DEVELOPMENT OF EXCLUSIVITY IN PERCEPTUALLY BASED CATEGORIES OF YOUNG INFANTS

The exclusivity of perceptually defined categorical representations fo r natural animal categories in young infants was investigated. Previou sly, as well as in Experiment 1, evidence was obtained for a categoric al representation for cats in 3- and 4-month-old infants that excluded dogs but included perceptually similar female lions after a number of different familiarization procedures. However, in Experiment 2 both d ogs and female lions were found to be excluded when the initial famili arization with cats alone was followed by six pairings of familiar cat s and novel lions intermingled with two added pairings of familiar cat s. The present results indicate that a categorical representation can attain a high level of exclusivity during early infancy as a consequen ce of experience with exemplars of the contrasting categories that acc ents the perceptual similarities among members of a category and the p erceptual differences among exemplars from different categories. (C) 1 994 Academic Press, Inc.