While research on object individuation assumes that even very young children are able to perceive objects as particulars, we argue that the results of relevant studies can be explained in terms of feature discrimination. We propose that children start out navigating the world with a feature-based ontology and only later become able to individuate objects spatiotemporally. Furthermore, object individuation is a cognitively demanding achievement resting on a uniquely human form of enculturation, namely the acquisition of deictic demonstratives. We conclude by outlining empirical expectations for operationalizations of our proposal.

中文翻译：

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来自一个没有物体的世界

虽然关于对象个体化的研究假设即使是非常年幼的孩子也能够将对象视为细节，但我们认为相关研究的结果可以用特征辨别来解释。我们建议孩子们开始使用基于特征的本体来导航世界，然后才能够在时空上对对象进行个体化。此外，客体个体化是一种认知要求很高的成就，它依赖于人类独特的文化适应形式，即获得指示性指示词。最后，我们概述了对我们提案实施的经验预期。