We investigated the impact of two highly salient transient features, labels and motions, on novel visual category learning in 10-month-old infants. In three eye-tracking experiments, infants were presented with exemplars from two novel categories either accompanied by category-specific labels, accompanied by category-specific motions, or in silence. Labels (Experiment 1) and motions (Experiment 2) were presented using a gaze-contingent design in which these transient features were triggered by infants’ fixations. Gaze-contingent transient features, despite being redundant, had a strong impact on categorization. The results revealed that both labels and motions support infants’ category formation. Furthermore, both labels and motions promoted similarity-focused exploration, whereas no such pattern was found when infants learned the categories in silence. Analyses of visual exploration patterns revealed that infants readily form expectations about motion properties of categories and that these expectations drive their looking behavior.

我们调查了两个高度显着的瞬态特征、标签和运动对 10 个月大婴儿新视觉类别学习的影响。在三个眼动追踪实验中，婴儿被展示了来自两个新类别的样本，或者伴随着特定类别的标签，伴随着特定类别的运动，或者在沉默中。标签（实验 1）和动作（实验 2）使用凝视随机设计呈现，其中这些瞬态特征由婴儿的注视触发。尽管是多余的，注视条件瞬态特征对分类有很大影响。结果表明，标签和动作都支持婴儿的类别形成。此外，标签和动作都促进了以相似性为中心的探索，而当婴儿在沉默中学习类别时，则没有发现这种模式。对视觉探索模式的分析表明，婴儿很容易形成对类别运动特性的期望，并且这些期望会驱动他们的观看行为。