To children (but not adults) a rose by any other name is still a rose
Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - 16:30
in Psychology & Sociology
Two vital parts of mentally organizing the world are classification, or the understanding that similar things belong in the same category; and induction, an educated guess about a thing's properties if it's in a certain category. There are reasons to believe that language greatly assists adults in both kinds of tasks. But how do young children use language to make sense of the things around them? It's a longstanding debate among psychologists.