Plunkett Kim, Hu Jon-Fan, Cohen Leslie B
Oxford University, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, UK.
Cognition. 2008 Feb;106(2):665-81. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.04.003. Epub 2007 May 18.
An extensive body of research claims that labels facilitate categorisation, highlight the commonalities between objects and act as invitations to form categories for young infants before their first birthday. While this may indeed be a reasonable claim, we argue that it is not justified by the experiments described in the research. We report on a series of experiments that demonstrate that labels can play a causal role in category formation during infancy. Ten-month-old infants were taught to group computer-displayed, novel cartoon drawings into two categories under tightly controlled experimental conditions. Infants were given the opportunity to learn the two categories under four conditions: Without any labels, with two labels that correlated with category membership, with two labels assigned randomly to objects, and with one label assigned to all objects. Category formation was assessed identically in all conditions using a novelty preference procedure conducted in the absence of any labels. The labelling condition had a decisive impact on the way infants formed categories: When two labels correlated with the visual category information, infants learned two categories, just as if there had been no labels presented. However, uncorrelated labels completely disrupted the formation of any categories. Finally, consistent use of a single label across objects led infants to learn one broad category that included all the objects. These findings demonstrate that even before infants start to produce their first words, the labels they hear can override the manner in which they categorise objects.
大量研究称，标签有助于分类，突出物体之间的共性，并在幼儿周岁前就促使他们形成类别。虽然这确实可能是个合理的说法，但我们认为，研究中所描述的实验并不能证明这一点。我们报告了一系列实验，这些实验表明标签在婴儿期的类别形成过程中可以起到因果作用。在严格控制的实验条件下，我们让10个月大的婴儿将电脑屏幕上显示的新奇卡通画分成两类。婴儿有机会在四种条件下学习这两类：没有任何标签、有两个与类别归属相关的标签、有两个随机分配给物体的标签、以及给所有物体都分配一个标签。在所有条件下，我们都使用在没有任何标签的情况下进行的新奇偏好程序来评估类别形成情况。标签条件对婴儿形成类别的方式有决定性影响：当两个标签与视觉类别信息相关时，婴儿学会了两类，就好像没有呈现标签一样。然而，不相关的标签完全扰乱了任何类别的形成。最后，对所有物体一致使用单个标签导致婴儿学会了一个包含所有物体的宽泛类别。这些发现表明，即使在婴儿开始说出第一个单词之前，他们听到的标签也可以改变他们对物体进行分类的方式。
