Understanding constraints on inheritance: Evidence for biological thinking in early childhood

Abstract

Children ranging from 3 to 6 years old were given three tasks to assess their understanding of race as an invariant trait that is biologically transmitted from parents to offspring. Children were asked to: (1) pair offspring with their biological parents on the basis of the physical characteristics associated with race in the face of a distracting cue, namely clothes colour; (2) pair offspring with their biological parents in the context of a trans‐racial adoption; and (3) assess the possibility of changes to their own racial identity. Analysis of pairing responses and justifications showed that 3‐ and 4‐ year‐old children have a limited knowledge of the inheritance and invariance of such racial characteristics, whereas 5‐ and 6‐year‐old children display more consolidated knowledge and coherent responding across the different tasks.

I. Introduction

“…They are also consistent with the finding that the great majority of North American and European children do not differentiate biological inheritance from social learning before the age of 6 to 7 (Gimenez & Harris, 2002;Solomon, 2002;Solomon et al, 1996;Springer, 1996;Springer & Keil, 1989;Weissman & Kalish, 1999;Williams & Affleck, 1999).…”

“…Despite the overall convergence of our data with those from studies with Zafimaniry children (Bloch et al, 2001), Tamil children (Mahalingham, 1998) and European and North American children (e.g., Gimenez & Harris, 2002;Solomon et al, 1996;Springer, 1996;Springer & Keil, 1989;Williams & Affleck, 1999) in showing that an understanding of biological inheritance takes time to develop, there is considerable divergence in the age at which Vezo, Zafimaniry, Tamil, European and North American children succeed in exhibiting a differentiated pattern of reasoning. Most strikingly, whereas European and North American children succeed by the age of 6 or 7, it takes Vezo children another 6 or 7 years to do so (see Study 3).…”

“…A number of studies have already reported data that challenge this claim. For example, Solomon et al (1996) found that it is not until 6 or 7 years of age that the majority of North American children can be credited with this understanding (see also Gimenez & Harris, 2002;Springer, 1996;Weissman & Kalish, 1999;Williams & Affleck, 1999 for converging results). Mahalingham (1998) With respect to folksociological concepts of human groups, the adult data presented in Study 1 failed to confirm the hypothesis that all humans, irrespective of the socio-political environment in which they live, will conceptualize human groups as if they were natural kinds, that is by naturalizing and essentializing them (i.e., believing that membership in them is inherited from birth parents, and that a person's properties can be predicted from membership).…”

“…Piagetian clinical interviews have shown that North American children do not come to understand human reproduction until late in the elementary school years (e.g., Bernstein & Cowan, 1975). Although it has been argued that these interviews underestimate preschool children's understanding (Atran, 1998;Hirschfeld, 1996;Solomon, Johnson, Zaitchik, & Carey, 1996;Springer & Keil, 1989;Wellman & Gelman, 1998), it is not clear that young children perform any better in switched-at-birth and adoption studies, which ask children to reason about the resemblance between offspring and their birth or adoptive parents and which do not require them to explicitly articulate their understanding of innate potential and of the role of birth parentage in the inheritance of properties (e.g., Arterberry, Barrett, & Hudspeth, 1999;Carey, 1995;Gimenez & Harris, 2002;Solomon, 2002;Solomon et al, 1996;Weissman & Kalish, 1999;Williams & Affleck, 1999). Indeed, the interpretation of these studies is under active debate.…”

The Influence of Competition on Children's Social Categories

“…Preschoolers do not expect categories based on arbitrary physical markers (e.g., shirt color) to have social implications unless they learn that the marker has meaning in their environment (Bigler, Jones, & Lobliner, 1997;Patterson & Bigler, 2006;Rhodes & Gelman, 2008). Also, for categories based on race, preschoolers recognize race as an inherited and stable physical property (Giménez & Harris, 2002;Hirschfeld, 1996) but often do not view race as predictive of novel social properties (Kinzler, Shutts, DeJesus, & Spelke, 2009;Rhodes, Brickman, & Gelman, 2009;Shutts et al).…”