When 60 five-year-old and 48 10-year-old children heard three stories, each containing three target objects from each of three taxonomic categories, younger children received greater benefit than older children from strongly scripted story presentations and from constrained category-cue and script-cue retrieval conditions. Cues and the extent to…

Two experiments tested 10-month-old infants' categorization abilities. Infants were presented with a sequence of stimuli depicting members of a given category. Stimuli representing nonmembers of the category were inserted into the sequence. Infants appeared to disregard the nonmembers in the sequence. (MDM)

Examined the possibility that knowledge about hierarchical organization of categories and cross-language equivalents for object labels can help children limit use of the assumption that nouns pick out mutually exclusive object categories. Findings suggest that even preschoolers use knowledge about language and categorization to fine tune the…

A label can convey nonobvious information about category membership. Three studies show that preschoolers (N144) sometimes ignore or reject labels that conflict with appearance, particularly when they are uncertain that the speaker meant to use those labels. In Study 1, 4-year-olds were more reluctant than 3-year-olds to accept that, for example,…

A critical examination of two key aspects of Piaget's account of how small children come to understand basic number concepts. (Author/CS)

Examined the extent to which children draw upon reality and fantasy, either explicitly or implicitly, in their spontaneous classifications, and when instructed to sort on that basis. (Author/JMB)

Perceptual and categorical similarity were varied independently in a concept-matching task administered to young children. Perceptual similarity proved to be the primary determinant of difficulty level. Superordinate and basic matches were equally difficult. When perceptual resemblance was minimal, most children were unable to recognize matches at…

This study contrasted two possible relations between reflection-impulsivity and analytic or holistic modes of processing. Although impulsive children were more holistic in the classification task, they made more errors than reflectives on matching tests, regardless of whether the content favored holistic processing. (RH)

Two experiments assessed the importance of form versus function in 2-year-old infants' categorizations. Nonsense objects were constructed to independently vary form and function. Adults differentially directed subjects' attention to one or the other stimulus dimension. It was hypothesized that children's conceptualizations would vary as a function…

Three experiments used adults' performances in a category abstraction paradigm to test for the existence of individual style in the drawings of three five-year-olds. Overall, studies provided experimental support for the notion that young children possess recognizable artistic styles. (MP)

Examines the relationship between class inclusion and age and indicates that class inclusion frequently appears to develop at a much later age than is suggested in Piaget's writings. (Author/MP)

The ability of 18-, 24-, and 30-week-old infants to learn conceptual categories regarding adult female faces was examined using a habituation paradigm. (JMB)

Children who had received training in sorting pictures of men and women, and in sorting occupations according to rules that countered gender stereotypes, exhibited a more egalitarian response in subsequent measures of gender stereotyping and showed superior memory for counterstereotypic information in stories than did other children. (BC)

Eighteen-month-old children performed sorting tasks and their parents completed checklists of words used by the children. Children who performed exhaustive grouping, or grouping of objects of different kinds in different locations, were reported as using more words than children who did not perform exhaustive grouping. (BC)