How do children learn to classify unfamiliar object categories?

For my masters project I investigated how young children learn to classify unfamiliar object categories.

When we perceive our surroundings, we can quickly identify and group different objects into their relevant categories (e.g., this is a vehicle, this is an animal). Once we have learned different object categories, we are then able to learn which properties are diagnostic of category exemplars (e.g., we learn that dogs will bark, and birds will tweet).

This may seem rather routine for us as adults but is quite a complicated task for young children whose cognitive functions are still developing! I therefore explored how children’s ability to categorise unfamiliar objects develops with age.

I chose to explore the emergence of category learning between 3 and 5 years of age as this cohort experiences a particularly important developmental milestone: the beginning of primary school. If you have children, then you will have noticed that significant change accompanies their transition to primary school. Children will develop their reading skills, children will develop their social skills, children will develop in confidence. With such broad development following the beginnings of primary school, children’s cognitive functions also take a leap. So I asked, what are the consequences for category learning?

In order to find out, I devised an online study in which children met unfamiliar animal species. The story was that each unfamiliar animal that the children encountered was supposedly late for their family birthday party and children helped out by deciding which party the animal should head to. This task therefore saw young children sort unfamiliar objects (animals) into their relevant categories (by sending the animal to their family birthday party).

I found that 5-year-olds demonstrated much more accurate category learning than 3-year-olds. This indicates that successful object categorisation develops a lot following the onset of primary school. The findings of my masters project therefore indicate that children take great strides in their ability to assign unfamiliar objects into their respective categories, even before the end of their first year at primary school!

Following these incredibly interesting findings I have developed a new experiment that will investigate this research area further by looking at how young children learn to categorise different types of objects and exploring how young children learn about different object properties.