Processing Natural Kinds Categories by Tamarins

Findings: 1999-2005

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A test of the generality of perceptually-based categories found in infants: Attentional differences toward natural kinds by New World monkeys

Julie J. Neiworth, Richard R. Parsons, and Janice M. Hassett

2004

Developmental Science

(2004) Vol 7 (2): 185-193.
ABSTRACT
 
A preference to novelty paradigm used to study human infants (Quinn, 2002) examined attention to novel animal pictures at the subordinate, basic, and superordinate levels in tamarins. First, pairs of pictures representing categories in a stratified manner were presented in phases, starting with a single monkey species (subordinate level) and ending with mammal and dinosaur sets (superordinate levels). After each phase, tests paired novel pictures from the familiarized set with a novel broader category. Look rates toward each picture were coded. Tamarins looked significantly longer at a novel species after being familarized with a single monkey species, a species-specific effect. Subjects attended equivalently to novel primate species after habituation to 4 monkey species, but looked significantly longer at pictures of mammals, marking a basic level inclusion and a superordinate exclusion. Superordinate testing revealed that more novel and diverse sets generated more attention. The evidence implies that natural categorical representation occurs at an attentional level in primates in ways similar to human infants, and is effected by recent exposure and category variability.
  Click here for full-text PDF version of submitted manuscript.

Click here for full-text PDF version of poster, presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, April, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: