The Development of Induction and Categorization

将知识从已知实例推广到新实例的能力是人类学习的一个至关重要的属性。这种能力在发育很早的时候就出现了。例如，在学习一种新动物的名字后，孩子可以将这个名字推广到其他类似的动物。同样，当一个孩子了解到一种新的动物时，他可以将这一事实推广到其他类似的动物身上。根据一些说法，归纳概括是新知识进入世界的唯一过程，对这种能力及其发展的理解可以阐明认知科学的一个主题，即人们如何获得知识的问题。最重要的是，人们如何从通常基于简单相似性的日常概括转变为基于抽象知识的深层概括，仍然是未知的。这项研究的中心目标是了解在发展过程中概括变化的能力。我们假设，归纳概括的发展是由故意将注意力集中在输入信息的某些方面而忽略其他方面的能力的发展推动的。八个针对婴儿和成年人的实验通过提出三个问题来验证这一假说：(1)儿童如何发展刻意关注某些方面，而忽略其他方面的能力？(2)这种刻意控制注意力的能力如何解释归纳概括的变化？(3)是否有可能通过注意训练来促进刻意注意的发展？这一基础研究的结果将为研究人员和实践者提供信息。首先，拟议的项目将产生新的理论和经验知识，为归纳发展注意力奠定基础。这将极大地促进我们对学习和认知发展中几个至关重要的方面的发展的理解。第二，拟议的项目将采用新的方法，从而促进发展和学习研究的方法论宝库。最后，该项目可能会帮助儿童发展和教育的实践者更好地理解注意力如何影响学习和认知发展的一些重要方面。

The ability to generalize knowledge from known to novel instances is a critically important property of human learning. This ability appears very early in development. For instance, upon learning a name of a new animal, a child can generalize this name to other similar animals. Similarly, upon learning a fact about a new animal, a child can generalize this fact to other similar animals. By some accounts, inductive generalization is the only process by which new knowledge comes into the world and understanding of this ability and its development can elucidate a single main theme to cognitive science the question of how people come to have knowledge. Most importantly, it remains unknown how people move from every-day generalizations which are often based on simple similarity to deep generalizations that are based on abstract knowledge. The central goal of this research is to understand how the ability to generalize changes in the course of development. We hypothesize that the development of inductive generalization is driven by the development of the ability to deliberately focus attention on some aspects of incoming information while ignoring others. Eight experiments with infants and adults test this hypothesis by posing three questions: (1) How do children develop the ability to deliberately attend to some aspects, while ignoring others?; (2) How well does this ability to deliberate control attention explain changes in inductive generalization?; and (3) Is it possible to facilitate the development of deliberate attention through attentional training?Results of this foundational research will inform researchers as well as practitioners. First, the proposed project will generate new theoretical and empirical knowledge grounding the development of induction in the development of attention. This will significantly advance our understanding of the development of several critically important aspects of learning and cognitive development. Second, the proposed project will employ novel methodologies, thus contributing to the methodological armamentarium of developmental and learning research. And finally, the project may help practitioners of child development and education to better understand how attention affects some important aspects of learning and cognitive development.