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

Abstract

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.