[The utilization of categorical knowledge in story inference of young children]

Hundred-seventy-nine children, 5- and 6-year-olds, were assigned to one of three groups; basic-context group (BC), intermediate-context group (IC), and superordinate-context group (SC). Each child listened to the first half of a story, which was the same for three groups except that it contained a basic-level word (e.g. apple) for BC group, an intermediate-level word (e.g. fruit) for IC group, and a superordinate-level word (e.g. food) for SC group. Immediately after the listening the child was asked to infer the later half of the story. Main findings were as follows: (1) in BC and IC conditions 6-year-olds made more inferences based on the informed concept-level than 5-year-olds, but in SC condition the age difference was not observed; (2) both error analysis and verbal report showed that most inference errors resulted from the overextension beyond the informed concept-level.