Xu F, Carey S
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139, USA.
Cogn Psychol. 1996 Apr;30(2):111-53. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1996.0005.
Adults conceptualize the world in terms of enduring physical objects. Sortal concepts provide conditions of individuation (establishing the boundaries of objects) and numerical identity (establishing whether an object is the same one as one encountered at some other time). In the adult conceptual system, there are two roughly hierarchical levels of object sortals. Most general is the sortal bounded physical object itself, for which spatiotemporal properties provide the criteria for individuation and identity. More specific sortals, such as dog or car, rely on additional types of properties to provide criteria for individuation and identity. We conjecture that young infants might represent only the general sortal, object, and construct more specific sortals later (the Object-first Hypothesis). This is closely related to Bower's (1974) conjecture that infants use spatiotemporal information to trace identity before they use property information. Five studies using the visual habituation paradigm were conducted to address the Object-first Hypothesis. In these studies, 10-month-old infants were able to use spatiotemporal information but failed to use property/kind information to set up representations of numerically distinct individuals, thus providing empirical evidence for the Object-first Hypothesis. Finally, infants succeed at object individuation in terms of more specific sortals by 12 months. The relation between success at our task and early noun comprehension is discussed.
成年人根据持久的物理对象来构建对世界的概念。分类概念提供了个体化条件（确定对象的边界）和数字同一性条件（确定一个对象是否与在其他时间遇到的某个对象相同）。在成人概念系统中，存在两个大致层次的对象分类。最一般的是有界物理对象本身这一分类，时空属性为其个体化和同一性提供标准。更具体的分类，如狗或汽车，则依赖其他类型的属性来提供个体化和同一性标准。我们推测，年幼的婴儿可能仅表征一般分类“对象”，并在之后构建更具体的分类（对象优先假说）。这与鲍尔（1974）的推测密切相关，即婴儿在使用属性信息之前利用时空信息来追踪同一性。我们进行了五项使用视觉习惯化范式的研究来验证对象优先假说。在这些研究中，10个月大的婴儿能够利用时空信息，但未能利用属性/类别信息来建立数字上不同个体的表征，从而为对象优先假说提供了实证证据。最后，婴儿在12个月大时能够根据更具体的分类成功实现对象个体化。我们还讨论了任务成功与早期名词理解之间的关系。
