Preschoolers Use Intentional and Pedagogical Cues to Guide Inductive Inferences and Exploration

• Autores: Lucas P. Butler, Ellen M. Markman
• Localización: Child development, ISSN 0009-3920, Vol. 83, Nº. 4, 2012, págs. 1416-1428
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Children are judicious social learners. They may be particularly sensitive to communicative actions done pedagogically for their benefit, as such actions may mark important, generalizable information. Three experiments (N = 224) found striking differences in preschoolers’ inductive generalization and exploration of a novel functional property, depending on whether identical evidence for the property was produced accidentally, intentionally, or pedagogically and communicatively. Results also revealed that although 4-year-olds reserved strong generalizations for a property that is pedagogically demonstrated, 3-year-olds made such inferences when it was produced either intentionally or pedagogically. These findings suggest that by age 4 children assess whether evidence is produced for their benefit in gauging generalizability, giving them a powerful tool for acquiring important kind-relevant, generic knowledge.