TY - GEN
T1 - The Development of Structural Thinking about Social Categories
AU - Vasilyeva, Nadya
AU - Gopnik, Alison
AU - Lombrozo, Tania
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© CogSci 2017.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Representations of social categories help us make sense of the social world, supporting predictions and explanations about groups and individuals. Here we explore whether children and adults are able to understanding category-property associations in structural terms, locating an object of explanation within a larger structure and identifying structural constraints that act on elements of the structure. We show that children as young 3-4 years of age show signs of structural thinking, but that this capacity does not fully develop until after 7 years of age. These findings introduce a viable alternative to internalist accounts of social categories, such as psychological essentialism.
AB - Representations of social categories help us make sense of the social world, supporting predictions and explanations about groups and individuals. Here we explore whether children and adults are able to understanding category-property associations in structural terms, locating an object of explanation within a larger structure and identifying structural constraints that act on elements of the structure. We show that children as young 3-4 years of age show signs of structural thinking, but that this capacity does not fully develop until after 7 years of age. These findings introduce a viable alternative to internalist accounts of social categories, such as psychological essentialism.
KW - category representation
KW - essentialism
KW - social categories
KW - structural explanation
KW - structural factors
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85139563780&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85139563780
T3 - CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition
SP - 1266
EP - 1271
BT - CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
T2 - 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017
Y2 - 26 July 2017 through 29 July 2017
ER -