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Reasoning about a Structured Object: Three‐ and Four‐Year‐Olds' Grasp of a Borderline Case and an Unexcluded Middle
Author(s) -
Sharpe Dean,
Côté MarieHélène,
Eakin Laurel
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8624.00062
Subject(s) - grasp , psychology , object (grammar) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , affordance , cognitive science , artificial intelligence , computer science , programming language
Objects, in general, have structure; that is, they can be analyzed into parts. This gives rise to certain problems relating to predicate inheritance. For instance, an object may possess a property in part but not in whole (a borderline case ) and different parts of an object may possess opposed properties, so that the object as a whole possesses neither (an unexcluded middle ). Experiment 1 ( N = 24) tested 3‐year‐olds' grasp of a borderline case, and Experiment 2 ( N = 28) tested the ability of children as young as age 3 to grasp an unexcluded middle. Results suggest that children as young as the age of 3 possess a sophisticated ability to reason about the heritability of properties from parts to wholes. We discuss the results in relation to the basic interpretive structures available to young children, particularly object structure.