3-040 - Children’s Assumption of Category Homogeneity: Development, Consequences, and Potential Causes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

From early in development, children use categories to organize their experience and to guide their interactions with the environment. Underlying this behavior is an assumption of category homogeneity—that categories mark groups of individuals that are highly similar to each other. This assumption has important developmental consequences (Gelman, 2003). It promotes knowledge acquisition by allowing children to overlook surface-level differences between category members and focus on important, underlying similarities. However, this assumption also has costs, leading children to ignore or neglect important within-category variability and facilitating stereotyping.

The current symposium explores the assumption of category homogeneity from a developmental perspective, considering both its consequences and potential origins. The first paper documents developmental changes in the homogeneity assumption across childhood, including how these beliefs differ based on the category domain (animal, artifact, social) and the nature of the property under consideration. The second paper examines the influence of category homogeneity beliefs on induction by testing how developmental changes in expectations of category homogeneity influence the extent to which children consider sample diversity (e.g., two robins vs. a robin and an eagle) when evaluating the inductive potential of a sample. Finally, speaking to the issue of origins, the third paper suggests that the homogeneity assumption (as well as its less-desirable counterpart in the social domain, stereotyping) stems in part from how people typically make sense of category members’ features and behaviors – namely, by appealing to inherent factors. The symposium concludes with comments from our discussant, a leading expert on conceptual development.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• Amanda C Brandone, Lehigh University

Discussant

• Charles Kalish, Univ of Wisc-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Children’s Changing Beliefs about Category Homogeneity Influence the Development of Category-Based Induction - Presenting Author: Amanda C Brandone, Lehigh University

• Continuity and Change in the Development of Category-Based Induction - Presenting Author: Marjorie Rhodes, New York University

• A Basic Explanatory Heuristic Promotes Stereotype Formation and Endorsement - Lin Bian, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Presenting Author: Andrei Cimpian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign