Teleo-functional constraints on preschool children's reasoning about living things

These studies explore the degree to which preschool children employ teleological-functional reasoning ‐ reasoning based on the assumption of function and design ‐ when making inferences about animal behavior. Using a triad induction method, Study 1 examined whether a sensitivity to biological function would lead children to overlook overall similarity and instead attend to relevant functional cues (in the presence of overall dissimilarity), as a basis for generalizing behavioral properties to unfamiliar animals. It found that, between 3 and 4 years of age, children, with increasing consistency, attend to functional features rather than overall similarity when drawing inferences about animal behavior. Children’s ability to describe the relevance of functional adaptations to animal behavior also increased with age. Study 2 explored whether Study 1 findings might result from stimulus biases in favor of the function-based choice. It found that children’s attention shifted from functional features to overall similarity when generalizing labels rather than behaviors with the same triads. These results are discussed in relation to the development of biological knowledge.