Simone P. Nguyen

Cross-classification and category representation in children's concepts

Items commonly belong to many categories. Cross-classification is the classification of a single item into more than one category. This research explored 2- to 6-year-old childrens use of 2 different category systems for cross-classification: script (e.g., school-time items, birthday party items) and taxonomic (e.g., animals, clothes). The results of Experiments 1 and 2 show that by a young age, children are able to cross-classify items into both category systems. Experiment 3 found that children mentally represent cross-classified items as simultaneously belonging to both taxonomic and script categories. Experiment 4 found that children often, but do not always, spontaneously activate taxonomic and script cross-classifications. Overall, the results demonstrate that from an early age children form and use both taxonomic and script categories for cross-classification.

Parental reports of children’s biological knowledge and misconceptions

Children’s misconceptions about five specific biological concepts—life, aging, reproduction, illness, and death—were investigated using a parent survey. Parents of 3- to 4-year-olds (N 1/4 125) and parents of 5- to 6-year-olds (N 1/4 145) completed a questionnaire about their child’s knowledge and misconceptions involving these concepts. Parents reported that misconceptions were common among 3- to 6-year-olds, particularly for reproduction and death. Parents reported a greater reluctance to talk with their children about death and reproduction and also thought their children should learn about these concepts at a later age than other biological concepts. One third of the misconceptions reported by parents occurred at the boundary between different domains, where information from another domain (i.e., physics or psychology) was incorrectly associated with the biological domain. Parents of 5- to 6-year-olds reported fewer misconceptions than parents of 3- to 4-year-olds, suggesting that these misconceptions are open to change and are eventually replaced by accurate biological knowledge.

Causal Reasoning about Illness: A Comparison between European- and Vietnamese-American Children

These studies examine childrens understanding of the causes of illness cross-culturally. In Study 1, European- and Vietnamese-American 4- to 5-year-olds, 6- to 7-year-olds, and adults were asked to make causal attributions for a series of illness related stories. In Study 2, European- and Vietnamese-American 6- to 7-year-olds and adults were asked about the causes and remedies of illness. The results show that biological causality was the dominant form of reasoning about illness across the different ages and cultural groups, although there was some acceptance of magical causality among the Vietnamese-Americans (children and adults) and the European-American children. These results are discussed in terms of the coherence of illness beliefs.

The role of external sources of information in children's evaluative food categories.

Evaluative food categories are value-laden assessments which reflect the healthfulness and palatability of foods (e.g., healthy/unhealthy, yummy/yucky). In a series of three studies, this research examines how 3- to 4-year-old children (N = 147) form evaluative food categories based on input from external sources of information. The results indicate that children prefer to ask a mom and teacher over a cartoon and child for information about the evaluative status of foods. However, children are cautious to accept information about healthy foods from all of the external sources compared to unhealthy, yummy, and yucky foods. The results also indicate that providing information about the positive taste of healthy foods helps to encourage children to select healthy foods to eat. Taken together, these results have potential implications for childrens health and nutrition education.

Not as easy as pie. Disentangling the theoretical and applied components of children's health knowledge☆

While there has been substantial research on childrens dietary habits and physical activity level, there has been little work linking childrens understanding of these concepts and how they apply them. This study aims to elucidate the association between two concepts that have not been distinguished in previous work; theoretical and applied health knowledge. Four-year-old children completed measures of theoretical and applied health knowledge regarding vegetables, fatty foods, physical, and sedentary activities. Results indicate that childrens theoretical and applied health knowledge are distinct concepts that are positively associated. That is, children who accurately identify the relative health of foods and activities are more likely to be able to select foods and activities that promote their bodys health.

Inductive Selectivity in Children’s Cross-Classified Concepts

Cross-classified items pose an interesting challenge to childrens induction as these items belong to many different categories, each of which may serve as a basis for a different type of inference. Inductive selectivity is the ability to appropriately make different types of inferences about a single cross-classifiable item based on its different category memberships. This research includes 5 experiments that examine the development of inductive selectivity in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (n=272). Overall, the results show that by age 4, children have inductive selectivity with taxonomic and script categories. That is, children use taxonomic categories to make biochemical inferences about an item whereas script categories to make situational inferences about an item.

Trust and doubt: An examination of children’s decision to believe what they are told about food

The domain of food is one that is highly relevant and vital to the everyday lives of children. However, childrens reasoning about this domain is poorly understood within the field of developmental psychology. Because childrens learning about food, including its evaluative components (e.g., health, taste) is so heavily dependent on information conveyed by other people, a major developmental challenge that children face is determining who to distrust regarding food. In three studies, this investigation examined how 3- and 4-year-olds and adults (N=312) use different cues to determine when to ignore informant information (i.e., distrust what an informant tells them by choosing an alternative) in food- and non-food-specific scenarios. The results of Study 1 indicated that by age 4 years, children are less trusting of inaccurate sources of information compared with sources that have not demonstrated previous inaccuracy. Study 2 revealed that these results are applicable across the domain of objects. The results of Study 3 indicated that by age 4, children trust benevolent sources more often than malevolent ones. Thus, when reasoning about the evaluative components of food, by age 4, children appraise other peoples untrustworthiness by paying attention to their inaccuracy and malevolence.

Body and Soul: Do Children Distinguish between Foods When Generalizing Biological and Psychological Properties?.

ABSTRACT Research Findings: In 2 experiments, we tested whether children generalize psychological and biological properties to novel foods. We used an induction task in which a property (either biological or psychological) was associated with a target food. Children were then asked whether a taxonomically related and a script-related food would also have the property. In a yes/no task (Experiment 1) 9-year-olds preferentially generalized the property to taxonomically related foods, but 4- and 6-year-olds did not. In a forced-choice task (Experiment 2; 4- to 6-year-olds), children preferred the taxonomic choice over the script choice. This preference was weak at age 4 but established by age 5. In both experiments, and all age groups, biological properties, and psychological properties were treated similarly. It is argued that the children do not distinguish biological and psychological properties of food most likely because they believe that psychological properties are caused by biological dispositions. Practice or Policy: We argue that nutrition education should take advantage of children’s existing knowledge of food categories and how children generalize knowledge from 1 food to another. In particular, children have good knowledge of taxonomic categories and can best access that knowledge when they are required to compare different foods.

Unintentional child poisoning risk: A review of causal factors and prevention studies

ABSTRACT Unintentional child poisoning represents a significant public health priority in the United States and globally. This article was written to accomplish three goals: (a) outline and discuss a conceptual model of factors that lead to unintentional poisoning incidents among children under 5 years of age, including the roles of individual people, the environment, packaging and labeling of toxic products, and community and society; (b) review published literature concerning interventions designed specifically to reduce unintentional child poisoning; and (c) draw conclusions about what is known and what gaps exist in the current literature on unintentional child poisoning prevention to inform development, evaluation, and implementation of empirically supported, theoretically based prevention programs. The need for multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary, team-based approaches to prevention is emphasized.