Human-centeredness is Not a Universal Feature of Young Children's Reasoning: Culture and Experience Matter When Reasoning About Biological Entities.
We consider young children's construals of biological phenomena and the forces that shape them, using Carey's (1985) category-based induction task that demonstrated anthropocentric reasoning in young urban children. Follow-up studies (including our own) have questioned the generality of her results, but they have employed quite different procedures and either have not included urban children or, when urban samples were included, have failed to reproduce her original findings. In the present study of 4-10-year-olds from three cultural communities, our procedures followed Carey's more closely and replicated her findings with young urban children. However, they yielded quite different results for young rural European American and young rural Native American children. These results underscore the importance of a complex interaction of culture and experience--including both day-to-day interactions with the natural world and sensitivity to the belief systems of the communities--in children's reasoning about the natural world.
Medin
Douglas
D
Northwestern University.
Waxman
Sandra
S
Woodring
Jennie
J
Washinawatok
Karen
K
Cognition. 1994 Apr-Jun;50(1-3):171-88
8039360
Br J Dev Psychol. 2011 Sep;29(Pt 3):375-95
21848736
Psychol Sci. 2008 Apr;19(4):314-9
18399881
Psychol Rev. 2004 Oct;111(4):960-83
15482069
Dev Psychol. 2007 Mar;43(2):294-308
17352540
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Aug 28;104(35):13868-74
17715299