Work

Preschoolers’ ability to navigate communicative interactions in guiding their inductive inferences

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: Evaluating whether information is generalizable, essential knowledge about a novel category is a critical component of conceptual development.In previous work (Butler & Markman, 2012) 4-year-old children were able to use their understanding of whether information was explicitly communicated for their benefit to guide such reasoning, while 3-year-olds were not.In two experiments, we further investigate this finding.Four-year-olds were adept at navigating pedagogical interactions, judiciously identifying which specific actions in an ongoing interaction were meant as communicative demonstrations for their benefit, while 3year-olds did not distinguish between the manners of demonstration even in a simpler context.Taken together, these experiments illustrate that this powerful learning mechanism for facilitating children's conceptual development is under construction during the preschool years.

Source: eScholarship (California Digital Library)

Authors: Butler, Lucas, Markman, Ellen

Institutions: Max Planck Society, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Science Foundation

OpenAlex ID: W2404986593

FWCI: 0.532

Cites: 15

Cited by: 4

Related to: 10