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Preschoolers favor the creator's label when reasoning about an artifact's function
1Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 400400, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA. jaswal@virginia.edu
Cognition
|September 28, 2005
Summary
Children understand that creators know an artifact's intended function. Even young children link a creator's label to an object's purpose, especially if they believe the creator made it.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Development
- Philosophy of Mind
- Linguistics
Background:
- Artifacts possess intended functions often known by their creators.
- Children's understanding of how labels relate to object function is a key developmental milestone.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether young children recognize that a creator's label conveys privileged information about an artifact's intended function.
- To explore children's attribution of function based on labels when the creator is the source of information.
Main Methods:
- 3- and 4-year-old children were presented with ambiguous artifacts.
- A speaker used an anomalous label for the artifact, varying whether she claimed to have made it or found it.
- Children's functional assignments based on the label were recorded.
Main Results:
- Children were more likely to assign the artifact's function based on the anomalous label when they believed the speaker created the object.
- This suggests children connect creator-attributed labels with intended function.
Conclusions:
- Very young children understand the link between an artifact's creator and its intended function.
- Children utilize the creator's label as privileged information to infer an object's purpose, demonstrating early theory of mind and artifact understanding.