The stability and flexibility of spatial categories

Four experiments examined the flexibility and stability with which children and adults organize locations into categories based on their spatiotemporal experience with locations. Seven-, 9-, 11-year-olds, and adults learned the locations of 20 objects in an open, square box. During learning, participants experienced the locations in four spatiotemporally defined groups (i.e., four sets of nearby locations learned together in time). At test, participants attempted to place the objects in the correct locations without the aid of the dots marking the locations. Children and adults displaced the objects toward the corners of the box consistent with the organization they experienced during learning, suggesting that they used spatiotemporal experience to organize the locations into groups. Importantly, the pattern of organization remained the same following a long delay for all four age groups, demonstrating stability. For adults, this organization shifted after a new pattern of spatiotemporal experience was introduced, suggesting that adults' categories based on spatiotemporal experience are quite flexible. Children only exhibited flexibility when the new pattern of spatiotemporal organization was consistent with available perceptual cues, demonstrating that the flexibility with which children organize locations into categories is intimately tied to both remembered and perceptual sources of information.     

How Children and Adults Name Broken Objects: Inferences and Reasoning About Design Intentions in the Categorization of Artifacts

If inferences about the functions intended by object designers guide the way artifacts are categorized, a broken object should still be considered a member of its original category even though it is currently dysfunctional; however, an object that appears to be dysfunctional by design should not be. Such a comparison was arranged in four studies of lexical categorization. Even with novel categories, 10-year-olds and adults preferentially included broken objects, and they did so spontaneously (Study 1). Younger children did not (Studies 1 and 2). However, when probed about the design intentions behind novel objects, 6-year-olds often inferred them correctly and then took intentions into account to categorize (Study 3). In fact, when 4-year-olds named objects derived from familiar categories, even they spontaneously used design intentions to categorize (Study 4). Accordingly, even young children provided some evidence of categorizing artifacts by inferring and reasoning about intended functions.     

How Do Opportunities to View Objects Together in Time Influence Children's Memory for Location?

We conducted three experiments to investigate how opportunities to view objects together in time influence memory for location. Children and adults learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of an open, square box. During learning, participants viewed the objects either simultaneously or in isolation. At test, participants replaced the objects without the aid of the dots. Experiment 1 showed that when the box was divided into quadrants and the objects in each quadrant were categorically related, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults in the simultaneous viewing condition exhibited categorical bias, but only 11-year-olds and adults in the isolated viewing condition exhibited categorical bias. Experiment 2 showed that when the objects were categorically related but no boundaries were present, 11-year-olds and adults in the simultaneous viewing condition exhibited categorical bias, but only adults showed bias in the isolated viewing condition. Experiment 3 revealed that adults exhibited bias in both simultaneous and isolated viewing conditions when boundaries were present but the objects were not related. These findings suggest that opportunities to see objects together in time interact with cues available for grouping objects to help children form spatial groups.     

Does information about what things are influence children's memory for where things are?

Two experiments examined how information about what objects are influences memory for where objects are located. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and adults learned the locations of 20 objects marked by dots on the floor of a box. The objects belonged to 4 categories. In one condition, objects belonging to the same category were located in the same quadrant of the box. In another condition, objects and locations were randomly paired. After learning, participants attempted to replace the objects without the aid of the dots. Children and adults placed the objects in the same quadrant closer together when they were related than when they were unrelated, indicating that object information led to systematic biases in location memory.     

Test sample selection by preschool children: Honoring diversity

In a test of an inductive inference, preschool children's selection of objects was examined. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds selected diverse objects first in sequential selections; in Experiment 2, adults and 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, made similar selections under the same conditions. A defective object led subjects in all age groups to test a similar object. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds chose to test a pair of dissimilar objects rather than a pair of similar objects, but 3-year-olds did not. Three-year-olds' selections were independent of diversity. In Experiment 4, we attempted to emphasize the diversity of objects for 3-year-olds. Their first task was to select an object that was the same as or different from a target object. The subjects responded correctly in this task but did not prefer to test diverse objects. Experiment 5 showed that neither 3- nor 4-year-olds have a bias to select nondiverse objects in a nontest context. The findings indicate that children as young as 4 years old value diverse evidence in induction.     

Cross-cultural differences in cognitive development: attention to relations and objects

Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool children in the two cultures. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds from the two cultures (N=64) participated in a relational match-to-standard task in two conditions, with simple or richly detailed objects, in which a focus on individual objects may hurt performance. Rich objects, consistent with past research, strongly limited the performance of U.S. children but not Japanese children. In Experiment 2, U.S. and Japanese 4-year-olds (N=72) participated in a visual search task that required them to find a specific object in a cluttered, but organized as a scene, visual field in which object-centric attention might be expected to aid performance and relational attentional pattern may hinder the performance because of relational structure that was poised by the scene. U.S. children outperformed Japanese children. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds from both cultures (N=36) participated in a visual search task that was similar to Experiment 2 but with randomly placed objects, where there should not be a difference between the performance of two cultures because the relational structure that may be posed by the scene is eliminated. This double-dissociation is discussed in terms of implications for different developmental trajectories, with different developmental subtasks in the two cultures.     

Developmental differences in shape processing

Considerable evidence indicates that shape similarity plays a major role in object recognition, identification and categorization. However, little is known about shape processing and its development. Across four experiments, we addressed two related questions. First, what makes objects similar in shape? Second, how does the processing of shape similarity develop? We specifically asked whether children and adults determine shape similarity by using categories (e.g., straight vs. curved), as proposed by Biederman (1987), or whether they treat all shape variability uniformly, as proposed by Ullman (1998). Findings from Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that adults and 7-year-olds generally engage in a process in which they impose categories on shape variation and judge objects that fall within those categories as being similar in shape. Four-year-olds are far less likely to engage in such a process. Experiments 3 and 4 address whether 4-year-olds are more likely to treat shape similarity categorically (as older children and adults do) when the objects are given familiar names, functions, and internal properties. Naming did lead to more advanced treatment of shape similarity in some cases. Overall, these findings provide evidence of developmental differences in shape processing and suggest that knowledge of abstract properties of objects may affect the calculation of shape similarity.     

Experiencing nearby locations together in time: the role of spatiotemporal contiguity in children's memory for location

Three studies investigated how experiencing nearby locations together in time influences memory for location. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and adults learned 20 object locations in a small-scale space. The space was divided into regions by lines or walls. In Study 1, participants learned the locations either region by region or in a random order. Following learning, participants replaced the objects without the aid of the dots marking the locations and the boundaries subdividing the space. They replaced the objects in any order they chose. After experiencing the locations in random orders during learning, only adults underestimated distances between locations belonging to the same group (i.e., region). Conversely, 9- and 11-year-old children and adults who had experienced the locations region by region during learning underestimated these distances. These findings suggest that experiencing nearby locations together in time increases the weight children assign to categorical information in their estimates of location. Results from Studies 2 and 3 in which participants learned the locations region by region and then replaced the objects region by region (Study 2) or in a random order (Study 3) were similar, highlighting the importance of spatiotemporal cues in memory for location. (c) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).     

Recognition and categorization of biologically significant objects by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta): the domain of food.

To survive, organisms must be able to identify edible objects. However, we know relatively little about how humans and other species distinguish food items from non-food items. We tested the abilities of semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to learn rapidly that a novel object was edible, and to generalize their learning to other objects, in a spontaneous choice task. Adult monkeys watched as a human experimenter first pretended to eat one of two novel objects and then placed replicas of the objects at widely separated locations. Monkeys selectively approached the object that the experimenter had previously eaten, exhibiting a rapidly induced preference for the apparently edible object. In further experiments in which the same objects were used as tools or were manipulated at the face but not eaten, we fail to observe an approach bias, providing evidence that the monkeys' pattern of approach in the earlier experiments was specific to objects that were eaten. Subsequent experiments tested how monkeys generalized their preference for an edible object by first allowing them to watch a human experimenter eat one of two objects and then presenting them with new objects composed of the same substance but differing from the original, edible object in shape or color. Monkeys ignored changes in the shape of the object and generalized from one edible object to another on the basis of color in conjunction with other substance properties. Finally, we extended this work to infant rhesus monkeys and found that, like adults, they too used color to generalize to novel food objects. In contrast to adults, however, infants extended this pattern of generalization to objects that were acted on in other ways. These results suggest that infant monkeys form broader object categories than adults, and that food categories become sharpened as a function of maturational or experiential factors.     

Matching and naming objects by shape or function: age and context effects in preschool children

Three experiments tested preschoolers' use of abstract principles to classify and label objects by shape or function. Three- and 4-year-olds were instructed to match objects by shape or function. Four-year-olds readily adopted either rule, but 3-year-olds followed only the shape rule. Without a rule, 4-year-olds tended to match by shape unless object function was shown during matching (Experiment 2). Three-year-olds' ability to use a function rule was tested in several conditions (re-presenting functions; reminders to "use the rule"; repeating rule on every trial). None induced consistent function matching (Experiment 3). Supplemental memory and verbal tasks showed that 3-year-olds have trouble using function as an abstract basis of comparison. Naming data, however, show that preschoolers are learning that object labels are based on function. The results show preschoolers' growing flexibility in adopting abstract generalization rules and growing knowledge of conventions for extending words.     

On the coding of spatial information

Two experiments studied recall of objects and their locations in an intentional-incidental learning paradigm. When studying spatial information, the usual incidental condition is not truly incidental, because subjects often deliberately use locations to help organize objects for recall. Therefore, a true incidental task was devised in which neither objects nor locations were expected to be recalled and for which explicit encoding of locations was irrelevant. There was only a small loss in recall of objects or their locations in a true incidental condition. It was concluded that a great deal of location information is automatically coded into long-term memory storage in the sense that active processing is not required. The data were contrasted with incidental processing of other attributes, such as color. Although adults performed better than children, there were no age-related interactions, indicating similarity of functioning at all ages studied.     

Development of size constancy in children: a test of the proximal mode sensitivity hypothesis

In two experiments, we attempted to replicate Shallo and Rock's (1988) finding that 5- and 6-year-old children exhibit size constancy for a distant object when tested with comparison objects that are matched for visual angle. Experiment 1 (N = 80) included four age groups: 5-, 6-, and 9-year-olds and adults. Participants viewed one standard object from 61 m and indicated which of nine nearby comparison objects matched the standard object in size. The comparison objects subtended equal visual angles in one condition and different visual angles in another. In both conditions, the 5- and 6-year-old children underestimated the size of the standard object, whereas the 9-year-old children and adults made nearly accurate size estimates. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), we replicated the finding that 6-year-old children underestimate size when tested with comparison objects that subtend equal visual angles. Our results conflict with those of Shallo and Rock and support earlier findings that young children do not exhibit size constancy for distant objects.     

Attributing human characteristics: Developmental changes in over- and underattribution

Twenty each 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, second-graders, fourth-graders, and college students were asked to attribute seven unobservable animate properties to each of seven phylogenetically varied animate objects, including a person, and a stone as a typical inanimate object. For anatomical/physiological properties (e.g., heart), there was a progression from preschoolers' similarity-based attribution, that is, attributing the properties to the target object according to its similarity to people, toward category-based attribution by adults via similarity-based inference constrained by categorical knowledge. Thus, preschoolers made many underattribution errors and some overattribution errors, but such errors decreased markedly with age and were seldom found among adults. For mental properties (e.g., feeling), subjects in all age groups still made similarity-based attribution. Thus, not a few overattribution errors, though restricted mostly to advanced animals, still existed even among adults (Experiment 1). Experiment 2, in which 20 5-year-olds and 20 college students were asked to attribute four animate properties to five objects each belonging to categories of mammals, birds, fish, insects, and plants, as well as a person and a stone, confirmed the above group data results through analyses of individual data.     

Object manipulability affects children’s and adults’ conceptual processing

Research on kinds of concepts indicates that children use perceptual and functional information differently to form natural and artifact concepts. Beyond object domain, object manipulability appears to be a decisive factor in adult conceptual processing. Thus, the effect of object manipulability on conceptual processing was tested in 5- and 7-year-olds and adults using a picture matching task. Reaction times for identifying conceptual relations on the basis of perceptual similarity (e.g., jacket-coat) and contextual/functional information (e.g., jacket-hanger) were analyzed according to object manipulability and domain. Both children and adults were faster to identify contextual/functional relations for manipulable than for nonmanipulable objects. Conversely, they were faster to identify perceptual similarity relations for nonmanipulable than for manipulable objects, particularly for natural concepts. Results reveal an early distinction between concepts of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects. Implications for further research on concept formation and for embodied views of concepts are discussed.     

Spatial habit competes with effort to determine human spatial organization

Despite the important role that the physical environment plays in shaping human cognition, few studies have endeavoured to experimentally examine the principles underlying how individuals organize objects in their space. The current investigation examines the idea that humans organize objects in their space in order to minimize effort or maximize performance. We devised a novel spatial organization task whereby participants freely arranged objects in the context of a writing task. Critically, we manipulated the frequency with which each object was used and assessed participants’ spontaneous placements. In the first set of experiments, participants showed a counterintuitive tendency to match pen pairs with their initial placements rather than placing pens in the less effortful configuration. However, in Experiment 2, where the difference in physical effort between different locations was increased, participants were more likely to reorganize the pens into the less effortful configuration. We begin developing a theory of human spatial organization wherein the observed initial bias may represent a kind of spatial habit formation that competes with effort/performance considerations to shape future spatial organization.     

Responses of Preschoolers in Two Frustrating Episodes: Emergence of Complex Strategies for Emotion Regulation

Although research on young children's abilities to organize emotional states has increased in recent years, little is known about the emergence of complex strategies for emotion regulation in preschoolers. In the present study, emotion-regulation strategies used by 52 normally developing 3- and 4-year-olds were examined. Children and their primary caregivers (50 mothers, 2 fathers) participated in 2 controlled frustration episodes that were videotaped. Four types of strategies were coded: comforting behaviors, instrumental behaviors, distraction behaviors, and cognitive reappraisals. Results indicated that 3-year-olds used proportionately more instrumental strategies than 4-year-olds, and parents of 3-year-olds showed the same pattern, whereas parents of 4-year-olds did not. Moreover, 3-year-olds used a variety of strategies when frustrated, including cognitive reappraisals. Significant positive correlations were found between the types of strategies used by the children and by the parents to help their children. It is suggested that children may be using strategies to organize their emotional states before they are able to accurately report on them.     

Young infants readily use proximity to organize visual pattern information

Four experiments relying on novelty and spontaneous preference procedures were performed to determine whether 3-4-month-old infants utilize the Gestalt principle of proximity to organize visual pattern information. In Experiment 1, infants familiarized with arrays of elements that could be organized into either columns or rows were tested for their preference between vertical and horizontal bars. The infants preferred the novel organization of bars. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the novelty preference could not be attributed to an a priori preference or an inability to discriminate between the elements comprising the patterns. Experiment 4 replicated the results of Experiment 1 in a bars --> elements version of the task, indicating that extended exposure is not necessary for infants to organize based on proximity. The results suggest that infants readily organize visual pattern information in accord with proximity. Implications of this finding for models of the ontogenesis and microgenesis of object perception in infants and adults are discussed.     

Children's understandings of the attributes of life

Previous investigations of children's understandings of the life concept have focused on their classifications of the life status of familiar objects. In this study, we attempted to examine more directly the processes by which children infer life status by examining their reasoning about unfamiliar objects. In Experiment 1, 4- to 11-year-olds and adults were asked to name attributes of living things to establish which attributes they associated most closely with life. Children age 7 and younger most often named attributes true only of animals but not of plants; older children more often named attributes true of both animals and plants. However, movement was the single attribute cited most frequently by children of all ages tested. In Experiment 2, 4- to 11-year-olds and adults were presented information about attributes of imaginary objects on a distant planet and were asked to infer if those objects were alive. Again, young children relied relatively heavily on qualities true only of animals but not of plants, whereas older children relied more on attributes true of both plants and animals. Also as before, movement was viewed as indicative of life at all ages tested. In Experiment 3, we examined the hypothesis that children discriminate among different types of motion and that the types of motion they associate with life are in fact typical of living things. Children ranging from age 5 through 11 were found to discriminate among different types of motion and to infer that objects were alive only when they showed the types of motion typical of living beings. The results of Experiment 3 allowed interpretation of seemingly conflicting results that have arisen in previous studies, as well as in Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study.     

The flexible use of inductive and geometric spatial categories

The present study examined the flexibility with which people can adopt different category schemes in the spatial domain. In a location memory task, participants viewed and estimated the locations of four kinds of objects that were spatially grouped by object identity. This identity-based arrangement was either congruent or incongruent with the perceptually based, geometric categories that have been reported in previous research. Four experiments examined the conditions under which these different category schemes are used to inform estimates of locations. The results showed that use of identity information depended on the number of objects to be remembered during a trial: When one or two objects were remembered at a time, only geometric categories affected estimates, but when four objects were to be remembered, both geometric categories and identity groupings affected estimates. As memory load increases, participants rely on additional sources to inform their estimates of location.