Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous work has shown that preschoolers—in comparison to older children and adults—tend to view categoriesas homogeneous, generalizing properties of individuals broadly to all category members (e.g., this dax has wings, so all daxesdo). Here, we explore whether the testimony used to describe category individuals as well as children’s prior knowledge ofcategories attenuates their homogeneity expectations. Using a novel induction task, 4 to 7-year-olds were asked to predict thedistribution of properties among members of familiar/unfamiliar animal categories based on a single exemplar. Exemplars wereintroduced as “special” to half of participants. Preliminary findings (N = 71) suggest that prior knowledge may contribute tobeliefs about category homogeneity: responses for familiar animals varied appropriately given the real-world prevalence of eachproperty whereas children overestimated the property’s prevalence for unfamiliar animals. The complete dataset will speak tohow language choice in testimony shifts children’s beliefs about homogeneity.