Two studies explored preschool children's beliefs about the relationship between perceptually based similarity among things and their predicted behaviors by focusing on form-function correspondences. Perceptual similarity, if motivated by intuitive beliefs about correspondences between form and function was found to be sufficient basis for…

Three types of concepts were examined: concepts defined by sufficient features, concepts which possessed necessary and sufficient features, and concepts composed of exemplars with distinctive features. Second- and fifth-grade subjects learned the concepts in a procedure encouraging abstraction of common features or a procedure fostering exemplar…

Preschool children were asked to choose the figure most resembling a real man from three figures drawn according to formulas used by children to depict humans. Results suggest development of drawing systems influences children's conceptions about objects or events. (Author/DB)