The role of bodies in infants’ categorical representations of humans and non-human animals

• To investigate whether bodies are useful cues in infants' category formations, 7-month-old infants were familiarized to images of humans or non-human animals followed by test pairs comprising a familiar category image and a hybrid image with a novel category body. Infants familiarized to humans did not demonstrate a novelty preference for hybrid stimuli with non-human animal bodies. Infants familiarized with non-human animals demonstrated a novelty preference for hybrid stimuli with human bodies, suggesting that there is an asymmetry in infants' category formations of bodies. Compared with infants familiarized to non-human animals, the infants familiarized to humans had a higher proportional fixation count to bodies during familiarization, but the lack of preference for novel category bodies at test suggests that 7-month-old infants' representations of the features of human bodies are likely still developing and they are more likely to form a summary-based categorical representation of non-human animals.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

body representations

categorization

eye tracking

familiarity

infants

social stimuli

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)