Seminar · Cognition
Abstraction doesn't happen all at once (despite what some models of concept learning suggest)
Micah Goldwater · University of Sydney
Thu, Nov 18, 2021 · 21:00 UTC
In the past few years, there has been growing evidence that the basic ability for relational generalization starts in early infancy, with 3-month-olds seeming to learn relational abstractions with little training. Further, work with toddlers seem to suggest that relational generalizations are no more difficult than those based on objects, and they can readily consider both simultaneously. Likewise, causal learning research with adults suggests that people infer causal relationships at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously as they learn about novel causal systems. These findings all app