Event categorization in infancy

Abstract

Recent research suggests that one of the mechanisms that contribute to infants' acquisition of their physical knowledge is the formation of event categories, such as occlusion and containment. Some of this research compared infants' identification of similar variables in different event categories. Marked developmental lags were found, suggesting that infants acquire event-specific rather than event-general expectations. Other research - on variable priming, perseveration, and object individuation - presented infants with successive events from the same or from different event categories. To understand the world as it unfolds, infants must not only represent each separate event, but also link successive events; this research begins to explore how infants respond to multiple events over time.

Fig. 1

Schematic drawing of the unexpected test events in the experiment of Hespos and Baillargeon [22]. (a) Occlusion condition. (b) Containment condition. (See text for discussion.)

Fig. 2

Schematic drawing of the unexpected test events in the experiment of Wang et al. (unpublished data). (a) Containment condition. (b) Covering condition.

Fig. 3

Schematic drawing of the unexpected test events in the experiment of Luo and Baillargeon (unpublished data). (a) Occlusion condition. (b) Containment condition.

Fig. 4

Schematic drawing of the unexpected test events in the experiment of Wang and Baillargeon (unpublished data). (a) Occlusion priming condition. (b) Display priming condition.

Fig. 5

Schematic drawing of the familiarization and unexpected test events in the experiment of Aguiar and Baillargeon [29]. (a) Same-category condition. (b) Different-categories condition.

Fig. 6

Schematic drawing of the unexpected test trials in the experiment of Wilcox and Chapa [35] (a) Event-monitoring condition. (b) Event-mapping condition. (Redrawn with permission from the description in Wilcox et al. [36].)