Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Perceptual cues clearly play a fundamental role in early categorization. Perceptual properties, however, are typically understood to be static shape cues. Some studies have suggested that dynamic perceptual cues, such as motion, may also be important in categorization. This study was an attempt to explore the role that motion plays in children's categorization of biological kinds as well as in more abstract concepts, such as geometric figures. Confronted with a choice between movement and shape, 4-year-old children were found to base their inductions about category membership primarily on motion cues, regardless of whether the objects were animals or geometric figures. This pattern of responses is also present in 7-year-olds for animals but not for geometric figures. Older children may begin to appreciate that motion is unique to animals and are therefore less likely to use motion cues to categorize geometric figures. The results support the view that children are initially guided by motion in categorization. Only as they grow older do they begin to constrain their inferences with respect to different motion cues. The present findings suggest that motion plays an overriding role that is central in the process of concept acquisition and in the mechanisms by which concepts are later structured.