title: Development of category-based reasoning in 4- to 7-year-old children: the influence of label co-occurrence and kinship knowledge.
abstract: Category-based reasoning is central to mature cognition; however, the developmental course of this ability remains contested. One strong indicator of category-based reasoning is the propensity to make inferences based on semantically similar labels. Recent evidence indicates that in preschool-age children the effects of semantically similar labels are limited to a small subset of labels that co-occur in child-directed speech, suggesting that performance with these labels may reflect lexical priming rather than category-based reasoning. However, most co-occurring labels used in prior research refer to offspring-parent relationships (e.g., puppy-dog). Thus, it is possible that children in previous research performed induction by relying on kinship rather than co-occurrence information. To address this possibility, the current studies examined the role of kinship knowledge and label co-occurrence in induction in 4- to 7-year-old children and adults. The results point to a gradual age-related increase in the ability to spontaneously rely on kinship knowledge when making inferences.
authors: Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. kegodwin@andrew.cmu.edu
authors: Karrie E
authors: KE
authors: Godwin
authors: Bryan J
authors: BJ
authors: Matlen
authors: Anna V
authors: AV
authors: Fisher
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult