G. Gutheil et Ks. Rosengren, A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME - PRESCHOOLERS UNDERSTANDING OF INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY ACROSS NAME AND APPEARANCE CHANGES, British journal of developmental psychology, 14, 1996, pp. 477-498
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.