THEORY-BASED CORRELATIONS AND THEIR ROLE IN CHILDRENS CONCEPTS

Recent accounts of conceptual development have emphasized the importan t role intuitive theories play in concept formation; however, it is st ill not clear exactly how these theories exert their influence. We pre sent evidence that elementary school age children use theories to link together specific features associated with individual concepts. The r esults of our first experiment indicate that theory-based correlations play a prominent role in typicality judgments and in decisions about category membership. In a second experiment, we demonstrate that child ren's theories play an important role in determining which attributes will be considered most central to the concept. The results of these s tudies suggest that feature correlations can serve to link children's concepts with their intuitive theories of the world.