Observing and imitating the formation of object classes during the second year of life.

Abstract

The developmental origins of overt object classification are still poorly understood, but one factor that may be informative and facilitative of classification during the second year is observing adults group similar objects. A pretest-posttest design with modeling and control groups was used to assess the impact of modeling on deferred imitation of groupings based on object similarity. Children at three ages (12, 18, and 24 months) observed an adult produce class groupings and alignments of objects. By 18 and 24 months, there was significant deferred imitation of object groupings. There was virtually no effect at 12 months. Moreover, only at 24 months were classified sets spatially aligned. The results indicate that observing adult classification will at least facilitate object grouping during the latter part of the second year, and that it may promote the use of spatial alignments as organizing devices or as modes of depicting object classes.