Chapter 5

Question 1

Conceptual knowledge

Answer 1

knowledge about the kinds of things in the world. This is not only
about knowledge about objects, but also about actions, events, and mental states.

Question 2

Conceptual development consists of..

Answer 2

consists of inductive learning and categorization.

Question 3

What plays a role in categorization?

Answer 3

Perceptual information, conceptual information and beliefs

Question 4

How does Neisser describe categorization?

Answer 4

the ability to treat a set of things as equal, to put
them in the same pile, to call them the same, or to respond to them in the same way

Question 5

prototype theory

Answer 5

the theory that the normal
level of a category (basic level) gives us the most information about what something is and
how it should be classified

Question 6

Eimas & Quinn (1994) about 3-4 month old infants experiment with zebras and horses.

Answer 6

conclusion: infants looked at the other animals longer. This shows that they can see the difference between the prototype
of a horse and that of another animal.

Question 7

However, children do not show spontaneous sorting behaviour before the age of eighteen
months. As a sign of categorization, they use sequential touching. They touch objects that
belong to a certain category in sequence, so first all cars and then all horses. Mandler and
Bauer (1988) investigated this at a basic level (cat and car) and at a superordinate level
(animal and vehicle)

12 vs 15 vs 20 months old

Answer 7

Twelve and fifteen-month-old infants distinguished only through
sequential touch on a basic level. Only infants aged 20 months made a distinction at
superordinate level.

There were many individual differences, for example, that 25% of the twelve-month-old
infants were responsive to the superordinate level. In a follow-up experiment, they showed
that basic level categories were easily distinguished from each other if they belonged to two
different superordinate categories, but more difficult if they belonged to the same
superordinate category. Superordinate classification therefore plays a larger role than was
thought.

Question 8

implication of the study of Mandlr and Bauer about sequential touching.

Answer 8

Perceptual context that items from the same superordinate class are more difficult to distinguish from each other. a car and an animal are easy om uit elkaar te houden, twee dieren niet.

Question 9

What does it mean when Rosch stated that perceptual equality correlates with structural equality?

Answer 9

. The perceptual equality between dogs and horses
represents an underlying structural equality, namely that they are both organisms. Basic
level and superordinate concepts stem from perceptual knowledge.

Question 10

Pauen’s study where she manipulated objects and let infants hold these objects (ginving eyes to furniture)

Answer 10

Yet infants
spent more time looking at an item from a new category than at an item from a familiar category. So, they used their previous knowledge of categories to determine in which
category these objects belonged.

Question 11

matching-to-sample test and > 19 months old children, conclusion about basic and super ordinate

Answer 11

Children were slightly better in basic-level objects, but they also scored
very well on super-ordinate objects

Question 12

Rosch argued that categorization starts at …

Answer 12

the basic level and then develops into
categorization at the superordinate and subordinate level. However, different studies indicate
something else.

For example, only kids aged above 31 months old could distinguish on basic level with touching.

Question 13

Quinn’s theory: global to basic sequence (

Answer 13

e (first global categorization
and then basic level). This theory is based on perception. It derives from connectionist
modelling.

Question 14

connectionist modellling

Answer 14

This is a mathematical model of learning via neural networks. Every unit in the
network has an output that is a simple numerical function of its input. Cognitive skills, such
as language, are represented by patterns of activity at different units. Information therefore
enters the input nodes and relevant information about identifying characteristics is filtered
and passed on to the output nodes. So, it starts with global categorization, but during
learning, more and more nodes are being developed that will distinguish between multiple
details. This makes categorization on a basic level possible. The more of these nodes
develop, the more categorization takes place at the basic level and ultimately this is
preferred.

Question 15

Quinn, Westerlund and Nelson (2006) contrasted pictures of cats with pictures of dogs, a
basic level distinction, in the first ever study of neural markers of infant categorization. EEG
was recorded as six-month-olds watched a series of 18 different pictures of cats, and then
were shown either more cat pictures, or some dog pictures. Quinn and his colleagues
reported a novel ERP.. the Nc what is that?

Answer 15

the Nc (a negative central component), related to viewing the novel
category (dogs). Therefore, for the basic level of categorization, a distinct neural marker
appears to be associated with categorical discrimination.

Question 16

prototype

Answer 16

A prototype is an example from a category that is considered to be very representative of
that category

Question 17

How important is the emphasises of prototyping in categorization?

Answer 17

Furthermore, the
degree of prototyping explained a larger part of the variance than age or level of
categorization in a study of Bauer et al, where they investigated whether prototypes play a role in
categorization and made use of the sequential touching measurement..

Question 18

multi-voxel pattern analysis
(MVPA)

Answer 18

In these studies, the voxels (small cubic regions of the brain, typically
containing thousands of neurons) that are reliably activated by certain concepts are studied.
The spatial activation patterns across voxels differ for different concepts, so brain activity can
be sued to classify cognitive activity – activation of one group of voxels may reliably signify thinking about a cat.

Question 19

Some of the behavioural data discussed so far has been quite
contradictory. Why??

Answer 19

One reason for this contradiction may be that the infant brain is attending to aspects of the
stimuli that haven’t yet been considered by experimenters (and therefore not controlled for in
a stimulus set). The features of a stimulus which a child or infant considers important and
assigns the greatest weight in computing similarity and making inductive inferences could be
different from those features used by an adult

Question 20

Since children experience concepts different from adults, different parts of the brain are
therefore activated. Mervis et al. (1987) named this ‘child-basic categories’

Answer 20

They are
opposed to adult-basic categories. The child-basic categories can ensure that children focus
on different basic level categories than adults. Those categories can be broader or narrower
or can overlap. They studied the categorization of a child with regard to ducks. This
categorization changed slowly. First it only contained pictures of ducks, then a duck rattle
and then a plush duck head rattle and Donald Duck. Then the child saw ducks in many more
instances than his mother, such as in a swan-shaped soap.

Question 21

Bertenhl study with point light walker displays for children to see difference to see difference between living and non living object.
infants of what age?

Answer 21

e. Infants of nine months old only dishabituated for
the ‘real’ videos, which were not manipulated. This suggests that they are sensitive to
biological movement. In a follow-up experiment, Bertenhal discovered that this was due to
an implicit detection of the person’s body, because this effect was not found when the films
were shown upside dow

Question 22

Lamfuss study with children aged 4 and 5 and the lines of a non-biological concept

Answer 22

The lines of movement of a non-biological concept are predictable, in contrast to
those of an organism. Lamsfuss (1995) showed that children aged 4 and 5 years old
understand this by showing them two tracks (irregular and regular) and asking which one
probably belonged to an animal and which one belonged to a machine. Children chose the
regular track with a machine and the irregular track with an organism significantly more
often.

Question 23

Another way to explore the understanding of biological and non-biological concepts is to see
if children recognize that biological concepts can move on their own. Massey and R. Gelman
(1988) showed children pictures of living and non-living objects and asked them whether or
not these objects could move up and down a hill on their own. Unknown pictures were
shown of mammals (marmoset), of non-mammals (tarantula), and exemplars of three
inanimate categories; statues of animals, of objects with wheels (bicycle; which can only go
down a mountain but not up a mountain) and of complex rigid objects (a camera).

Answer 23

Children
aged 3 years made good decisions about the pictures in 78% of the cases and children aged
4 years in 90% of the cases. They often focused on legs and feet. If an object did have feet
(as with the statues), the children ignored the feet because the objects could not move. The
3-year-olds made the most mistakes with non-mammals but realized that they were animals:
for example, they said that a tarantula was too small to be able to climb the mountain.

Question 24

what did the study by Gelman and Gottfried (1993) show about the distinction between animals and other objects?

Answer 24

showed that children of 4 years old already
make a distinction between animals and other objects: animals can move themselves and
toys and objects can only move with the help of an external force or person.

Question 25

What does also play a role in children discriminating between alive and unlaive things?

Answer 25

The presence or absence of a goal also plays a role. In the study by Opfer (2002), children
were exposed to moving blob-like shapes that seemed to have a purpose or not. If they had
a purpose, they were considered living things

Question 26

What can we conclude of chuldren’s knowledge about the insidesof non living and living things?

Answer 26

They know how to separate a machine, but they don’t know exactly, concrete what insides look like. they only have an abstract idea. this also happened when children got verbally assested and they only responded abstractly what the insides looked like

Question 27

What can we conclude out of the study of growth in living and non living things.

Answer 27

These
results show that the principle of growth is understood better for living things than for
non-living things.

The 5-year-old children scored 100% correct in the same-size-smaller
condition in animals and 97% correct in the same-size-bigger condition. The 3-year-old
children scored 78% and 89% correct respectively. For the non-living objects, the 5-year-old
children also scored 100% and the 3-year-old children 78% accurate in the
same-size-smaller condition and were at chance in the same-size-bigger condition
5 year olds scored better.

Question 28

At what age do children now that only objects can be changed (qua identitieit) and not organisms? And why is that?

Answer 28

children aged 7-9.

Keil explains
that this is because older children are operating on the basis of a biological theory. Here
organisms are identified on the basis of underlying traits and deep causal relationships.
Objects are identified by the usefulness they serve for people.

Question 29

What evidence exists from studies of natural causes?

Answer 29

Children
over-generalized that people were the cause of behaviour in less familiar organisms. They
said that if salt melts in water it is caused by humans (42%).

Sometimes they attributed an
internal cause to an object, but that often occurred with self-sustaining objects: for example,
a telephone that rings.

Question 30

Thematic relationships

Answer 30

Thematic relationships are associative, for example: dogs go together with bones and bees
with honey. Adults do this in terms of categorical relationships.

Question 31

Is there a preference for thematic relationships or categroic?

Answer 31

it seemed thematic at first, but.. “ In 26% of the trials with 16-month-old
children and in 15% of the trials with 20-month-old children, there was a preference for
thematic relationships. Therefore, the conclusion was that children only prefer thematic
relationships under the influence of certain test instructions. As children can use thematic
and categorical relationships from an early age, children would be developing both at the same time.

Question 32

vA characteristic feature

Answer 32

is a feature that is typically associated with the concept (grandmas
are old)

Question 33

definition feature

Answer 33

is a feature that applies to all members of a group (a
grandmother is always the mother of one of the parents).

Question 34

the characteristic-to-defining shift

Answer 34

It is thought that children first categorise based on the characteristic features and that there
is a transition to categorization based on definition features as they learn more about the
world. doesn’t occur at the same age all the time

Question 35

essentialism

Answer 35

states that people make implicit assumptions about the structure of the world
and the underlying nature of categories. These assumptions are represented in the
categories that they develop. Categories are not detected by observing correlations. In
adults there is a causal necessity, which is used to categorise. This could also be present
with children.

Essentialism is not based on dichotomous development, but on two distinctive, interrelated
levels: the level of observable reality and the level of explanation and cause. It is stated that
the theories and core values of essentialism are innate in order to guide cognitive
development. The origin of this innate knowledge is unclear

Question 36

essentialist bias

Answer 36

can be an early cognitive bias. She suggests that children have
an innate tendency to search for hidden characteristics that allow them to categorise. Young
children seem to assume that living things maintain their identity after superficial change and
pass on some properties to their offspring. In addition, children value the determination of
which properties members of a certain category should share.

Question 37

vitalistic approach to perceive causality as a mechanism or as an intention

Answer 37

Another proposition is that young children take a vitalistic approach to perceive causality as
a mechanism or as an intention. Vitalistic causality is that food and water provide vital life
forces to make people and other animals active.