Causal relations drive young children’s induction, naming, and categorization

Opfer, John E.; Bulloch, Megan J.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.08.006

Cited by 39 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Challenges to this account stem from findings suggesting that even young children are not limited to making inferences solely on the basis of perceptual similarity (Chi, Hutchinson, & Robin, 1989;Fisher et al, 2011;Inagaki, 1990;Godwin et al, 2013;Opfer & Bulloch, 2007). For example, Inagaki (1990) observed that 5-year-old children's inductive inferences differed as a function of their experience: compared to children who never had a pet, children who had experience caring for a goldfish were more likely to make biologically plausible inferences about other animals (e.g., a frog).…”

Section: Perceptual Similarity Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of inductive generalization with familiar categories

2015

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Inductive generalization is ubiquitous in human cognition. In the developmental literature, two different theoretical accounts of this important process have been proposed: a naïve theory account and a similarity-based account. However, a number of recent findings cannot be explained within the existing theoretical accounts. We describe a revised version of the similarity-based account of inductive generalization with familiar categories. We tested the novel predictions of this account in two reported studies with 4-year-old children (N = 57). The reported studies include the first short-term longitudinal investigation of the development of children's induction with familiar categories, and it is the first study to explore the role of individual differences in semantic organization, general intelligence, working memory, and inhibition in children's induction.

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Section: Perceptual Similarity Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of inductive generalization with familiar categories

2015

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“…Studies of inductive generalization in adults (Lee & Holyoak, 2008;Rehder, 2009) and children (Carey, 1985;Opfer & Bulloch, 2007;Hayes & Thompson, 2007) have suggested that inductive inferences often rely on causal theories. Our approach is consistent with this general claim.…”

Section: Generalization and Causal Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 99%

An integrated account of generalization across objects and features

Kemp

Shafto

Tenenbaum

2012

Cognitive Psychology

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Humans routinely make inductive generalizations about unobserved features of objects. Previous accounts of inductive reasoning often focus on inferences about a single object or feature: accounts of causal reasoning often focus on a single object with one or more unobserved features, and accounts of property induction often focus on a single feature that is unobserved for one or more objects. We explore problems where people must make inferences about multiple objects and features, and propose that people solve these problems by integrating knowledge about features with knowledge about objects. We evaluate three computational methods for integrating multiple systems of knowledge: the output combination approach combines the outputs produced these systems, the distribution combination approach combines the probability distributions captured by these systems, and the structure combination approach combines a graph structure over features with a graph structure over objects. Three experiments explore problems where participants make inferences that draw on causal relationships between features and taxonomic relationships between animals, and we find that the structure combination approach provides the best account of our data.

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“…Children's understanding of the category rule was confirmed in a stringent test of their categorization performance before and after the induction task. Perceptual and category induction choices were disambiguated by using a triad paradigm in which children were asked to generalize properties from a target item to Perceptual to category transition 8 either a perceptual or a category choice (as in Bulloch & Opfer, 2009;Gelman & Markman, 1986;Opfer & Bulloch, 2007;Sloutsky et al, 2007). In order to address concerns about the validity of Sloutsky et al's design (Gelman & Waxman, 2007), we used biologically plausible stimuli (novel insects) and demonstrated a familiar relational connection through an animated transition from juvenile to adult.…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other research has indicated that young children are capable of varying their strategy, depending on context. Opfer and Bulloch (2007) found that when category information was available, children were capable of using this information to make a category-based induction decision. However if no category information was available, then children relied on perceptual similarity (see also Hayes & Thompson, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%