TY - JOUR A1 - Hildebrandt, Frauke A1 - Glauer, Ramiro A1 - Kachel, Gregor T1 - Coming from a world without objects T2 - Mind & Language N2 - 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. KW - demonstratives KW - infant cognition KW - kind‐bias KW - object individuation KW - reference Y1 - 2020 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fhpotsdam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2500 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:525-25000 VL - 37 IS - 2 SP - 159 EP - 176 PB - Wiley Blackwell Publishing Ltd CY - Oxford, UK ER -