Date:
Friday, March 23, 2012 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
The effect of labelling on category learning
I will present a set of studies which explore categories formation in adults. The main behavioural finding is that given a set of new objects, and equal experience categorizing them, people who learn names for the categories are better able to categorize them. Furthermore, ERP studies demonstrate that specific labels can advance categorisation even further when there is sound-symbolic congruence between label and object properties. Taken together, these categorisation studies demonstrate that labels can indeed facilitate category learning, but also that specific labels can advanced categorisation even further by highlighting featural similarities between labels and objects.