A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME - PRESCHOOLERS UNDERSTANDING OF INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY ACROSS NAME AND APPEARANCE CHANGES

One of the major achievements of early cognitive development is the ab ility to understand that an object's individual identity can remain st able while various properties of the object change. Previous research has indicated that preschoolers determine individual identity using pr operties such as proper name and appearance. These results contrast wi th recent theory and research showing preschoolers' ability to go beyo nd variable/external properties in their judgments concerning category membership. Previous results may also be due in part to the methodolo gies employed. We therefore conducted three experiments investigating the effect of changes in proper name or appearance on children's judgm ents of individual identity of animals, using an alternative methodolo gy based on the theory of psychological essentialism. Pictures of fami liar animals (e.g. dogs) that were given specific behavioural (primari ly) properties chosen to be both stable in nature and highly individua ting were shown to 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds and adults. Name or appear ance was then altered and participants judged whether the animal's beh aviour had also changed. Judgments of stability in behaviour were take n to correspond to judgments of stability in individual identity. By a ge 4 most children consistently judged that stable properties were una ffected by changes in name and appearance, suggesting that preschooler s may possess a better understanding of individual identity than previ ously thought. These results are discussed in terms of the relation of identity understanding to conceptual development.