Developmental change in form categorization in early infancy

Abstract

Three experiments utilizing the familiarization/novelty-preference procedure were conducted to examine the form categorization abilities of newborn and 3-to 4-month-old infants. In the first two experiments, newborn infants discriminated between individual exemplars chosen from different form categories (Expt 1) and from within a form category (Expt 2). In Expt 3, older infants provided evidence of having formed individuated categorical representations for circles, crosses, squares and triangles, whereas newborn infants did not. However, newborn performance was consistent with the formation of broader categorical representations for open versus closed classes of form (i.e. crosses vs. circles, squares and triangles). The results are discussed in terms of a possible differentiation-based developmental change from broad-to-narrow (or global-to-basic) in the perceptual category representations formed by young infants.