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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 21, 2026

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm

Published on: April 28, 2016

Memory errors reveal a bias to spontaneously generalize to categories.

Shelbie L Sutherland¹, Andrei Cimpian¹, Sarah-Jane Leslie²

¹Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Cognitive Science

|October 21, 2014

Summary

Humans possess a bias to spontaneously generalize information to entire categories, even when it distracts from a task. This implicit generalization tendency influences memory and operates with minimal cognitive resources, impacting how we form category-based knowledge.

Keywords:

Concepts Generic knowledge Memory Quantifiers

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Human Cognition
Categorization Studies

Background:

Humans commonly generalize specific instances to broader categories.
Existing research highlights generalization abilities but not an inherent bias towards it.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether humans exhibit a spontaneous, implicit bias to generalize information to categories.
To determine if this generalization bias influences memory and task performance.

Main Methods:

Participants memorized novel quantified and generic facts about fictional kinds.
Facts varied in generalizability (e.g., diet vs. idiosyncratic habits).
A task designed to elicit errors from spontaneous generalization was employed, including conditions with cognitive load.

Main Results:

Participants showed a bias to generalize quantified facts to entire kinds.
This generalization bias was stronger for properties that are typically generalizable.
Memory errors consistent with spontaneous generalization increased for generalizable properties, even under cognitive load.

Conclusions:

Evidence supports a powerful, implicit bias in humans to generalize information to categories.
This bias operates automatically and with low cognitive effort.
The findings have implications for understanding category learning and knowledge formation.