Under what circumstances do people agree that a kind-referring generic sentence (e.g., "Swans are beautiful") is true? We hypothesised that theory-based considerations are sufficient, independently of prevalence/frequency information, to lead to acceptance of a generic statement. To provide evidence for this general point, we focused on…

Two studies (N = 456) compared the development of concepts of animal species and human gender, using a switched-at-birth reasoning task. Younger children (5- and 6-year-olds) treated animal species and human gender as equivalent; they made similar levels of category-based inferences and endorsed similar explanations for development in these 2…

Preschoolers use information from interventions, namely intentional actions, to make causal inferences. We asked whether children consider some interventions to be more informative than others based on two components of an actor's knowledge state: whether an actor "possesses" causal knowledge, and whether an actor is allowed to "use" their…

The authors conducted 4 studies suggesting that children attribute different modes of transmission to genetic disorders and contagious illnesses. Study 1 presented preschoolers through 5th graders and adults with "switched-at-birth" scenarios for various disorders. Study 2 presented preschoolers with the same disorders but used contagion links in…

Reviews selected research on children's early formation of categories. Finds sophistication in how children group objects and think about those groupings. Notes findings related to type of grouping (thematic or taxonomic), multiple classifications, overgeneralization, the role of background knowledge on classification abilities, the…