The nature of label-induced categories: preverbal infants represent surface features and category symbols

Humans categorize objects not only based on perceptual features (e.g., red, rounded), but also function (e.g., used to transport people). Category membership can be communicated via labeling (e.g., ‘Apple’, ‘Vehicle’). While it is well established that even preverbal infants rely on labels to learn categories, it remains unclear what is the nature of those categories: whether they simply contain sets of visual features diagnostic of category membership, or whether they additionally contain abstract category markers or symbols (e.g. linguistic in the form of category labels or non-linguistic). To address this question, we first used labeling to teach two novel object categories, each composed of unfamiliar visually unrelated objects, to adults and 9-month-olds. Then, we assessed categorization in an EEG category-oddball task. Both adults and infants displayed stronger neural responses to the infrequent category, which, in the absence of visual features shared by all category members, indicates that the categories they set up contained feature-independent category markers. Well before language production starts, labels help infants to discover categories without relying on perceptual similarities across object and build category representations with summary elements that may be critical for the development of abstract thought.