Knowledge, Development, and Category Learning

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents the rapprochement between knowledge-based and similarity-based views of children's categorization. Prior knowledge suggests which features are most relevant during category learning and influences how similarity is computed during categorization. However, the effects of prior knowledge are not static. Increasing experience with the members of a new category can lead children to incorporate into their concept representation features that were not predicted by prior knowledge. Experience with instances that violate expectations can also lead children to revise their general beliefs about a category domain. This analysis suggests that there are three routes to developmental change in children's concepts. This chapter discusses evidence bearing on the first two of these routes, suggesting that each has a role to play in shaping children's concepts. It also reviews the arguments for a role of background knowledge in children's categorization and examines the various ways that “knowledge” has been defined. The empirical evidence illustrating the different ways through which background knowledge can affect children's encoding of new exemplars, decisions about category membership, memory for instances, and category-based inferences is reviewed. The chapter examines the challenges that remain for theories that assume that early categorization is driven by an interaction between knowledge and experience with novel category exemplars.