Essentialist beliefs in children: The acquisition of concepts and theories.

摘要: In their first few years of life, children are making sense the world at two levels once: fine-grained level everyday object categories (deciding which things trees and dogs cookies), a broader that some have called commonsense “theories.” Both remarkable achievements. First, consider categorization. If children's vocabulary is any indication, by age 6 they carved up into thousands distinct (Carey, 1978). Many undergo “explosion” roughly 18 months (Halliday, 1975; McShane, 1980; Nelson, 1973), when rate acquisition suddenly rises exponentially. One child studied in detail Dromi (1987) produced as many 44 new words one week, 340 her 7 speech. No other species acquires symbolic communication this rate. Even studies successfully teach apes to acquire sizeable vocabularies sign language incomparable, with no noticeable explosion (e.g., after more than 4 exposure language, Washoe acquired only about 132 signs; Gardner & Gardner, 1989). At around same time learn classify individual entities rapid growth, developing broad systems belief world. Not do identify certain objects “dogs,” but also belong class animals, animals engage characteristic biological processes such inheritance, self-generated movement. Children learning physical laws gravity, mental states dreams, social relationships within units families.