Competition Between Object Topology and Surface Features in Children’s Extension of Novel Nouns

Abstract

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 (n = 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.

Intuitive network topology.

“…If these topological building blocks are a part of a functional language of thought in the mind, a natural question arises about the development of this language: To what extent is the sort of basic topological thinking intuitive to young children—or even infants? A few studies have explored sensitivity to topological properties of objects (e.g., closure, overlap) in infancy (Chien et al, 2012; Kibbe & Leslie, 2016) in early childhood (Kenderla et al, 2023) and in animal models (Chen et al, 2003), and there is consensus that at least some aspects of topology are a vital part of object representation. A question remains about whether and/or how the network-like topological relations studied here are related to object topology.…”

“…While features of object topology like closure, overlap, and embedding have been widely studied (Wei et al, 2019; but see also Kenderla et al, 2023; Kibbe & Leslie, 2016; Renz et al, 2000; Rips, 2020), including in work which has utilized graph-like stimuli rather than filled-in shapes (see Kanbe, 2013), features of network topology like T-junctions and crosses have not been explicitly studied in this way (but see, e.g., Lowet et al, 2018). It remains unclear whether to what extent these different kinds of topology are related.…”

An object's categorizability impacts whether infants encode surface features into their object representations

“…In Pomiechowska and Gliga (2021), the objects from unfamiliar categories had distinct shapes that hinted at their function (e.g., a padlock). These unique, function‐related shapes may have prompted infants to encode the objects' affordances (Booth & Waxman, 2002; Futó et al., 2010; see also Diesendruck & Bloom, 2003; Kenderla et al., 2023) and then notice when those features changed. By contrast, in our Experiment 2, the affordances of the objects did not vary (by design; to correspond to Experiment 1), while function‐irrelevant surface features did vary.…”

An object’s categorizability impacts whether infants encode surface features into their object representations

“…a padlock). These unique, function-related shapes may have prompted infants to encode the objects' affordances (Booth & Waxman, 2002;Futó et al, 2010; see also Diesendruck & Bloom, 2003;Kenderla et al, 2023) and then notice when those features changed. By contrast, in our Experiment 2, the affordances of the objects did not vary (by design; to correspond to Experiment 1), while function-irrelevant surface features did vary.…”