Eimas P D, Quinn P C
Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912.
Child Dev. 1994 Jun;65(3):903-17.
A series of experiments examined the abilities of 3- and 4-month-old infants to form categorical representations to exemplars of natural kinds--cats and horses. These experiments also permitted assessment of the relative exclusivity of these representations--the extent to which they exclude exemplars from contrasting basic-level categories from the same superordinate category. We found that categorical representations could be formed for horses that excluded cats, zebras, and giraffes, and for cats that excluded horses and tigers but not female lions. Lions were, however, excluded from the representations of cats in 6- and 7-month-old infants. Evidence was also obtained for 2 a priori preferences for members of one category over another. The discussion examined the roles of similarity between the exemplars of the contrasting categories and those of the tested category on estimates of exclusivity and of spontaneous preferences on the formation and exclusivity of categorical representations.
一系列实验研究了3个月和4个月大的婴儿对自然种类（猫和马）的范例形成分类表征的能力。这些实验还允许评估这些表征的相对排他性——即它们将来自同一上位类别中对比基本类别范例排除在外的程度。我们发现，可以为马形成排除猫、斑马和长颈鹿的分类表征，为猫形成排除马和老虎但不排除母狮的分类表征。然而，在6个月和7个月大的婴儿中，狮子被排除在猫的表征之外。还获得了关于对一个类别成员相对于另一个类别成员的两种先验偏好的证据。讨论考察了对比类别范例与测试类别范例之间的相似性对排他性估计以及对分类表征的形成和排他性的自发偏好的作用。
