Abstract
The goal of the present chapter is to outline how infants’ experience with multiple exemplars contributes to their ability to form representations of the small-scale spatial relations, such as above, below, between, inside, or on top. Although infants discriminate between changes in the spatial arrangement of objects early in development, this skill undergoes significant advances throughout infancy. In particular, the ways in which infants benefit from multiple exemplars evolve with the development of their spatial skills and their categorization skills. We outline theoretical views that inform these developmental changes and point to the possible mechanisms that may underlie how infants’ experience with multiple exemplars contributes to their ability to form abstract representations of spatial relations. We also consider how manipulating the number and type of exemplars is an important tool for understanding the development of infant spatial categorization.
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Casasola, M., Park, Y. (2020). How Multiple Exemplars Matter for Infant Spatial Categorization. In: Childers, J. (eds) Language and Concept Acquisition from Infancy Through Childhood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35594-4_3
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