The Role Of Categorization In Adolescents

How have different research methods contributed to understanding how infants organise the world into classes, categories and concepts? Psychologists regularly conduct research and construct scientific hypothesis while pushing the boundaries of psychology in a concerted effort to understand human nature, while answering complex questions in this important and intriguing area of study. Probably one of the most challenging fields facing psychologists is the study of children, especially in the area of cognitive development psychology. In addition to the ethical considerations, difficulties recruiting participants and inventing tasks that grab a child’s attention, cognitive developmental psychologist are facing greater challenges with investigating mental
While the familiarization/novelty preference method can measure global level categorization, other research methods designed to test older infants have provided evidence for their ability to form different levels of category representations(Oates et al, 2004). For example, an object examination method counts on realistic three-dimensional stimuli to test categorization in infants that are over seven months old. The experiment consisted of a fixed duration familiarization trial, in which infants are allowed to manipulate different toy exemplars from the same category that are presented in a random order with a test phase similar to the familiarization/novelty preference method. Duration of active examination between novel instance from a familiar category, a novel instance from a category or a completely novel stimulus is measured to infer categorization. In this procedure a careful manipulation of the stimuli is presented to the infant and researchers are able to examine the infant’s ability to categorize on both a basic and specific level (Oates et al,