Diversity-based reasoning in children age 5 to 8

Heit, Evan and Hahn, Ulrike 1999. Diversity-based reasoning in children age 5 to 8. Presented at: 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 19-21 August 1999. Published in: Hahn, Martin and Stoness, Scott C. eds. Proceedings of the Twenty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 212-217. 10.4324/9781410603494-42

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Abstract

One of the hallmarks of inductive reasoning by adults is the diversity effect, namely that subjects draw stronger inferences from a diverse set of premise statements than from a homogenous set of premises (Osherson et al., 1990). However, past developmental work (Lopez et al., 1992; Gutheil & Gelman, 1997) has not found diversity effects with children age 9 and younger. In our own experiments, we found robust and appropriate use of diversity information in children as young as 5 years. For stimuli we used pictures of people and their possessions, rather than the stimuli concerning animals and their biological properties in past studies. We discuss implications of these results for models of inductive reasoning.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item - published (Paper)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics
Publisher:	Lawrence Erlbaum
ISBN:	9780585305103
Last Modified:	28 Aug 2026 10:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/35157

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