Presents a "procedural view" of the learning mind, arguing against previous theories citing physical properties as its basis. A more process-oriented view of information processing is offered, which describes "mind" in terms of skill in manipulating symbols, and the notion of skills is shown to provide a useful framework for accounting for…

In a study using preschool and elementary school children, the children's judgments of whether brief stories described valid instances of a concept shifted in a manner consistent with the authors' hypothesis that meanings typically develop from representations in which characteristic features predominate to those in which defining features become…