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This research investigates the procedures by which three-month-old infants form categories. We propose that infants extract a central representation of different stimuli belonging to the same category. They can thus compare this representation with all new stimuli. Three experiments were performed using series of rectangles that varied in their length (25 % ) . Their width was also varied to keep area constant. The average rectangle would be the central representation. An infant- controlled habituation and novelty- reaction paradigm was used. For the test, infants were shown, depending on the experiment, the average rectangle vs a square, the average rectangle vs a new rectangle, or the average rectangle vs a familiar rectangle. Although global results support our hypothesis, some order effects occurred, in the first two experiments, the results were stronger when the average rectangle was presented first. This tended to reinforce the privileged status of the average prototype. These results suggest that central representation abstraction is one of the processes playing a role in three- month- old infants' formation of categories.
