Rethinking Conceptually-Based Inference — Grounding Representation in Task and Behavioral Dynamics: Commentary on “Fifteen-month-old infants attend to shape over other perceptual properties in an induction task,” by S. Graham and G. Diesendruck, and “Form follows function: Learning about function helps children learn about shape,” by E. Ware and A. Booth

Abstract

The question of what representations underlie young children's categorizations and early word learning has an extensive history. Answers have been shaped by several longstanding debates, including the conceptual/perceptual debate raised by Graham and Diesendruck (G&D) in their article in this issue. Their contribution to this debate is an experiment examining 15-monthold infants' attention to shape, color and texture in an inductive inference task. Infants were presented with a novel object that possessed a nonobvious property demonstrated by acting on the object (e.g., the object squeaked when squeezed). They were then presented test objects that matched the exemplar in shape, color or texture and their attempts to produce the demonstrated properties observed. G&D found that infants performed the demonstrated actions most often with the shape-matching test objects. Furthermore, the number of actions infants performed was significantly related to the intercorrelated variables of vocabulary size, number of count nouns known, and age.The data presented by G&D make an important contribution to our understanding of infants' performance in inductive inference tasks. In particular, no previous studies have examined infants' differential attention to particular dimensions in these tasks, or related performance to vocabulary development. However, we disagree regarding the nature and implications of this contribution. We believe that this disagreement, to a large extent, stems from a more fundamental disagreement regarding the conceptual/perceptual debate. We first present our take on that debate. Briefly, we believe it is not so easy to separate perceptual and conceptual bases for children's categorizations. Rather, we argue for a process-based account of categorization grounded in developmental accounts of perception, action, learning, attention and memory. We then illustrate how our take leads to a different interpretation of G&D's data and thus a different conclusion regarding its implications.A process-based developmental account of children's early categorizations also bears on interpretation of the studies presented by Ware and Booth (2010) in their article in this issue, addressed to the role of function in children's development of the "shape bias." They gave 17-month-olds extensive experience with the functions of novel objects, and showed some preference to attend to shape in a subsequent categorization task. The authors argue that this

Learning how actions function: The role of outcomes in infants’ representation of events

“…Results like those reported here are also important because function typically is considered a unified object property that is effortlessly perceived by infants (Graham & Diesendruck, 2010; Ware & Booth, 2010; see Samuelson & Perone, 2010 for a discussion). However, our results are more consistent with recent views that function is a property that emerges from the interaction of multiple features of the object, the observer, and the context (e.g., Barsalou, Sloman, & Chaigneau, 2005; Oakes & Madole, 2008).…”

Tell me about Pangolins! Evidence that children are motivated to learn about kinds.

“…By suggesting that young children are motivated to seek out information about kinds, the present findings support the notion that kind-based representations are central to human cognition from its earliest stages (e.g., Cimpian & Erickson, 2012;Csibra & Gergely, 2009;Dewar & Xu, 2009;Gelman, 2003;Keates & Graham, 2008). In contrast, these findings are inconsistent with proposals on which early thought operates largely over exemplar-based representations that store the perceptual features of previously encountered items (e.g., Fisher & Sloutsky, 2005;Samuelson & Perone, 2010;Sloutsky & Fisher, 2004). On the exemplar view, kind-based reasoning emerges late in development (after the age of 7) and is a product of extensive learning, perhaps even direct instruction by teachers and parents.…”

Children show heightened knew-it-all-along errors when learning new facts about kinds: Evidence for the power of kind representations in children’s thinking.

“…Given the degree of complexity involved in kind-based reasoning, one might expect it to emerge relatively late in development. Although some have indeed argued for this possibility (e.g., Samuelson & Perone, 2010; Sloutsky, 2010), research has also uncovered surprising signs of early competence. For instance, even children who have just begun to produce multiword utterances are able to talk about kinds, and do so spontaneously (e.g., Gelman, Goetz, Sarnecka, & Flukes, 2008; Gelman, Taylor, & Nguyen, 2004; Pappas & Gelman, 1998).…”