Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Representations of social categories help us make sense of thesocial world, supporting predictions and explanations aboutgroups and individuals. Here we explore whether children andadults are able to understanding category-property associationsin structural terms, locating an object of explanation within alarger structure and identifying structural constraints that acton elements of the structure. We show that children as young3-4 years of age show signs of structural thinking, but that thiscapacity does not fully develop until after 7 years of age. Thesefindings introduce a viable alternative to internalist accounts ofsocial categories, such as psychological essentialism.