Generic statements (e.g., "Lions have manes") make claims about kinds (e.g., lions as a category) and, for adults, are distinct from quantificational statements (e.g., "Most lions have manes"), which make claims about how many individuals have a given property. This article examined whether young children also understand that generics do not…

For adults, ownership is nonobvious: (a) determining ownership depends more on an object's history than on perceptual cues, and (b) ownership confers special value on an object ("endowment effect"). This study examined these concepts in preschoolers (2.0-4.4) and adults (n = 112). Participants saw toy sets in which 1 toy was designated as the…

Predicting how people will behave in the future is a critical social-cognitive task. In four studies (N = 150, ages preschool to adult), young children (ages 4-5) used category information to guide their expectations about individual consistency. They predicted that psychological properties (preferences and fears) would remain consistent over time…

Preschoolers use information from interventions, namely intentional actions, to make causal inferences. We asked whether children consider some interventions to be more informative than others based on two components of an actor's knowledge state: whether an actor "possesses" causal knowledge, and whether an actor is allowed to "use" their…

This study tests the firm distinction children are said to make between living and nonliving kinds. Three, 4-, and 5-year-old children and adults reasoned about whether items that varied on 3 dimensions (alive, face, behavior) had a range of properties (biological, psychological, perceptual, artifact, novel, proper names). Findings demonstrate…

Reviews selected research on children's early formation of categories. Finds sophistication in how children group objects and think about those groupings. Notes findings related to type of grouping (thematic or taxonomic), multiple classifications, overgeneralization, the role of background knowledge on classification abilities, the…