Abstract
Human infants’ developing manipulatory transformations involved in classifying objects from ages 6 to 24 months were investigated. Infants’ manipulations develop from predominantly serial one-at-a-time acts with one object to predominantly parallel two-at-a-time acts with two objects. This shift is marked by increasingly overt transformational consequences for the objects manipulated. When infants construct parallel transformations they are initially different. With age they are increasingly identical or reciprocal. Also during this age period, as the number of objects manipulated at the same time increases, so does the frequency with which infants coordinate them. At the same time, the kind of objects infants manipulate simultaneously changes. Six-month-olds manipulate different objects when acting on more than one object at a time. By age 12 months, infants switch to manipulating identical objects at the same time, indicating that they are beginning to construct identity classes. Since this development occurs about a half year before human infants develop any substantial naming behavior, the origins of classification cannot depend on this linguistic development
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Langer, J., Schlesinger, M., Spinozzi, G. et al. Developing classification in action: I. Human infants. Hum. Evol. 13, 107–124 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02439389
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02439389