Abstract
Categorization of sensory stimuli is a vital process in understanding the world. In this paper we show that distributional learning plays a role in learning novel object categories in school-aged children. An 11-step continuum was constructed based on two novel animate objects by morphing one object into the other in 11 equal steps. Forty-nine children (7–9 years old) were subjected to one of two familiarization conditions during which they saw tokens from the continuum. The conditions differed in the position of the distributional peaks along the continuum. After familiarization it was tested how the children categorized the stimuli. Results show that, in line with our expectations, familiarization condition influenced categorization during the test phase, indicating that the frequency distribution of tokens in the input had induced novel object category formation. These results suggest that distributional learning could play an important role in categorizing sensory stimuli throughout life.
Highlights
The world around us is incredibly complex
Participants preferred token deviant 1 (D1) over deviant 2 (D2), but stimulus choice was influenced by familiarization condition
For D1 in the current study, the choice for either D1 or D2 was still significantly influenced by familiarization condition
Summary
The world around us is incredibly complex. We need to form mental categories in order to make sense of the sensory information we perceive, which allow us to recognize and distinguish different objects, for example distinguishing a knife from a screwdriver. In the study of Newell and Bülthoff (2002) adult participants showed categorical perception of different familiar objects like bottles, glasses and lamps in adults. Linear continuums of three-dimensional visual stimuli were constructed, e.g., a transformation of a wine glass to a beer glass in 11 equal steps. Participants perceived these continuums as categorical rather than continuous: results from an identification task showed that there was a clear point where the object was no longer a wine glass, but a beer glass. The experiment showed better discrimination of two tokens that surround that boundary (between-category discrimination) than of two tokens within a category (within-category discrimination)
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