Children's recall of generic and specific labels regarding animals and people

Abstract

Although children tend to categorize objects at the basic level, we hypothesized that generic sentences would direct children's attention to different levels of categorization. We tested children's and adults’ short-term recall (Study 1) and longer-term recall (Study 2) for labels presented in generic sentences (e.g., Kids like to play jimjam) versus specific sentences (e.g., This kid likes to play jimjam). Label content was either basic level (e.g., cat, boy) or superordinate (e.g., animal, kid). As predicted, participants showed better memory for label content in generic than specific sentences (short-term recall for children; both short and longer-term recall for adults). Errors typically involved recalling specific noun phrases as generic, and recalling superordinate labels as basic. These results demonstrate that language influences children's representations of new factual information, but that cognitive biases also lead to distortions in recall.