AUTHOR=Gamond Lucile , Tallon-Baudry Catherine , Guyon Nicolas , Lemaréchal Jean-didier , Hugueville Laurent , George Nathalie TITLE=Behavioral Evidence for Differences in Social and Non-Social Category Learning JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology VOLUME=3 YEAR=2012 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00291 DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00291 ISSN=1664-1078 ABSTRACT=

When meeting someone for the very first time one spontaneously categorizes the seen person on the basis of his/her appearance. Categorization is based on the association between some physical features and category labels that can be social (character trait…) or non-social (tall, thin). Surprisingly little is known about how such associations are formed, particularly in the social domain. Here, we aimed at testing whether social and non-social category learning may be dissociated. We presented subjects with a large number of faces that had to be rated according to social or non-social labels, and induced an association between a facial feature (inter-eye distance) and the category labels using two different procedures. In a first experiment, we used a feedback procedure to reinforce the association; behavioral measures revealed an association between the physical feature manipulated and abstract non-social categories, while no evidence for an association with social labels could be found. In a second experiment, we used passive exposure to the association between physical features and labels; we obtained behavioral evidence for learning of both social and non-social categories. These results support the view of the specificity of social category learning; they suggest that social categories are best acquired through unsupervised procedures that can be considered as a simplified proxy for group transmission.