Overall, findings revealed that newborns are able to form broad categories of distinguishable geometric shapes by relying on the shapes' perceptual similarity. Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.