Infants' reasoning about opaque and transparent occluders in an individuation task

Wilcox, Teresa; Chapa, Catherine

doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00055-0

Cited by 47 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Hence, longer looking to narrow-than to wide-screen events is taken as evidence for object individuation. This interpretation has been supported by data obtained using other violation-of-expectation tasks (Wilcox & Baillargeon, 1998a;Wilcox & Chapa, 2002;Wilcox & Schweinle, 2002; for a review, see Wilcox, Schweinle, & Chapa, 2003, or Wilcox & Woods, in press) and search tasks (McCurry, Wilcox, & Woods, 2005). 1 1 Although some researchers have questioned the extent to which the narrow-screen task assesses object individuation in infants, there is now substantial evidence using different paradigms (McCurry, Wilcox, & Woods, 2006;Wilcox, 1999;Wilcox & Baillargeon, 1998b;Wilcox & Schweinle, 2002) that infants as young as 4.5 months can use featural information to individuate objects and show prolonged looking to different-features narrow-screen events because they are puzzled to see two objects out of view behind the narrow screen.…”

Section: The Development Of Object Individuation In Infancy: Past Andmentioning

confidence: 79%

Multisensory exploration and object individuation in infancy.

Wilcox

Woods

Chapa

et al. 2007

Developmental Psychology

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Recent research indicates that by 4.5 months, infants use shape and size information as the basis for individuating objects but that it is not until 11.5 months that they use color information for this purpose. The present experiments investigated the extent to which infants' sensitivity to color information could be increased through select experiences. Five experiments were conducted with 10.5-and 9.5-month-olds. The results revealed that multimodal (visual and tactile), but not unimodal (visual only), exploration of the objects prior to the individuation task increased 10.5-month-olds' sensitivity to color differences. These results suggest that multisensory experience with objects facilitates infants' use of color information when individuating objects. In contrast, 9.5-month-olds did not benefit from the multisensory procedure; possible explanations for this finding are explored. Together, these results reveal how an everyday experience-combined visual and tactile exploration of objects-can promote infants' use of color information as the basis for individuating objects. More broadly, these results shed light on the nature of infants' object representations and the cognitive mechanisms that support infants' changing sensitivity to color differences.

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Section: The Development Of Object Individuation In Infancy: Past Andmentioning

confidence: 79%

Multisensory exploration and object individuation in infancy.

Wilcox

Woods

Chapa

et al. 2007

Developmental Psychology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hence, longer looking to the narrow-than the wide-screen test event is taken as evidence of object individuation. This interpretation of prolonged looking to narrow-screen events is supported by the outcome of other violation-of-expectation (Wilcox & Baillargeon, 1998a;Wilcox & Chapa, 2002;Wilcox & Schweinle, 2002) and search (McMurry et al, 2007) tasks. 2 Previous research using the narrow-screen task indicates that infants younger than 11.5 months look equally at the narrow-and the wide-screen green ball-red ball test event (Wilcox, 1999;Wilcox et al, 2007).…”

Section: Increasing Infants' Sensitivity To Color By Making Color Funmentioning

confidence: 83%

Color–function categories that prime infants to use color information in an object individuation task

Wilcox

Woods

Chapa

2008

Cognitive Psychology

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There is evidence for developmental hierarchies in the type of information to which infants attend when reasoning about objects. Investigators have questioned the origin of these hierarchies and how infants come to identify new sources of information when reasoning about objects. The goal of the present experiments was to shed light on this debate by identifying conditions under which infants' sensitivity to color information, which is slow to emerge, could be enhanced in an object individuation task. The outcome of Experiment 1 confirmed and extended previous reports that 9.5-month-olds can be primed, through exposure to events in which the color of an object predicts its function, to attend to color differences in a subsequent individuation task. The outcomes of Experiments 2 to 4 revealed age-related changes in the nature of the representations that support color priming. This is exemplified by three main findings. First, the representations that are formed during the colorfunction events are relatively specific. That is, infants are primed to use the color difference seen in the color-function events to individuate objects in the test events, but not other color differences. Second, 9.5-month-olds can be led to form more abstract event representations, and then generalize to other colors in the test events if they are shown multiple pairs of colors in the color-function events. Third, slightly younger 9-month-olds also can be led to form more inclusive categories with multiple color pairs, but only when they are allowed to directly compare the exemplars in each color pair during the present events. These results shed light on the development of categorization abilities, cognitive mechanisms that support color-function priming, and the kinds of experiences that can increase infants' sensitivity to color information.

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“…In subsequent studies with different stimuli (infants had to track people versus inanimate objects), the shift to kind-based individuation was found earlier at 10 months (Bonatti, Frot, Zangl, & Mehler, 2002). Studies with an analogous but simplified methodology as Xu and Carey (1996) also found infant success in property/kind conditions somewhat earlier at 9.5 months (Wilcox & Baillargeon, 1998;Wilcox & Chapa, 2002), in some cases even at 5.5 months (Wilcox & Schweinle, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Ape metaphysics: Object individuation without language

2008

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Developmental research suggests that whereas very young infants individuate objects purely on spatiotemporal grounds, from (at latest) around 1 year of age children are capable of individuating objects according to the kind they belong to and the properties they instantiate. As the latter ability has been found to correlate with language, some have speculated whether it might be essentially language dependent and therefore uniquely human. Existing studies with non-human primates seem to speak against this hypothesis, but fail to present conclusive evidence due to methodological shortcomings. In the present experiments we set out to test non-linguistic object individuation in three great ape species with a refined manual search methodology. Experiment 1 tested for spatiotemporal object individuation: Subjects saw 1 or 2 objects simultaneously being placed inside a box in which they could reach, and then in both conditions only found 1 object. After retrieval of the 1 object, subjects reached again significantly more often when they had seen 2 than when they had seen 1 object. Experiment 2 tested for object individuation according to property/kind information only: Subjects saw 1 object being placed inside the box, and then either found that object (expected) or an object of a different kind (unexpected). Analogously to Experiment 1, after retrieval of the 1 object, subjects reached again significantly more often in the unexpected than in the expected condition. These results thus confirm previous findings suggesting that individuating objects according to their property/kind is neither uniquely human nor essentially language dependent. It remains to be seen, however, whether this kind of object individuation requires sortal concepts as human linguistic thinkers use them, or whether some simpler form of tracking properties is sufficient.

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Infants' reasoning about opaque and transparent occluders in an individuation task

Cited by 47 publications

References 16 publications

Multisensory exploration and object individuation in infancy.

Multisensory exploration and object individuation in infancy.

Color–function categories that prime infants to use color information in an object individuation task

Ape metaphysics: Object individuation without language

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