The Influence of Shape Similarity and Shared Labels on Infants’ Inductive Inferences about Nonobvious Object Properties

Welder, Andrea N.; Graham, Susan A.

doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00371

Cited by 182 publications

(164 citation statements)

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“…In a series of experiments with 16-to 21-month-old infants, Welder and Graham (2001) found that labeling guides infants' inductive inference, and it sometimes overrides perceptual similarity. In their studies, the experimenter modeled a nonobvious property of an unfamiliar target object, for example, an object making a rattling sound when shaken, and the infant was given other test objects that were perceptually similar or dissimilar to the target object.…”

Section: Fei Xumentioning

confidence: 99%

The cognitive functions of language

2002

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This paper explores a variety of different versions of the thesis that natural language is involved in human thinking. It distinguishes amongst strong and weak forms of this thesis, dismissing some as implausibly strong and others as uninterestingly weak. Strong forms dismissed include the view that language is conceptually necessary for thought (endorsed by many philosophers) and the view that language is de facto the medium of all human conceptual thinking (endorsed by many philosophers and social scientists). Weak forms include the view that language is necessary for the acquisition of many human concepts and the view that language can serve to scaffold human thought processes. The paper also discusses the thesis that language may be the medium of conscious propositional thinking, but argues that this cannot be its most fundamental cognitive role. The idea is then proposed that natural language is the medium for nondomain-specific thinking, serving to integrate the outputs of a variety of domain-specific conceptual faculties (or central-cognitive "quasimodules"). Recent experimental evidence in support of this idea is reviewed and the implications of the idea are discussed, especially for our conception of the architecture of human cognition. Finally, some further kinds of evidence which might serve to corroborate or refute the hypothesis are mentioned. The overall goal of the paper is to review a wide variety of accounts of the cognitive function of natural language, integrating a number of different kinds of evidence and theoretical consideration in order to propose and elaborate the most plausible candidate.Keywords: Cognitive evolution; conceptual module; consciousness; domain-general; inner speech; language; logical form (LF); thought Peter Carruthers is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Until recently he Directed the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of eight books, coeditor of four, and has published numerous articles in journals and collections. There are two major foci to his main research area in philosophy of psychology. One is the nature of consciousness, where he has developed and defended a form of higher-order thought theory. The other is the architecture of human cognition, and the place of natural language within it.that language is only a channel, or conduit, for transferring thoughts into and out of the mind, they are then obliged to claim that the stream of inner verbalization is more-or-less epiphenomenal in character. (Some possible minor cognitive roles for inner speech, which should nevertheless be acceptable to those adopting this perspective, will be canvassed later.) The real thinking will be going on elsewhere, in some other medium of representation.One reason for the popularity of the communicative conception amongst cognitive scientists is that almost all now believe that language is a distinct input-output module of the mind (at least in some ...

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Section: Fei Xumentioning

confidence: 99%

The cognitive functions of language

2002

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“…Although some studies have replicated the finding that labels facilitate categorybased induction (e.g., Graham, Kilbreath, & Welder, 2004;Welder & Graham, 2001), Sloutsky and colleagues (Sloutsky & Fisher, 2004;Sloutsky & Lo, 1999;Sloutsky et al, 2001) argued that children may treat labels simply as perceptual attributes of objects as well as (or instead of) conceptual information. They further argued that labels might be weighted more than visual attributes because they are auditory features, which might be more salient than visual features to infants and young children (e.g., Sloutsky & Napolitano, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Category label effects on Chinese children’s inductive inferences: Modulation by perceptual detail and category specificity

Long

Lü²,

Zhang

et al. 2012

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…Indeed, children under 2 y of age are the most likely age group to accidentally poison themselves (24). Additionally, although adults, older children, and even adult monkeys rely on different perceptual properties to make inferences about foods and about artifacts (e.g., using color when reasoning about foods, shape when reasoning about artifacts), human infants do not (5,(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). Because human infants have historically relied on caregivers to provide safe and nutritious diets, they may not need to have mechanisms in place for reasoning about food.…”

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Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

Liberman

Woodward

Sullivan

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

152

137

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Selecting appropriate foods is a complex and evolutionarily ancient problem, yet past studies have revealed little evidence of adaptations present in infancy that support sophisticated reasoning about perceptual properties of food. We propose that humans have an earlyemerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food selection. Specifically, infants' reasoning about food choice is tied to their thinking about agents' intentions and social relationships. Whereas infants do not expect people to like the same objects, infants view food preferences as meaningfully shared across individuals. Infants' reasoning about food preferences is fundamentally social: They generalize food preferences across individuals who affiliate, or who speak a common language, but not across individuals who socially disengage or who speak different languages. Importantly, infants' reasoning about food preferences is flexibly calibrated to their own experiences: Tests of bilingual babies reveal that an infant's sociolinguistic background influences whether she will constrain her generalization of food preferences to people who speak the same language. Additionally, infants' systems for reasoning about food is differentially responsive to positive and negative information. Infants generalize information about food disgust across all people, regardless of those people's social identities. Thus, whereas food preferences are seen as embedded within social groups, disgust is interpreted as socially universal, which could help infants avoid potentially dangerous foods. These studies reveal an early-emerging system for thinking about food that incorporates social reasoning about agents and their relationships, and allows infants to make abstract, flexible, adaptive inferences to interpret others' food choices.food | social cognition | infancy | cognitive development | disgust

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The Influence of Shape Similarity and Shared Labels on Infants’ Inductive Inferences about Nonobvious Object Properties

Cited by 182 publications

References 53 publications

The cognitive functions of language

The cognitive functions of language

Category label effects on Chinese children’s inductive inferences: Modulation by perceptual detail and category specificity

Early emerging system for reasoning about the social nature of food

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