Younger B
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Child Dev. 1990 Jun;61(3):614-20.
The present study demonstrates that the infant's ability to detect correlations among attributes extends to correlations among feature categories of the type we might expect to be useful in forming natural object categories. 48 10- and 13-month-old infants were tested using an infant-control habituation procedure. Infants initially were exposed to as many as 12 different animals. 2 attributes were perfectly correlated within the set of habituation stimuli. For example, animals with feathered tails had ears, and animals with furry tails had antlers. The appearance of the correlated features varied across the set of 12 animals. Infants' sensitivity to the pattern of correlation existing within the habituation set was demonstrated by their responses to new stimuli following habituation. Infants generalized habituation to a new animal that preserved the experienced pattern of correlation, but showed an increase in looking to a stimulus that contained a novel combination of the same features.
本研究表明，婴儿检测属性之间相关性的能力扩展到了我们预期在形成自然物体类别时有用的那种特征类别之间的相关性。使用婴儿对照习惯化程序对48名10个月和13个月大的婴儿进行了测试。婴儿最初接触了多达12种不同的动物。在习惯化刺激组中，有两个属性完全相关。例如，有羽毛尾巴的动物有耳朵，有毛茸茸尾巴的动物有鹿角。相关特征的外观在这12种动物中各不相同。婴儿对习惯化组中存在的相关模式的敏感性通过他们在习惯化后对新刺激的反应得到了证明。婴儿将习惯化推广到了保持经验性相关模式的新动物上，但对包含相同特征新组合的刺激的注视时间增加了。
