The Influence Of Category Labels?Perceptual Features And Functional Features On 4-6-year-olds Children's Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is a process that extend knowledge from known to novel instances,it is a powerful and effective tool for children to produce new knowledge.In the past,there has been a great controversy about children's inductive reasoning: whether children's category-based inductive reasoning is a primitive preference or a gradual development,and whether category labels or perceptual features dominate children's inductive reasoning.Previous viewpoints on children's inductive reasoning usually viewed the role of category information and perceptual similarity in children's inductive reasoning separately,but Fisher's(2015)theory of perceptual and representational similarity of inductive reasoning argues that children's inductive reasoning is the result of the interaction of perceptual similarity and representational similarity,and perceptual similarity refers to the similarity of features of objects observed directly.Representational similarity refers to the feature similarity of objects stored in memory.Children grow up in the environment of real objects.Functional features of real objects may be the key clues for children to form the representation of real objects.Representational similarity has a very important impact on children's inductive reasoning.However,how functional features affect children's inductive reasoning is still unclear.In order to explore the development trend of children's inductive reasoning based on category with age,and the different roles of category labels,perceptual features and functional features in children's inductive reasoning,the classical triangular paradigm was adopted in this study.The experimental materials were based on Godwin and Fisher's(2015),In consideration of the difference of children's familiarity with objects in different cultural backgrounds.It has been adjusted based on the previous materials.Pre experiment were designed to calibrate the familiarity of experimental materials in order to ensure that the materials used were real objects that children were very familiar with.We designed two experiments.In experiment 1,we examined the development trend of children's inductive reasoning with age,and the effects of category labels,perceptual features and functional features on children's inductive reasoning in three age groups.The experiment was designed by using 3(age: 4,5,6)X4(label and feature type: no label,category label,perceptual feature,functional feature).The results showed that 4-year-old children's performance of similarity-based inductive reasoning was better than that of category-based inductive reasoning,while 5-year-old and 6-year-old children's performance of category-based inductive reasoning was better than that of similarity-based inductive reasoning.The results were better;perceptual features were helpful to the inductive reasoning based on similarity,category labels were helpful to the inductive reasoning based on category,and functional features were helpful to the inductive reasoning based on category for children aged 4-6.Experiments 2 examined the effect of the number of target samples on category-based inductive reasoning in 4-year-old children.The experiment was designed by using 2(target sample number: 1,2)x3(label and feature type: no label,category label,functional feature).The results of Experiment 1 show that it is difficult for 4-year-old children to make inductive reasoning based on categories.Previous studies have proved that adding target samples can help children classify based on categories(Graham et al.,2010;Vukatana et al.,2015).In experiment 2,we wanted to explore whether adding a target sample could help children understand category concepts and help 4-year-olds to make category-based inductive reasoning.The experimental results show that 4-year-old children with one target sample perform better in category-based inductive reasoning.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)Children's category-based inductive reasoning is gradually developing,rather than a "primitive preference".4-year-olds were more inclined to inductive reasoning based on similarity,while 5-year-olds and six-year-olds were more inclined to inductive reasoning based on category.The age of 4-5 is likely to be the critical period for the development of children's category-based inductive reasoning.(2)Perceptual features are beneficial to the inductive reasoning based on similarity for children aged 4-6 years;category labels are beneficial to the inductive reasoning based on category for children aged 4-6 years;functional features are beneficial to the inductive reasoning based on category for children aged 6 years,but have little effect on children aged 4 and 5 years.(3)When category labels and perceptual similarities conflict,4-6-year-olds can make inductive reasoning based on category;when functional features and perceptual similarities conflict,only 6-year-olds can make inductive reasoning based on category.(4)Compared with perceptual and functional features,category labels are more conducive to children's category-based inductive reasoning;compared with category labels and functional features,perceptual features are more conducive to children's similarity-based inductive reasoning.(5)For 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds,category labels are more conducive to children's category-based inductive reasoning than functional features,while for 6-year-olds,there is little difference between them.(6)Adding a target example can help 4-year-old children to use category-based inductive reasoning.