Causal relations and feature similarity in children's inductive reasoning.
Four experiments examined the development of property induction on the basis of causal relations. In the first 2 studies, 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults were presented with triads in which a target instance was equally similar to 2 inductive bases but shared a causal antecedent feature with 1 of them. All 3 age groups used causal relations as a basis for property induction, although the proportion of causal inferences increased with age. Subsequent experiments pitted causal relations against featural similarity in induction. It was found that adults and 8-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, preferred shared causal relations over strong featural similarity as a basis for induction. The implications for models of inductive reasoning and development are discussed.
Hayes
Brett K
BK
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia. B.Hayes@unsw.edu.au
Thompson
Susan P
SP
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D015984:Causality; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011337:Probability Learning; D011340:Problem Solving; D012660:Semantics