Perceptually Based Approaches to Understanding Early Categorization
Paul C. Quinn
Department of Psychology, Brown University

There has been debate over the roles of perceptual and conceptual information in the development of representations for global and basic-level categories of objects. However, even within one or the other framework for understanding early categorization (i.e., perceptual or conceptual), there may not be uniform consensus. Each investigative group has a unique research strategy and view of the data. The purpose of this thematic collection is to allow four investigative teams that have adopted a perceptually based approach to present their most recent findings in a common forum. What points of synthesis and divergence exist at this stage in the research? Two articles (Mareschal & French, this issue; Quinn & Johnson, this issue) describe efforts to develop connectionist accounts of the processes that allow infants to form category representations for objects at global and basic levels. Two additional articles examine factors affecting the formation of global and basic-level category representations by infants. Younger and Fearing (this issue) focus on the between-category contrast of the stimuli presented during familiarization, whereas Rakison (this issue) emphasizes the role of object parts in marking category distinctions. The four articles are discussed in commentaries by Smith (this issue) and Mandler (this issue). Smith proposes that category formation by infants can be explained in terms of dynamic processes of perceiving and remembering working collaboratively to create “moments of knowing.” Mandler argues that infant categorization performance needs to be understood from a dual process framework involving separable perceptual and conceptual processes. Quinn, Johnson, Mareschal, Rakison, and Younger (this issue) respond to the commentaries in a reply that focuses on issues of metatheory, mechanism, and data interpretation. The articles, along with Smith’s commentary, were originally presented as papers in a symposium entitled Perceptually Based Approaches to Early Categorization conducted at the 1998 International Conference on Infant Studies held in Atlanta, Georgia, April 2 through 5, 1998.