Six-month-old infants' categorization of containment spatial relations.

Full Abstract

Six-month-old infants' ability to form an abstract category of containment was examined using a standard infant categorization task. Infants were habituated to 4 pairs of objects in a containment relation. Following habituation, infants were tested with a novel example of the familiar containment relation and an example of an unfamiliar relation. Results indicate that infants look reliably longer at the unfamiliar versus familiar relation, indicating that they can form a categorical representation of containment. A second experiment demonstrated that infants do not rely on object occlusion to discriminate containment from a support or a behind spatial relation. Together, the results indicate that by 6 months, infants can recognize a containment relation from different angles and across different pairs of objects.

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Author information

Author/s: Casasola, Marianella (M); Cohen, Leslie B (LB); Chiarello, Elizabeth (E);

Affiliation: Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. mc272(-atsign-)cornell.edu

Grants: HD-23397 (Agency:United States NICHD)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Child development (Child Dev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: -2003 May-Jun; vol 74 (issue 3) : pp 679-93

Dates: Created 2003/06/10; Completed 2003/10/10; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12795384, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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