Children and even infants have clear intuitions about power early in development; they can infer who is dominant and subordinate from observing a single interaction. However, it is unclear what children infer about each individual's status from these interactions--do they think dominants and subordinates will maintain their status when interacting…

To acquire social conventional knowledge, children must distinguish between behaviors that are practiced by groups of people versus those that are practiced by individuals. How do children infer the scope (i.e., level of generality) of social behavior? Prior work has addressed this question by focusing on the cues or instruction that adults…

Under what conditions will people generalize and remember observed social information? Preschool- (n = 44) and young school-age (n = 46) children and adults (n = 40) heard short vignettes describing characters' actions and motives on a single occasion. Characters were introduced using either proper names or category labels. Test questions asked…