OBSERVING AND IMITATING THE FORMATION OF OBJECT CLASSES DURING THE 2ND YEAR OF LIFE

The developmental origins of overt object classification are still poo rly understood, but one factor that may be informative and facilitativ e of classification during the second year is observing adults group s imilar objects. A pretest-posttest design with modeling and control gr oups was used to assess the impact of modeling on deferred imitation o f groupings based on object similarity. Children at three ages (12, 18 , and 24 months) observed an adult produce class groupings and alignme nts of objects. By 18 and 24 months, there was significant deferred im itation of object groupings. There was virtually no effect at 12 month s. Moreover, only at 24 months were classified sets spatially aligned. The results indicate that observing adult classification will at leas t facilitate object grouping during the latter part of the second year , and that it may promote the use of spatial alignments as organizing devices or as modes of depicting object classes.