Current theories of category learning posit separate verbal and nonverbal learning systems. Past research suggests that the verbal system relies on verbal working memory and executive functioning and learns rule-defined categories; the nonverbal system does not rely on verbal working memory and learns non-rule-defined categories (E. M. Waldron…

Humans have an extremely flexible ability to categorize regularities in their environment, in part because of attentional systems that allow them to focus on important perceptual information. In formal theories of categorization, attention is typically modeled with weights that selectively bias the processing of stimulus features. These theories…

A total of 80 children 4 to 7 years of age participated in a study attempting to establish (1) the frequency of classification performance by age and in relation to available classification criteria, and (2) the degree of preference for different classification criteria by age, particularly differences between figurative and operative criteria.…

Preschool children's awareness of distinctions between animate and inanimate objects was assessed by showing stimulus films of animate and inanimate objects that moved in different ways. Results indicated that five- and some four-year-olds performed near adult levels, whereas three-year-olds did not, although the animate-inanimate distinction did…