Inductive selectivity in children's cross-classified concepts.

Cross-classified items pose an interesting challenge to children's induction as these items belong to many different categories, each of which may serve as a basis for a different type of inference. Inductive selectivity is the ability to appropriately make different types of inferences about a single cross-classifiable item based on its different category memberships. This research includes 5 experiments that examine the development of inductive selectivity in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (n=272). Overall, the results show that by age 4, children have inductive selectivity with taxonomic and script categories. That is, children use taxonomic categories to make biochemical inferences about an item whereas script categories to make situational inferences about an item.