Kenderla Praveen, Kim Sung-Ho, Kibbe Melissa M
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA.
Department of Psychology, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.
Open Mind (Camb). 2023 Apr 5;7:93-110. doi: 10.1162/opmi_a_00073. eCollection 2023.
Objects' topological properties play a central role in object perception, superseding objects' surface features in object representation and tracking from early in development. We asked about the role of objects' topological properties in children's generalization of novel labels to objects. We adapted the classic name generalization task of Landau et al. (1988, 1992). In three experiments, we showed children ( = 151; 3-8-year-olds) a novel object (the standard) and gave the object a novel label. We then showed children three potential target objects and asked children which of the objects shared the same label as the standard. In Experiment 1, the standard object either did or did not contain a hole, and we asked whether children would extend the standard's label to a target object that shared either metric shape or topology with the standard. Experiment 2 served as a control condition for Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, we pitted topology against another surface feature, color. We found that objects' topology competed with objects' surface features (both shape and color) in children's extension of labels to novel objects. We discuss possible implications for our understanding of the inductive potential of objects' topologies for making inferences about objects' categories across early development.
物体的拓扑属性在物体感知中起着核心作用，在物体表征和发育早期的追踪过程中，它取代了物体的表面特征。我们探讨了物体的拓扑属性在儿童将新标签推广到物体过程中的作用。我们改编了Landau等人（1988年、1992年）的经典命名推广任务。在三个实验中，我们向儿童（ = 151名；3至8岁）展示一个新物体（标准物体），并给该物体一个新标签。然后我们向儿童展示三个潜在的目标物体，并询问儿童哪个物体与标准物体有相同的标签。在实验1中，标准物体要么有洞要么没有洞，我们询问儿童是否会将标准物体的标签扩展到与标准物体具有相同度量形状或拓扑结构的目标物体上。实验2作为实验1的对照条件。在实验3中，我们将拓扑结构与另一个表面特征——颜色进行了对比。我们发现，在儿童将标签扩展到新物体的过程中，物体的拓扑结构与物体的表面特征（形状和颜色）相互竞争。我们讨论了这对于我们理解物体拓扑结构在早期发育过程中对物体类别进行推理的归纳潜力可能产生的影响。
