Developmental changes in children's inductive inferences for biological concepts: implications for the development of essentialist beliefs

Abstract

We examined developmental changes in children's inductive inferences about biological concepts as a function of knowledge of properties and concepts. Specifically, 4-to 5-year-olds and 9-to 10-year-olds were taught either familiar or unfamiliar internal, external, or functional properties about known and unknown target animals. Children were asked to infer whether each of four probes, varying in categorical and perceptual similarity to the target, also shared that property. Overall, children made more inferences for known concepts and familiar properties. Older children were more likely to use categorical than perceptual information when making inferences about internal and functional properties of known concepts; however, younger children, in general, made no distinction for property type, and they weighted categorical and perceptual information similarly. Both age groups utilized appearance when making inferences about external properties. Results are discussed in terms of developmental changes in children's appreciation of essentialism.

Young children’s acceptance of within-species variation: Implications for essentialism and teaching evolution

“…First, they are consistent with prior work (e.g., Bjorklund & Thompson, 1983;Cimpian & Markman, 2009;Farrar & Boyer-Pennington, 2011;Hollander et al, 2002Hollander et al, , 2009Rosch, 1999) showing that children's ideas about biological variation are influenced by contextual factors like species familiarity and the presence of generic language. Educators and educational tools, therefore, should be mindful of these contexts when introducing evolutionary concepts and developing evolution instruction.…”

“…However, despite the avoidance of familiar animals and generic language-features known to be detrimental to children's abilities to attend to variation (Bjorklund & Thompson, 1983;Cimpian & Markman, 2009;Farrar & Boyer-Pennington, 2011;Hollander et al, 2002Hollander et al, , 2009Rosch, 1999)-children in Study 1 did not actively assume variation. Therefore, it was possible that other contextual factors might have impeded their otherwise even stronger potential to represent within-species variation.…”

“…The use of novel animals and traits was meant to reduce children's abilities to defer to prototypes and apply prior knowledge about familiar animals to inform their responses. This was an important consideration given that children have strong prototypes for familiar animals, leading to failures in recognizing and remembering atypical species members (Bjorklund & Thompson, 1983;Rosch, 1999) and increased rigidity when determining the shared traits among members (Farrar & Boyer-Pennington, 2011).…”