Reasoning about object categories and properties during early childhood

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Induction is an important part of our everyday reasoning, allowing us to generalize beyond what is known to new instances and situations. My research focuses on the emergence of category-based inductive reasoning during the infancy and preschool years. Category-based induction typically involves the following line of reasoning: first, observing that X has the property Y (e.g., a robin can fly); second, deciding that X and Z are the same kind of thing (e.g., a robin and a sparrow are both birds); and third, inferring that Z also has the property Y (e.g., therefore a sparrow can fly). The ability to reason that members of the same category may also share properties allows children to make sense of the great diversity of objects and entities in their environment and leads to cognitive efficiency and the opportunity to benefit from past experiences. ****The long-term objective of my research program is to characterize the development and nature of inductive reasoning during early childhood, with the ultimate goal of developing a model that captures infants' and preschoolers' inferences about novel categories and properties. During this granting period, we will conduct a series of studies addressing the following research questions: 1) when does category-based inductive reasoning emerge during infancy? 2) what factors influence infants' willingness to generalize novel properties of novel kinds? and 3) how does language help preschoolers determine which properties of an object should be generalized and which should not? Together, the results of these studies will reveal when and how infants and preschoolers develop this very important cognitive skill.****