- Published: September 27, 2022
- Updated: September 27, 2022
- University / College: Wake Forest University
- Level: Secondary School
- Language: English
- Downloads: 10
The paper ” Methods In Measuring Infants Development” is a great example of a psychology essay. Human infants have been found to demonstrate complex categorization abilities as supported by conditioned leg-kicking, object examination, generalized imitation, sequential touching, and visual preference studies. Equally, they display different levels of exclusivity relative to age and representations. This is critical for the development because the manner in which items are categorized or grouped together influences the way we learn correlations between different objects, as well as the related generalization. Therefore, categorization as a mental process is essential for cognition stability and organization. This paper summarizes the results of visual preference studies in infants.
Previous studies indicate that infants below one year of age are capable of creating visual-patterns perceptual category representations, for instance, geometric forms and schematic faces. For example, 3-4 months old infants can generalize square/triangle prototype exemplars into novel visual preferences and novel instances relative to form categories. They also portray prototype effects; their responses are as if the new prototype is more familiar than the formerly observed one (Mareschal and Quinn, 2001).
Some studies exploring infants’ category representations found that 3-4 months old infants presented with animal category formed category representation of domestic cats and novel cats but not tigers, dogs, birds, and horses. On the other hand, where they were presented with furniture category, they formed category representation for chairs including novel chairs but not tables, couches, and beds. Thus, infants’ processes of category formation are considered responsive and flexible to the inputs’ variability characteristics (Mareschal and Quinn, 2001).
More interestingly, the infants portray asymmetries in their category formation. This means that infants prefer illustrations under novel category B following the staging of category A exemplars. For instance, guided with familiar conditions, staged with cats creates a representation of cats that do not include dogs, but will not create a dogs’ category that leaves out cats.