Category coherence in children's inductive inferences with cross-classified entities

Holding multiple category representations: The role of age, theory of mind, and rule switching in children's developing cross-classification abilities

Cross-classification, the ability to categorize multifaceted entities in many ways, is a remarkable cognitive milestone for children. Past work has focused primarily on documenting the timeline for when children reach cross-classification competence. However, it is not well understood what cognitive factors underpin children's improvements. The current study aimed to examine the contributions of age, theory of mind, and rule switching to children's cross-classification development. We tested 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 75) using a cross-classification task, the Theory of Mind Task Battery, and the Three-Dimensional Change Card Sort test. The results revealed that age and theory of mind predict children's cross-classification over and above the effects of rule switching. The results also revealed that advanced-level theory of mind reasoning is a particularly strong predictor of cross-classification development. These findings increase understanding of cross-classification within children's broader cognitive development.

The rare preference effect: Statistical information influences social affiliation judgments

Shared preferences-liking the same things-facilitate and strengthen bonds between individuals. However, not all shared preferences are equally meaningful; sharing a rare preference with someone is often more exciting and meaningful than sharing a common preference. Here we present evidence for the rare preference effect: Participants chose to interact with (Experiment 1), and endorsed interactions between (Experiment 2), individuals who shared a rare preference, rather than those who shared a common preference, and this tendency increased with the relative rarity of the preference. While having a preference usually implies knowing and liking something, the presence of shared knowledge alone was sufficient to give rise to the rare preference effect (Experiments 3 & 4). Further, we find that social affiliation judgments are modulated by the causal process by which individuals came to have shared knowledge: Participants preferred to interact with someone who acquired a shared preference deliberately rather than accidentally (Experiment 5). In addition to the many cultural and emotional factors that drive mutual attraction, these results suggest that people's decisions about with whom to interact are systematically influenced by the statistics of the social environment.