The other “race” effect in the concept field: the strategic use of categorization and induction for 5- and 9-year-olds

We conducted two experiments to investigate the strategic use of categorization and induction in younger (5-y-o) and older (9-y-o) children with an adapted recognition paradigm (Experiment 1, natural concept; Experiment 2, artificial concept). In total, 240 children aged 5 or 9 years were recruited. The results revealed that, for natural concepts, the age effect was not significant. All children preferred a similarity-based strategy in the categorization and induction tasks. Specifically, they had significantly better distinguishing ability in the categorization task than in the induction task. For artificial concepts, the main effect of age was significant. Children aged 5 years used a similarity-based strategy across all types of tasks, while 9-year-olds used a similarity-based strategy in the induction task but used a category-based strategy in the categorization tasks.