Naming Practices and the Acquisition of Key Biological Concepts

Anggoro, Florencia K.; Waxman, Sandra R.; Medin, Douglas L.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02086.x

Cited by 54 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(24 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Projections to the plant target (M = 0.33, SD = 0.48) did not differ from those to either the animal targets, P = 0.15, or the artifact target, P = 0.06. This finding is consistent with previous research that suggests that 3-year-old children are not certain about the biological status of plants (6,12,(18)(19)(20).…”

supporting

confidence: 83%

“…There were no differences in 5-year-olds' projections to plant and artifact, P = 0.20. This finding is consistent with the view that by 5 years of age, children appreciate a category "animal" and can use it as a basis for projecting a novel biological property (3,7,18).…”

supporting

confidence: 81%

“…Developing converging measures and recruiting them to identify the perspectives adopted by young children from diverse communities will be important, as will broadening the question, asking not only how children come to understand the place of humans, but also the place of plants and nonhuman animals in the natural world (18,19,34). Cross-linguistic evidence may be essential for honing in on the ways in which language reflects, as well as influences, our perspectives on biological kinds (18,35,36). Finally, it will be important to analyze more fully the various cultural models and framework theories about the natural world.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We suspect that the additional animal targets included in Experiment 2 promoted greater focus on the category animal, which for 3-year-olds tends to include specifically nonhuman animals (17,18). The variability in 3-yearolds' responses to the plant targets in the two experiments likely reflects their uncertainty about the life-status of plants.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Anthropocentrism is not the first step in children’s reasoning about the natural world

Herrmann

Waxman

Medin

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What is the relation between human and nonhuman animals? As adults, we construe this relation flexibly, depending in part on the situation at hand. From a biological perspective, we acknowledge the status of humans as one species among many (as in Western science), but at the same time may adopt other perspectives, including an anthropocentric perspective in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman animals (as in fables and popular media). How do these perspectives develop? The predominant view in developmental cognitive science is that young children universally possess only one markedly anthropocentric vantage point, and must undergo fundamental conceptual change, overturning their initially human-centered framework before they can acquire a distinctly biological framework. Evidence from two experiments challenges this view. By developing a task that allows us to test children as young as 3 years of age, we are able to demonstrate that anthropocentrism is not the first developmental step in children’s reasoning about the biological world. Although urban 5-year-olds adopt an anthropocentric perspective, replicating previous reports, 3-year-olds show no hint of anthropocentrism. This suggests a previously unexplored model of development: Anthropocentrism is not an initial step in conceptual development, but is instead an acquired perspective, one that emerges between 3 and 5 years of age in children raised in urban environments.

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 83%

supporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Anthropocentrism is not the first step in children’s reasoning about the natural world

Herrmann

Waxman

Medin

2010

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Difficulty establishing the scope of the concept has been documented more recently in various populations (e.g., Anggoro, Waxman, & Medin, 2008;Carey, 1985;Opfer & Siegler, 2004;Richards & Siegler, 1984 for American children; Stavy & Wax, 1989 for Israeli children;Hatano, et al, 1993 for Japanese, American, and Israeli children). In general, these studies have underscored that children accurately attribute life status to animate entities, and are often adept at denying life status to nonliving entities.…”

Section: Unmasking Children's Concept Of Living Thingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmasking “Alive”: Children's Appreciation of a Concept Linking All Living Things

Leddon¹,

Waxman²,

Medin³

2009

Journal of Cognition and Development

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Decades of research have documented in school-aged children a persistent difficulty apprehending an overarching biological concept that encompasses animate entities like humans and non-human animals, as well as plants. This has led many researchers to conclude that young children have yet to integrate plants and animate entities into a concept LIVING THING. However, virtually all investigations have used the word "alive" to probe children's understanding, a term that technically describes all living things, but in practice is often aligned with animate entities only. We show that when "alive" is replaced with less ambiguous probes, children readily demonstrate knowledge of an overarching concept linking plants with humans and non-human animals. This work suggests that children have a burgeoning appreciation of this fundamental biological concept, and that the word "alive" paradoxically masks young children's appreciation of the concept to which it is meant to refer.Keywords conceptual development; children; folkbiology; animacy; science educationThe relation between a word and the concept to which it refers lies at the very heart of successful communication. While often taken for granted, we heavily rely on the shared alignment of words and concepts between speaker and hearer. For example, a hearer will only be able to correctly attribute new information that they hear about "dogs" to all dogs if the word "dog" and concept DOG are aligned. But this alignment is not always perfect. On the one hand, it may be responsive to the context or mode of communication. It is well known that context is an important part of interpretation (Grice, 1957;Levinson, 1983;Sperber & Wilson, 1995; among many others). For example, in an engineering context, "fluid" maps to a concept including both liquids and gases, while in common parlance, it would likely be understood to map to liquids only. Beyond context, there may also be problems with the concept-word mapping itself. Hearers may simply lack the underlying concept corresponding to a particular word, for example, abstract concepts like JUSTICE or ATOM. They may map the word to a different concept than the one intended by the speaker. Or they may have the relevant concept firmly in place, but have not yet aligned it with the corresponding word.The discussion above is more than hypothetical, as misalignments between words and concepts have real consequences for children's learning. In this paper we focus on a particularly important example, the relation between the word "alive" and the concept LIVING THINGa core biological concept that encompasses animate entities like humans and non-human animals, as well as plants. Decades (Carey, 1985;Hatano, Siegler, Richards, Inagaki, Stavy, & Wax, 1993;Klingberg, 1952;Klingensmith, 1953;Laurendeau & Pinard, 1962;Piaget, 1929;Russell & Dennis, 1939;Slaughter, Jaakkola, & Carey, 1999). In contrast, we suggest an alternative interpretation: it is not that this concept eludes children, but rather that they have failed to align the w...

show abstract