Basic-level and superordinate-like categorical representations in early infancy

A series of experiments using the paired-preference procedure examined 3- to 4-month-old infants' ability to form perceptually based categorical representations in the domains of natural kinds and artifacts and probed the underlying organizational structure of these representations. Experiments 1 and 2 found that infants could form categorical representations for chairs that excluded exemplars of couches, beds, and tables and also for couches that excluded exemplars of chairs, beds, and tables. Thus, the adult-like exclusivity shown by infants in the categorization of various animal pictures at the basic-level extends to the domain of artifacts as well--an ecologically significant ability given the numerous artifacts that populate the human environment. Experiments 3 and 4 examined infants' ability to form superordinate-like or global categorical representations for mammals and furniture. It was found that infants could form a global representation for mammals that included novel mammals and excluded other non-mammalian animals such as birds and fish as well as items from cross-ontological categories such as furniture. In addition, it was found that infants formed a representation for furniture that included novel categories of furniture and excluded exemplars from the cross-ontological category of mammals; however, it was less clear if infants' global representation for furniture also excluded other artifacts such as vehicles and thus the category of furniture may have been less exclusively represented. Overall, the present findings, by showing the availability of perceptually driven basic and superordinate-like representations in early infancy that closely correspond to adult conceptual categories, underscore the importance of these early representations for later conceptual representations.