Young children category learning: a training study

• Autores: Andrea Sabina Taverna, Olga Alicia Peralta de Mendoza
• Localización: European journal of psychology of education, ISSN-e 1878-5174, ISSN 0256-2928, Vol. 28, Nº 3, 2013, págs. 599-617
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 1 Cita
• Resumen

  • From an integrative approach, this work focuses on the role of conceptual mechanisms, such as comparison and conceptual-based inference, and sociopragmatic support in young children's taxonomic categorization. "Experiment 1" assessed whether 3-, 4-, and 6-year-old children succeed in detecting taxonomic relations on their own. A clear developmental trend was found: 6-year-olds succeeded, whereas 4- and 3-year-olds relied primarily on perceptually based categories. "Experiment 2" assessed if 3-year-olds are able to change their perceptual response into a taxonomic categorization as a function of the co-occurrence of contingent category information and feedback in an interactive process with an adult (experimenter). A pretest--posttest training study compared 3-year-olds' performance in four conditions: comparison, conceptual-based, information-only, and feedback-only. A perceptual--totaxonomic shift was found only in the comparison and conceptual-based training groups. Children who only received either category information or corrective feedback did not make such a shift. The results show that social interaction with supportive adults is a mechanism that drives conceptual understanding in early childhood.