CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Mattos, Otávio |
|---|---|
| Title | Representing Individual Properties Throughout Development |
| Summary | Humans can connect properties to entities in at least two ways. First, we might think that an entity has a property for being an exemplar of a kind: e.g., we see a basketball; therefore, we think it can bounce. Second, we might think that an entity has a property for being a particular individual: e.g., we see the basketball Michael Jordan played with; therefore, we think it has exclusive value. The fundamental difference is that one depends on distinguishing kinds of objects, while the other depends on distinguishing individuals by their past. This thesis explores infants’ and children’s capacity and interest to learn individual-related properties. Chapter 1 shortly discusses the representation of individual-related properties throughout development and summarizes each of the following chapters’ goals. Chapter 2 makes a longer discussion on the topic, reviewing the developmental literature and reflecting on what it shows about the representation of individual-related properties. Chapter 3 reports a behavioral study that investigated how infants encode the agents’ interaction with objects: i.e., an interaction with a kind of object (e.g., a doll) or a specific object (e.g., the doll). We found that infants can encode interactions with kinds and particulars; however, they more easily distinguish the objects the agent played with when they belong to different kinds. Chapter 4 reports an online study that investigated whether children index sound events directly to spatiotemporal objects or through their kinds. Our findings were inconclusive. Chapter 5 reports an online study that investigated the factors that motivate children to learn individual-related information. We found that children prioritize individual-related over kind-related information about objects they own, regardless of familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar kinds of objects) and item type (animal vs. artifact). Altogether, we aimed to compare infants’ capacity to represent individual-related and kind-related information and understand what motivates them to learn individual information. |
| Supervisor | Csibra, Gergely; Kóvacs, Ágnes Melinda |
| Department | Cognitive Science PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/mattos_otavio.pdf |
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