The development of category-based reasoning during early childhood

基于范畴的归纳推理是人类学习和推理的一个基本方面，它涉及到从特定案例中推断出一般规则或原则。在进行归纳推理时，我们首先观察给定实体的属性(例如，胡萝卜对你有好处)，确定两个实体属于同一类别(例如，胡萝卜和黄瓜都是蔬菜)，然后推断第二个实体也具有该属性(例如，黄瓜也对你有好处)。这种类型的推理使我们能够超越给予我们的信息，形成更多的全球概念。在儿童必须理解大量新信息的幼儿时期，归纳推理尤其重要。归纳推理可以帮助他们组织他们的世界，因为他们获得的知识可以应用到新的环境中。同时，将对象分类并将属性从一个类别成员概括到另一个类别成员的能力使儿童能够更有效地存储和检索信息，从而减少了学习需求。换句话说，孩子们不需要跟踪他们遇到的所有单独的物品；相反，他们可以将新信息合并到现有类别中，并相应地泛化属性。我的NSERC研究项目的长期目标是描述归纳推理的发展和性质，最终目标是开发一个全面的框架，捕捉幼儿对类别和属性的推理。在这个资助周期中，我和我的学生们将进行一系列雄心勃勃的研究，以解决以下目标：1)描述婴儿期基于类别的归纳推理的起源；2)检查支持婴儿基于类别的归纳推理的认知过程；3)检查语言信息如何指导幼儿的归纳推理。这些目标将通过三组研究来实现。在第一组中，我们将检验归纳推理的一个关键先驱的出现，即在7至9个月龄之间在类别及其各自属性之间形成联系的能力。在第二组中，我们将对14到20个月大的婴儿进行一项纵向研究，以表征在生命第二年支持归纳推理的认知过程。在第三组中，我们将评估如何使用语言来帮助2岁儿童确定对象的哪些属性应该概括为更广泛的类别，哪些不应该。总而言之，这些实验的结果将极大地促进我们对儿童早期基本认知能力发展的理解。

Category-based inductive reasoning is a fundamental aspect of human learning and reasoning that involves inferring a general rule or principle from a specific case. When making inductive inferences, we first observe a property of a given entity (e.g., carrots are good for you), decide that two entities belong to the same category (e.g., carrots and cucumbers are both vegetables), and then infer that the second entity also possesses the property (e.g., therefore, cucumbers are also good for you). This type of reasoning allows us to go beyond the information that we are given and form more global concepts. Inductive reasoning is especially critical in early childhood when children must make sense of a vast amount of new information. Inductive reasoning can help them organize their world, as their acquired knowledge can be applied in new contexts. At the same time, the ability to categorize objects and generalize properties from one category member to another allows children to store and retrieve information more efficiently, thereby reducing the demands of learning. In other words, children do not need to keep track of all the individual items that they encounter; instead, they can incorporate new information into existing categories and generalize properties accordingly. The long-term objective of my NSERC research program is to characterize the development and nature of inductive reasoning, with the ultimate goal of developing a comprehensive framework that captures young children's inferences about categories and properties. During this grant cycle, my students and I will conduct an ambitious series of studies to address the following objectives: 1) to characterize the origins of category-based inductive reasoning during infancy; 2) to examine the cognitive processes that support infants' category-based inductive reasoning; and 3) to examine how linguistic information guides young children's inductive inferences. These objectives will be met in three sets of studies. In the first set, we will examine the emergence of a critical precursor of inductive reasoning, namely, the ability to form associations between categories and their respective properties, between 7- and 9-months of age. In the second set, we will conduct a longitudinal study with infants 14- to 20-months of age to characterize the cognitive processes that support inductive reasoning during the second year of life. In the third set, we will assess how language can be used to help 2-year-olds determine which properties of an object should be generalized to a broader category and which should not. Together, the results of these experiments will significantly advance our understanding of the development of a fundamental cognitive ability during the early childhood years.