Children and adults may not realize how much they depend on external sources in understanding word meanings. Four experiments investigated the existence and developmental course of a “Misplaced Meaning” effect, wherein children and adults overestimate their knowledge about the meanings of various words by underestimating how much they rely on outside sources to determine precise reference. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that children and adults show a highly consistent MM effect, and that it is stronger in young children. Study 3 (...) demonstrates that adults are explicitly aware of the availability of outside knowledge, and that this awareness may be related to the strength of the MM effect. Study 4 rules out general overconfidence effects by examining a metalinguistic task in which adults are well calibrated. (shrink)

The present studies tested the hypothesis that strong assumptions about within-category homogeneity impede children’s recognition of the inductive value of diverse samples of evidence. In Study 1a, children (7-year-olds) and adults were randomly assigned to receive a prime emphasizing within-category variability, a prime emphasizing within-category similarities, or to not receive a prime. Only following the variability prime, children demonstrated a reliable preference for evaluating diverse over nondiverse samples to determine whether there is support for a category-wide generalization. Adults demonstrated a (...) robust preference for diverse samples in all conditions. These effects extended beyond the specific categories included in the prime, as well as to multiple types of test questions. Study 1b demonstrated that priming variability leads children to select diverse samples only when doing so is informative for induction. Implications for conceptual development are discussed. (shrink)

Generic language (e.g., “tigers have stripes”) leads children to assume that the referenced category (e.g., tigers) is inductively informative and provides a causal explanation for the behavior of individual members. In two preregistered studies with 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 497), we considered the mechanisms underlying these effects by testing how correcting generics might affect the development of these beliefs about novel social and animal kinds (Study 1) and about gender (Study 2). Correcting generics by narrowing their scope to (...) a single individual limited beliefs that the referenced categories could explain what their members would be like while broadening the scope to a superordinate category (Study 2) uniquely limited endorsement of gender norms. Across both studies, correcting generics did not alter beliefs about feature heritability and had mixed effects on inductive inferences, suggesting that additional mechanisms (e.g., causal reasoning about shared features) contribute to the development of full-blown essentialist beliefs. These results help illuminate the mechanisms by which generics lead children to view categories as having rich inductive and causal potential; in particular, they suggest that children interpret generics as signals that speakers in their community view the referenced categories as meaningful kinds that support generalization. The findings also point the way to concrete suggestions for how adults can effectively correct problematic generics (e.g., gender stereotypes) that children may hear in daily life. (shrink)

Kind representations, concepts like table, triangle, dog, and planet, underlie generic language. Here, we investigate the formal structure of kind representations—the structure that distinguishes kind representations from other types of representations. The present studies confirm that participants distinguish generic‐supporting properties of individuals (e.g., this watch is made of steel) and accidental properties (e.g., this watch is on the nightstand). Furthermore, work dating back to Aristotle establishes that only some generic‐supporting properties bear a principled connection to the kind, that is, are (...) true of an individual by virtue of its being a member of a specific kind (e.g., telling time for a watch). The present studies tested the hypothesis that principled connections are part of the formal structure of kind representations. Specifically, they tested whether they structure a newly learned kind representation. Experiment 1 found that introducing a property of a newly encountered novel kind in any one of four linguistic frames that provide evidence that a property has a principled connection to a kind (e.g., “It has fur because it is a blick”) led participants to infer a different conceptual consequence of principled connections (i.e., “There is something wrong with this blick, which does not have fur”) for which they had no direct evidence. Two introduction frames that provided no evidence for principled connections (e.g., “Almost all blicks have fur”) did not generate the same consequence. Experiment 2 found that all of the targeted properties were generic licensing, irrespective of the introduction frame. That the distinction between properties that bear principled connections to their kinds, and merely generic‐supporting properties structures novel kind representations, provides strong evidence that this distinction is part of the formal structure of kind representations. (shrink)

School-aged children often participate in school field trips, summer camps or visits at informal learning institutions like zoos and museums. However, relatively little is known about children’s memory and learning from these experiences, what types of event details and facts are retained, how retention varies across age, and whether different patterns are observed for different types of experiences. We aimed to answer these questions through a partnership with a local zoo. Four- to 10-year-old children participated in a weeklong summer camp, (...) during which they engaged in dynamic events, including visits to zoo animals. On the last day of camp, we elicited autobiographical event narratives for two types of experiences: a child-selected animal event and an experimenter-selected animal event. We coded event narratives for length and breadth using previously used autobiographical memory narrative coding schemes. In addition, we created a coding scheme to examine retention of semantic information. We report the types of autobiographical event details and facts children recalled in their narratives, as well as age group differences that were found to vary depending on the type of information and type of event. Through this naturalistic, yet controlled, study we gain insights into how children remember and learn through hands-on activities and exploration in this engaging and dynamic environment. We discuss how our results provide novel information that can be used by informal learning institutions to promote children’s memory and retention of science facts. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is an intuitive folk belief positing that certain categories have a non-obvious inner “essence” that gives rise to observable features. Although this belief most commonly characterizes natural kind categories, I argue that psychological essentialism can also be extended in important ways to artifact concepts. Specifically, concepts of individual artifacts include the non-obvious feature of object history, which is evident when making judgments regarding authenticity and ownership. Classic examples include famous works of art (e.g., the Mona Lisa is authentic (...) because of its provenance), but ordinary artifacts likewise receive value from their history (e.g., a worn and tattered blanket may have special value if it was one’s childhood possession). Moreover, in some cases, object history may be thought to have causal effects on individual artifacts, much as an animal essence has causal effects. I review empirical support for these claims and consider the implications for both artifact concepts and essentialism. This perspective suggests that artifact concepts cannot be contained in a theoretical framework that focuses exclusively on similarity or even function. Furthermore, although there are significant differences between essentialism of natural kinds and essentialism of artifact individuals, the commonalities suggest that psychological essentialism may not derive from folk biology but instead may reflect more domain-general perspectives on the world. (shrink)

Inductive reasoning is fundamental to human cognition, yet it remains unclear how we develop this ability and what might influence our inductive choices. We created novel categories in which crucial factors such as domain and category structure were manipulated orthogonally. We trained 403 4–9-year-old children to categorise well-matched natural kind and artefact stimuli with either featural or relational category structure, followed by induction tasks. This wide age range allowed for the first full exploration of the developmental trajectory of inductive reasoning (...) in both domains. We found a gradual transition from perceptual to categorical induction with age. This pattern was stable across domains, but interestingly, children showed a category bias one year later for relational categories. We hypothesise that the ability to use category information in inductive reasoning develops gradually, but is delayed when children need to process and apply more complex category structures. (shrink)