We're going to the zoo: Interactive educational activities with animals boost category-based induction in children

Journal article

We investigated whether category-based induction can be enhanced through educational activities with real-life animals. Four induction tasks involving pictures of real and novel biological kinds were administered to 252 children aged 5- to 7- years, split across two testing sessions. Between these two testing sessions, 129 of these children took part in a zoo-based educational activity where their attention was directed towards the importance of non-obvious category features. In the first testing session, older children made significantly more category inferences, consistent with developmental accounts of category-based induction. In the second testing session, there was a greater increase in category-based induction decisions made by children in the training condition. We suggest that category-based induction could be driven by an accumulation of category knowledge which leads to a deeper understanding of the importance of category features.

Authors: Badger, J; Shapiro, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Cognitive Development
• Volume: 49
• Pages: 1-10
• Publication date: 2018-11-13
• Acceptance date: 2018-10-29
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2018.10.003
• ISSN: 0885-2014
• Keywords: child development; training; category; education; induction