Induction, overhypothesis, and the origin of abstract knowledge. Evidence from 9-month-old infants |
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Authors: | Dewar Kathryn M Xu Fei |
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Affiliation: | Department of Psychology, 2136 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada. kathrynd@psych.ubc.ca |
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Abstract: | Human cognition relies on the ability to extract generalizable knowledge from limited evidence. One type of inductive learning, overhypothesis formation, allows learners to make inferences that take them beyond the limits of direct experience, leading to the creation of abstract knowledge. The developmental roots of this ability have yet to be investigated. We report three experiments examining whether 9-month-old infants are capable of forming overhypotheses. Our results show that when given evidence about a few objects in some category, infants formed a second-order generalization about categories in general. These findings provide evidence that infants possess a powerful mechanism for inductive learning-a mechanism that may be applied to many domains and that can account for the development of many inductive biases later on. |
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