Categorization — the ability to classify stimuli into distinct categories — is crucial to structure visual input and organize the visual world (Mareschal & Quinn, 2001; Grossmann et al., 2009; Hoehl, 2016) While infants already show the ability to categorize visual stimuli in their first year after birth (Xie et al., 2022), it remains an open question of how much of their early emerging representations are shaped by experience. Looking time studies suggest that familiarity affects infants’ categorization performance already at four months (Kovack-Lesh et al., 2010). Yet, the impact of visual experience on categorization remain to be further explored.
Here, we employ a cross-cultural approach to examine categorization in infants at 5 and 11 months from Germany and Japan. To investigate categorization processes, we decode the categories from Japanese and German items from the EEG. Specifically, infants saw 36 images from five categories, with items reflecting either typical German or Japanese cultural contexts. We applied Representational Similarity Analysis to determine category decoding accuracy and its temporal dynamics.
Preliminary results from 91 infants suggest a clear difference in category decoding accuracy between culturally familiar and unfamiliar items for 11-month-olds, with potential differences emerging as early as 5 months. We will further present data on face processing of culturally familiar and unfamiliar faces to disentangle perceptual narrowing and perceptual learning processes. This study holds the promise to offer exciting insights into how early categorization is bound by culture-specific experiences.