a developmental examination of the conceptual structure of animal, artifact, and human social categories across two cultural contexts：文化背景下的动物、神器和人类社会范畴的概念结构的发展检验.pdf

Cognitive Psychology 59 (2009) 244–274 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cognitive Psychology journal homepage: /locate/cogpsych A developmental examination of the conceptual structure of animal, artifact, and human social categories across two cultural contexts Marjorie Rhodes *, Susan A. Gelman University of Michigan, 2422 East Hall, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Previous research indicates that the ontological status that adults Accepted 8 May 2009 attribute to categories varies systematically by domain. For exam- Available online 13 June 2009 ple, adults view distinctions between different animal species as natural and objective, but view distinctions between different Keywords: kinds of furniture as more conventionalized and subjective. The Cognitive development present work (N = 435; ages 5–18) examined the effects of domain, Natural kinds Social categories age, and cultural context on beliefs about the naturalness vs. con- Concepts ventionality of categories. Results demonstrate that young chil- Categorization dren, like adults, view animal categories as natural kinds, but Culture artifact categories as more conventionalized. For human social cat- Gender egories (gender and race), beliefs