Essences and children

The topic that I would like to focus on for this week’s blog has to do with essences and what children know about them. Just as a refresher, essences determine the shared underlying structure of category members. Different researchers have noted that children have some understanding of this idea when they are very young (four years old). However, their development of using essences does not fully develop until later. This brings me to the Frank Keil study. His study wanted to see whether or not children would label something as “changed” or the “same” based on different transformations. There were two types of transformations: costumes and operations. There were two types of objects: natural kinds and artifacts. When Keil performed this study he found that four year olds think that if an object (or animal) has an operation, then it is changed. He also found that second graders will label an artifact as changed from an operation but they will not accept a change if it was performed on a natural thing. This shows that as children develop, their understanding about essences gradually grows. I just have a hard time believing that children at the age of four really understand this. Also there have been some researchers that have thought that this may be innate. I do not agree with this either. They say that preschoolers can distinguish between traits that are more likely to be nature or nurture. I think that children are learning these abilities. A four year old has some knowledge about this because from Keil’s study, we can suggest that four year olds understand that costumes do not change something. But for this to be innate, wouldn’t they have to know that operations do not change it either? They still accept transformations on artifacts by the time they are in the second grade. It just seems that they have more experience with these things, and that is why their development of this is more gradual. One thing that I would like to know more about is whether or not children use any other heuristics at young ages. I took the cognition class last spring. We talked about many different heuristics that we use every day. Since essentialism is a heuristic, I think it would be very helpful to compare whether or not children use other heuristics. One last thing that I think would help shed more light on this subject would be to test what children say about humans and transformations. I would like to know what children would say about a human that got an operation. It almost seems that children can understand essences when they have had experiences with it before. We talked in class about how most children know that a costume does not change who you are because of Halloween. They have had contact with using costumes and dressing up. Something that many children have not experienced at a young age is operations. Of course there are also many children that have had operations at a young age, but I think it would be interesting to have a study that includes children that have had operations at a young age. Would they be able to understand that an operation does not change “you?”