Theory-based Correlations and Their Role in Children's Concepts
Child DevelopmentPublished 1 December 1993
Susan E. Barrett, Hervé Abdi, Gregory L. Murphy, Jeanette McCarthy Gallagher
Citations67
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score2.19
SNIP2.13
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TL;DR
Evidence that elementary school age children use theories to link together specific features associated with individual concepts is presented, suggesting that feature correlations can serve to link children's concepts with their intuitive theories of the world.
Abstract
Recent accounts of conceptual development have emphasized the important role intuitive theories play in concept formation; however, it is still not clear exactly how these theories exert their influence. We present evidence that elementary school age children use theories to link together specific features associated with individual concepts. The results of our first experiment indicate that theory-based correlations play a prominent role in typicality judgments and in decisions about category membership. In a second experiment, we demonstrate that children's theories play an important role in determining which attributes will be considered most central to the concept. The results of these studies suggest that feature correlations can serve to link children's concepts with their intuitive theories of the world.
Keywords
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