Department of Psychology.
Dev Psychol. 2013 Dec;49(12):2383-95. doi: 10.1037/a0032049. Epub 2013 Feb 25.
Visual appearance is one of the main cues children rely on when categorizing novel objects. In 3 studies, testing 128 3-year-olds and 192 5-year-olds, we investigated how various kinds of information may differentially lead children to overlook visual appearance in their categorization decisions across domains. Participants saw novel animals or artifacts of varying degrees of similarity to target categories and were asked to place them in 1 of 2 categories. Manipulated across studies was the kind of information pitted against visual similarity: internal information (Study 1, both 3- and 5-year-olds), intentional information (Study 2, both 3- and 5-year-olds), or labels (Study 3, only 5-year-olds). Overall, we found that for 5-year-olds, but not so for 3-year-olds, internal information had a stronger effect on the categorization of animals than of artifacts. Intentional information, in turn, had a stronger effect on both age groups' categorization of artifacts than of animals. Labels too had a stronger effect on 5-year-olds' categorization of artifacts than of animals. These findings are consistent with a domain-specific account of categorization, according to which the weight of different kinds of information on categorization decisions depends on children's developing understanding of domains.
视觉外观是儿童在对新物体进行分类时依赖的主要线索之一。在 3 项研究中，我们对 128 名 3 岁儿童和 192 名 5 岁儿童进行了测试，研究了在不同领域中，各种信息如何导致儿童在分类决策中忽略视觉外观。参与者看到了具有不同程度与目标类别相似性的新动物或人工制品，并被要求将它们放置在 2 个类别中的 1 个中。在这些研究中，我们操纵了与视觉相似性相竞争的信息类型：内部信息（研究 1，3 岁和 5 岁儿童）、意图信息（研究 2，3 岁和 5 岁儿童）或标签（研究 3，仅 5 岁儿童）。总的来说，我们发现，对于 5 岁儿童，而不是 3 岁儿童，内部信息对动物的分类影响大于对人工制品的分类影响。相比之下，意图信息对两个年龄组的人工制品分类的影响大于对动物的分类影响。标签对 5 岁儿童对人工制品的分类影响也大于对动物的分类影响。这些发现与分类的特定领域解释一致，根据该解释，不同类型的信息对分类决策的权重取决于儿童对领域的发展理解。
