Components of young children's trait understanding: behavior-to-trait inferences and trait-to-behavior predictions.
Trait attribution is central to people's naïve theories of people and their actions. Previous developmental research indicates that young children are poor at predicting behaviors from past trait-relevant behaviors. We propose that the cognitive process of behavior-to-behavior predictions consists of two component processes: (1) behavior-to-trait inferences and (2) trait-to-behavior predictions. Experiment 1 demonstrates that 4-, 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds can infer trait labels from behaviors. Experiment 2 demonstrates that 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds can predict behaviors from trait labels but not from past behaviors. Experiment 3 demonstrates that 4- and 5-year-olds understand traits as predictive and stable over time. Taken together, these three studies show that young children, in possessing component trait-reasoning processes, have a nascent understanding of traits.
Liu
David
D
University of Michigan, Michigan, USA. davidliu@u.washington.edu
Gelman
Susan A
SA
Wellman
Henry M
HM
D000367:Age Factors; D002605:Character; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D012919:Social Behavior; D012951:Socialization