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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 21, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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

"I know it's complicated": Children detect relevant information about object complexity.

Richard E Ahl¹, Erika DeAngelis², Frank C Keil¹

¹Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

|June 6, 2022

Summary

Children develop an understanding of mechanistic complexity as they age. Older children can identify relevant information to gauge complexity, while younger children may focus on irrelevant features.

Keywords:

Artifacts Cognitive development Mechanistic reasoning Relevance detection Scientific education Technology

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Last Updated: Sep 21, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

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Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking IPL: Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking IPL: Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

Published on: December 14, 2012

Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Psychology of Artifacts

Background:

Mechanistic complexity influences human interaction with artifacts.
Previous studies showed children can detect complexity with explicit function information.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if children spontaneously prioritize relevant causal information for complexity judgments.
To determine the developmental emergence of understanding mechanistic complexity.

Main Methods:

Three studies examined how children (5-9 years) and adults evaluate object complexity.
Participants rated the helpfulness of relevant vs. irrelevant action information.
Study 3 confirmed participants understood the task was about object complexity, not action complexity.

Main Results:

7-9 year olds and adults favored relevant action information over irrelevant information.
5-6 year olds did not consistently prioritize relevant information unless contrasts were extreme.
Results suggest a developmental shift in identifying complexity-diagnostic properties.

Conclusions:

The ability to discern complexity-implying properties develops in early school years.
Younger children may be distracted by non-diagnostic features.
Older children better filter irrelevant information to assess mechanistic complexity.