@inproceedings{a5f1d335fd1741ee855e8a3245932a5b,
title = "The Development of Structural Thinking about Social Categories",
abstract = "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.",
keywords = "category representation, essentialism, social categories, structural explanation, structural factors",
author = "Nadya Vasilyeva and Alison Gopnik and Tania Lombrozo",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} CogSci 2017.; 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition, CogSci 2017 ; Conference date: 26-07-2017 Through 29-07-2017",
year = "2017",
language = "English (US)",
series = "CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Computational Foundations of Cognition",
publisher = "The Cognitive Science Society",
pages = "1266--1271",
booktitle = "CogSci 2017 - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society",
}