The developmental origins of object categories: how motion cues and labels bootstrap early categorization skills

对象类别的发展起源：运动提示和标签如何引导早期分类技能

• 批准号: RGPIN-2018-05090
• 负责人: PoulinDubois, Diane
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 依托单位: Concordia University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=662515
• 关键词: developmental; origins; object; categories; how

Partitioning the world into meaningful categories is a challenging task, especially considering the vast amount of information that could be recruited in the process (Cohen & Lefebvre, 2017). The early emergence of categorization skills allows children to make sense of the vast diversity of objects and entities in their environment. In particular, to categorize a given entity as being either animate or inanimate is thought to be a fundamental process characterizing human perception and cognition (e.g. Opfer & Gelman, 2010). In order to form such categories, children must perceive entities as alike, that is, employ some type of similarity rule to group them together. How do infants successfully organize the world into meaningful categories? In recent years, tremendous strides have been made toward investigating the conditions under which infants form categories, as well as the types of information that they consider in doing so (see Pauen, Birgit, Hoehl, & Bechtel, 2015 and Poulin-Dubois & Pauen, 2017 for recent reviews). Using research procedures that are appropriate for preverbal infants, it has been found that infants discriminate global categories like animals, vehicles, and furniture earlier in life than more fine-grained basic-level categories within each global class, such as cats and dogs, chairs and tables, or cars and trucks (Pauen, 2002). Since discovering this shift, researchers have been trying to understand the mental processes underlying category discrimination at a preverbal age, thereby focusing on whether infants develop knowledge-based representations for categories before language comes into play (Poulin-Dubois & Pauen, 2017). However, little is known about the mechanisms that allow children to focus their attention on what is most relevant to categorization. How do infants determine which objects to compare to each other? How do they determine which properties of those objects to focus on? Which motion cues are first associated to animate beings? Is biological motion a privileged cue for such distinction? Finally, how does the emergence of language promote categorization of objects at less-inclusive level, such as the basic level? Regarding the last issue, labels are considered to boost object categorization by allowing infants to focus on commonalities (Ferguson & Waxman, 2017). When the same noun is applied consistently to a set of distinct objects, both infants and adults alike are more likely to represent them as members of the same object category (Keates & Graham, 2008; Lupyan, Rakison & McClelland, 2007; Waxman & Booth, 2001; 2003). However, the exact function of labelling is unclear as well as whether bilingual children benefit as much from language when forming categories given their strategy to map more than one word to an object. The series of studies to be conducted in the context of the current research program attempts to fill these gaps.**

将世界分为有意义的类别是一项艰巨的任务，尤其是考虑到可以在此过程中招募的大量信息（Cohen＆Lefebvre，2017年）。分类技巧的早期出现使孩子们可以理解其环境中各种各样的物体和实体。特别是，将给定的实体归类为动画或无生命的，被认为是表征人类感知和认知的基本过程（例如Opfer＆Gelman，2010年）。为了形成此类类别，儿童必须将实体视为相似的实体，即采用某种类型的相似性规则将它们分组在一起。婴儿如何成功地将世界组织成有意义的类别？近年来，在调查婴儿形成类别的条件以及他们考虑的信息类型方面已取得了长足的进步（请参阅Pauen，Birgit，Hoehl和Bechtel，2015年和Poulin-Dubois＆Pauen，2017年，有关最近的评论）。使用适合言语婴儿的研究程序，已经发现，与每个全球阶层中更细颗粒的基本水平类别相比，婴儿在生活中歧视全球类别，例如动物，车辆和家具，例如猫和狗，例如猫，狗，椅子，桌子，汽车和卡车（Pauen，2002）。自从发现这一转变以来，研究人员一直在试图理解前言语时代歧视的心理过程，从而着重于婴儿在语言发挥作用之前是否开发基于知识的类别的基于知识的表征（Poulin-Dubois＆Pauen，2017年）。但是，对于允许儿童将注意力集中在与分类最相关的机制的机制中知之甚少。婴儿如何确定哪些对象相互比较？他们如何确定要关注的对象的哪些属性？哪些运动提示首先与生物动画相关联？生物运动是否是这种区别的特权提示？最后，语言的出现如何在诸如基本层面之类的层次上促进对象的分类？关于上一期，通过允许婴儿专注于共同点来增加标签来增强对象分类（Ferguson＆Waxman，2017年）。当相同的名词始终应用于一组不同的物体上时，婴儿和成年人都更有可能将它们表示为同一对象类别的成员（Keates＆Graham，2008; Lupyan，Rakison＆McClelland，2007; Waxman＆Booth＆Booth，2001; 2003; 2003）。但是，标签的确切功能尚不清楚，而且双语孩子在形成类别时是否从语言中受益匪浅，鉴于他们的策略将多个单词映射到对象。在当前研究计划的背景下进行的一系列研究试图填补这些空白。**