Carving Categories in a Continuous World: Preverbal Infants Discriminate Categorical Changes Before Distance Changes in Dynamic Events

To learn motion verbs and prepositions, children must categorize event components such that jumping 1 meter over the puddle and jumping 3 meters over the puddle are both instances of jumping. Thus, children’s categories must allow variability in coordinate properties, while preserving the relational component labeled by motion verbs and prepositions. The current study asks if preverbal infants notice within-category distance changes (e.g., height of a jump) more than across-category distance changes, (e.g., over versus under). Results suggest that categorical changes are most important, which has implications for how children carve a continuous world into categories that coincide with language.