Essentialism in Brazilian children's extensions of animal names

Bibliographic Data

ID9791761
AuthorsGil Diesendruck (0000-0002-1352-7173, Bar-Ilan University, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume37
Issue1
Pages49-60
Publication date2001-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDevelopmental Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0012-1649 • E-ISSN: 1939-0599
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/0012-1649.37.1.49
PMID11206433
OpenAlexW4248034929
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited33

The present study investigates whether Brazilian children have essentialist beliefs about animal categories. Two groups of Brazilian 4-year-olds (middle class and from shantytowns) were told that 2 animals share either internal or superficial properties. They were then taught labels for the animals. Across conditions, children from both groups were equally likely to interpret the labels as referring to mutually exclusive categories of animals, but they differed on how likely they were to maintain an inclusion relation between the labels. More important, children from both groups were more likely to accept a common label for animals sharing internal than superficial properties, indicating that internal property information convinced children that the animals were of the same kind. These findings were comparable to the results of a recent study by G. Diesendruck, S. A. Gelman, and K. Lebowitz (1998) with North American 4-year-olds

Class (philosophy · Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Essentialism · Inclusion (mineral · Property (philosophy · Sociology · Animal and Plant Science Education · Anthropology · Categorization, perception, and language · Child and Animal Learning Development · Gender Studies · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Psychology · Social Psychology

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