Preschool Children's Use of Trait Labels to Make Inductive Inferences

Abstract

One hundred one preschool children (ages 3 years 5 months to 4 years 10 months) participated in 3 studies examining the tendency to use verbal labels versus appearance information in making novel inductive inferences. A triad task analogous to that of S. A. Gelman and E. M. Markman (1986) was devised. Participants learned a different property for each of 2 children, and were asked which of the properties was true of a third child. One of the first 2 children was identified with the same label as the third child (e.g., both were labeled as shy) but looked different, and the other was identified with a different label than the third child but looked very similar. Results of Study 1 revealed that participants tended to use the trait labels, rather than superficial resemblance, in making psychological inferences. Studies 2 and 3 suggest that these results cannot be attributed to biases on the task. Study 4 provided a replication of the results of Study 1 in a context in which appearance information was explicitly pointed out and in which different trait labels were used.