Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:39:00.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The development of modeling or the modeling of development?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2008

David H. Rakison
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213; [email protected]://www.psy.cmu.edu/~rakison/
Gary Lupyan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850. [email protected]://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~glupyan/

Abstract

We agree with many theoretical points presented by Rogers & McClelland (R&M), especially the role of domain-general learning of coherent covariation. Nonetheless, we argue that in failing to be informed by key aspects of development, including the role of labels on categorization and the emergence of constraints on learning, their model fails to capture important features of the ontogeny of knowledge.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balaban, M. T. & Waxman, S. R. (1997) Do words facilitate object categorization in 9-month-old infants? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 64:326.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fulkerson, A. L. & Haaf, R. A. (2003) The influence of labels, non-labeling sounds, and source of auditory input on 9- and 15-month-olds' object categorization. Infancy 4:349–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, W. (1890) Principles of psychology, vol. 1. Holt.Google Scholar
Lupyan, G. (2005) Carving nature at its joints and carving joints into nature: How labels augment category representations. In: Modelling language, cognition and action: Proceedings of the 9th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop, ed. Cangelosi, A., Bugmann, G. & Borisyuk, R., pp. 8796. World Scientific.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupyan, G. (in press) From chair to “chair”: A representational shift account of object labeling effects on memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.Google Scholar
Madole, K. L. & Oakes, L. M. (1999) Making sense of infant categorization: Stable processes and changing representations. Developmental Review 19:263–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massaro, D. (1988) Some criticisms of connectionist models of human performance. Journal of Memory and Language 27:213–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nazzi, T. & Gopnik, A. (2001) Linguistic and cognitive abilities in infancy: When does language become a tool for categorization? Cognition 80:B11B20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rakison, D. H. (2005) Developing knowledge of motion properties in infancy. Cognition 96:183214.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rakison, D. H. & Lupyan, G. (in press) Developing object concepts in infancy: An associative learning perspective. Monographs of SRCD.Google Scholar
Roberts, S. & Pashler, H. (2000) How persuasive is a good fit? A comment on theory testing. Psychological Review 107:358–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, T. T. & McClelland, J. L. (2004) Semantic cognition: A parallel distributed processing approach. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegler, R. S. (2005) Models of categorization: What are the limits? In: Building object categories in developmental time, ed. Gershkoff-Stowe, L. & Rakison, D. H., pp. 433–39. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Waxman, S. R. & Markow, D. B. (1995) Words as invitations to form categories: Evidence from 12- to 13-month-old infants. Cognitive Psychology 29:257302.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xu, F. (2002) The role of language in acquiring object kind concepts in infancy. Cognition 85:223–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Younger, B. A. & Cohen, L. B. (1986) Developmental change in infants' perception of correlations among attributes. Child Development 57:803–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed