Sensitivity to Purely Taxonomic Associations among Young Children

The goal of the present study was to examine an aspect of semantic development. Previous research investigated whether different types of relations between entities influence the degree to which children perceive them as similar. The purpose of the present study was to compliment this research by investigating whether the number of relations between entities influences their perceived similarity. The results showed that preschool-aged children perceive entities related along both single and multiple dimensions as more similar than unrelated entities, and entities related along multiple dimensions as more similar than those related along a single dimension. Therefore, by four years of age children are sensitive to the number of relations linking entities.