CATEGORY TYPICALITY, CULTURAL FAMILIARITY, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATEGORY KNOWLEDGE

This study examined the role that cultural familiarity with instances might play in the development of category knowledge cross-culturally. Thirty kindergarten, 2nd-, 4th-, and 6th-grade children from Taiwan and the United States were asked to make category inclusion and typicality judgments for 6 categories. Cultural familiarity with instances was more highly correlated with the typicality ratings of younger than older children but was less strongly correlated for Chinese than American children. Cultural familiarity also partially accounted for cultural variations in category knowledge. Therefore, cultural familiarity with instances seems to play an important role in the development of category knowledge.