Age,Typicality,and Task Effects on Categorization of Objects

Abstract

Object categories seem to have a prototypic structure: a central core of typical members and a periphery of atypical, borderline cases. Our internal concepts of categories must include representations of this prototypic structure. Given such concepts, however, people may use different processing strategies for judging membership in a category. These depend on a person's age and the demands of the categorization task. 3-, 4-, 5-yr.-old, and adult subjects were tested in three different categorization tasks with the same materials. Some of the items to be categorized were central and some were peripheral category members. For 3-yr.-olds there were strong effects of typicality on all three tasks, suggesting that these children were matching items and judging membership in a category on the basis of a wholistic process of comparison. Slightly older children and adults, however, showed differential effects of typicality across tasks, suggesting that they were using various processing strategies in different situations. In some of the tasks, older children and adults may have been using abstraction skills, and for one of the tasks adults may have been using logical classification skills.