Methods in Measuring Infants Development - Essay Example

Human infants have been found to demonstrate complex categorization abilities as supported by conditioned leg-kicking, object examination, generalized imitation, sequential touching, and visual preference studies.  Equally, they display different levels of exclusivity relative to age and representations. This is critical for the development because the manner in which items are categorized or grouped together influences the way we learn correlations between different objects, as well as the related generalization.

 Previous studies indicate that infants below one year of age are capable of creating visual patterns perceptual category representations, for instance, geometric forms and schematic faces. For example, 3-4 months old infants can generalize square/triangle prototype exemplars into novel visual preferences and novel instances relative to form categories. They also portray prototype effects; their responses are as if the new prototype is more familiar than the formerly observed one (Mareschal and Quinn, 2001).

Some studies exploring infants’ category representations found that 3-4 months old infants presented with animal category formed category representation of domestic cats and novel cats but not tigers, dogs, birds, and horses. On the other hand, where they were presented with furniture category, they formed category representation for chairs including novel chairs but not tables, couches, and beds. Thus, infants’ processes of category formation are considered responsive and flexible to the inputs’ variability characteristics (Mareschal and Quinn, 2001).