From features to categories: The development of inductive generalization.
Robert W RalstonVladimir M SloutskyPublished in: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (2023)
Young children can generalize from known to novel, but the underlying mechanism is still debated. Some argue that from an early age generalization is category-based and undergoes little development, while others believe that early generalization is similarity-based, and the use of categories emerges over time. The current research brings new evidence to the debate. In Experiment 1 ( N = 118), we presented 3- to 5-year-olds and adults with a category learning task followed by an exemplar generation task. Then, in Experiment 2 ( N = 126), we presented the same tasks but provided participants with additional conceptual information about the category members. Our results indicate that early reasoning undergoes dramatic development: whereas young children rely mostly on salient features, adults rely on category information. These results challenge category-based accounts of early generalization while supporting similarity-based accounts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).