My research focuses on conceptual development, and on interrelationships between cognition and language. More specifically, I have been pursuing several questions. How do infants and young children form categories of objects and events, as well as more abstract categories? How do they store this information in memory? How do they generalize acquired knowledge to novel situations? And how do all these processes change in the course of development and learning? In an attempt to answer these questions, we study pre-linguistic infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and adults using a multiple experimental methodologies.

Selected Publications

Deng, W., & Sloutsky, V. M. (in press). Carrot-eaters and moving heads: Salient features provide greater support for inductive inference than category labels. Psychological Science. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (in press). Linguistic labels: Conceptual markers or object features? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. PDF

Hupp, J. M., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2011). Learning to learn: From within-modality to cross-modality transfer in infancy. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110, 408–421. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M. (2010). From perceptual categories to concepts: What develops? Cognitive Science, 34, 1244–1286. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M. (2009). Theories about “theories”: Where is the explanation? Comment on Waxman and Gelman.Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 331-332. PDF

Robinson, C. W., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2008). Effects of auditory input in individuation tasks. Developmental Science, 11, 869–881. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V (2008). Attentional learning and flexible induction: How mundane mechanisms give rise to smart behaviors. Child Development, 79, 639-651 PDF.

Kaminski, J. A., Sloutsky, V. M., & Heckler, A. F. (2008). The advantage of abstract examples in learning math. Science, 230, 454-455. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M., & Robinson, C. W. (2008). The role of words and sounds in visual processing: From overshadowing to attentional tuning. Cognitive Science, 32, 354–377. PDF

Kloos, H., & Sloutsky, V. M (2008). What’s behind different kinds of kinds: Effects of statistical density on learning and representation of categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 52–72. PDF

Robinson, C. W., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2007). Visual processing speed: Effects of auditory input on visual processing. Developmental Science, 10, 734–740. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M., Kloos, H., & Fisher, A. V. (2007). When looks are everything: Appearance similarity versus kind information in early induction. Psychological Science, 18, 179-185 PDF

Robinson, C. W., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2004). Auditory dominance and its change in the course of development.Child Development, 75, 1387-1401. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (2004). When learning and development decrease memory: Evidence against category-based induction. Psychological Science, 15, 553-558.

Sloutsky, V. M., & Fisher, A. V. (2004). Induction and categorization in young children: A similarity-based model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 166-188. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M. (2003). The role of similarity in the development of categorization. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 246-251. PDF

Sloutsky, V. M., & Napolitano, A. (2003). Is a picture worth a thousand words? Preference for auditory modality in young children. Child Development, 74, 822-833. PDF