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Updated: Dec 17, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
Kindhood and essentialism: Evidence from language.
Katherine Ritchie1, Joshua Knobe2
1Department of Philosophy, City College of New York, New York, NY, United States; Program in Philosophy, The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, NY, United States.
People mentally represent "kinds" differently than other groups. Kinds have two representations: individuals and the kind itself, explaining stereotyping and essentialism.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Existing research shows distinct cognitive processing for
- kinds
- versus non-kind categories.
- This difference in categorization impacts social perception and judgment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a theoretical framework explaining the differential representation of kinds.
- To elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying stereotyping and essentialism.
Main Methods:
- Drawing on principles from linguistics and cognitive psychology.
- Conceptual analysis of category representation formats.
Main Results:
- Non-kind categories are represented as simple collections of individuals.
- Kind categories involve dual representations: a collection of individuals and a representation of the kind itself.
- This dual representation explains phenomena like stereotyping and essentialism.
Conclusions:
- The representational format of a category is crucial for understanding social cognition.
- Distinguishing between collection and kind representations offers novel insights into stereotyping and essentialism.
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