Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Generics (e.g., boys play football) are used to link certain properties to the members of a category. One of the conceptual consequences of generics is licensing normative inferences about how category members should behave. Building on pragmatic approaches, we propose that children are especially likely to form normative inferences when they hear generic statements used in mismatching situations (e.g., saying "boys play football" to a boy who is playing volleyball). We investigated whether 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 157) draw normative inferences from generic statements that either matched or mismatched an observed situation. Partially aligning with our predictions, children prescribed generically and specifically stated properties to new category members more often in mismatching than in matching situations. Exploratory analyses suggested that children were more likely to prescribe generically than specifically stated properties in mismatching and matching situations. Overall, findings suggest that generics and situational mismatch promote normative inferences in children.