Like Father, Like Son: Young Children's Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents Author(S): Gregg E
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Like Father, like Son: Young Children's Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents Author(s): Gregg E. A. Solomon, Susan C. Johnson, Deborah Zaitchik and Susan Carey Source: Child Development, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 151-171 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1131693 Accessed: 28-08-2017 18:46 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Society for Research in Child Development, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Child Development This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 18:46:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Like Father, Like Son: Young Children's Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents Gregg E. A. Solomon and Susan C. Johnson Massachusetts Institute of Technology Deborah Zaitchik University of Massachusetts, Boston Susan Carey Massachusetts Institute of Technology SOLOMON, GREGG E. A.; JOHNSON, SUSAN C.; ZAITCHIK, DEBORAH; and CAREY, SUSAN. Like Father, Like Son: Young Children's Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1996, 67, 151-171. 4 studies investigated the broad claim that preschoolers understand biological inheritance. In Study 1, 4-7-year-old children were told a story in which a boy was born to one man and adopted by another. The biological father was described as having one set of features (e.g., green eyes) and the adoptive father as having another (e.g., brown eyes). Subjects were asked which man the boy would resemble when he grew up. Pre- schoolers showed little understanding that selective chains of processes mediate resemblance to parents. It was not until age 7 that children substantially associated the boy with his biological father on physical features and his adoptive father on beliefs. That is, it was not until age 7 that children demonstrated that they understood birth as part of a process selectively mediating the acquisition of physical traits and learning or nurturance as mediating the acquisition of beliefs. In Study 2, subjects were asked whether, as a boy grew up, various of his features could change. Children generally shared our adult intuitions, indicating that their failure in Study 1 was not due to their having a different sense of what features can change. Studies 3 and 4 replicated Study 1, with stories involving mothers instead of fathers and with lessened task demands. Taken together, the results of the 4 studies refute the claim that preschoolers understand biological inheritance. The findings are discussed in terms of whether children understand biology as an autonomous cognitive domain. Carey's (1985, 1988) claim that an logicallyauton- distinct entities, and (3) unique omous domain of biology is not constructed causal mechanisms, which provide explana- until the end of the first decade of life has tions for the phenomena in the domain and come under concerted criticism (e.g., Gel- the properties of the entities in it (Carey, man & Wellman, 1991; Inagaki & Hatano, 1985). Wellman and Gelman (1992) further 1993; Keil, 1989, 1994). At issue here are the point out that in an autonomous domain, do- explicit, accessible, conceptual representa- main-specific causal mechanisms operate in tions-the framework theories-that are a manner that respects ontological distinc- fundamental to the organization of concep- tions within a coherent causal explanatory tual knowledge. We can credit children framework. with The notions of ontological dis- an autonomous cognitive domain only tinctions if and coherent causal explanatory they can be shown to represent: (1) a setframeworks of are spelled out in related ways phenomena, involving (2) a domain of byonto- Carey (1985, in press), Keil (1979, 1989), We wish to thank Adebisi Lipede, Adee Matan, Veronica Mendoza, David Millstein, Kelly Olguin, Virginia Slaughter, Helen Tager-Flusberg, Linda Tickle Degnen, Mary Gale and the Cambridge Montessori School, Lynn Stuart and the Cambridge School District, Linda Rings and the Cambridge Compass Program, and the Solomon Schector Day School. This research was supported by grant 91-20 from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to the first author and grant 5-T32-MH18823 from NIMH to the second author. Please send correspondence concerning this article to the authors at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 79 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA 02139. [Child Development, 1996, 67, 151-171. ? 1996 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/96/6701-0014$01.00] This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 18:46:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 152 Child Development Murphy and Medin (1985), and Wellman not understand anything like a genetic and Gelman (1992). mechanism, but they must have some sense The above criteria for autonomous do- that the processes resulting in Resemblance to Parents differ from learning or other envi- mains are not independent. For example, ronmental mechanisms. Curly-haired par- "ontological distinction" and "explanatory ents may have curly-haired children because framework" are interdefined; not all concep- they give them permanents; prejudiced par- tual distinctions are ontological distinctions ents may have prejudiced children because (Carey, 1985; Keil, 1979). Cats are distin- they teach them to be so. These are not ex- guished from dogs, but this is not an ontolog- amples of biological inheritance. Inheri- ical distinction. Carey (1985, in press) argues tance, the biological origin of an animal's bi- that ontological distinctions are those be- tween entities embedded in different ological features, must be causally linked to birth, the biological origin of the animal. causal/explanatory frameworks. Researchers who claim that children understand an au- And as the biological parent is causally asso- ciated with birth and birth is causally associ- tonomous domain of biology have estab- ated with the origin of the body, so is the lished that preschool children realize that biological parent causally associated with animals (and perhaps also plants) are distin- bodily properties. Thus, the second compo- guished from other entities, because they nent: Children understand biological inheri- undergo processes such as growth that other tance only to the extent that they understand kinds do not (e.g., Keil, 1994; Rosengren, that, for certain characteristics, the chain of Gelman, Kalish, & McCormick, 1991). But in order to claim that these are understood processes underlying Resemblance to Par- ents crucially involves birth. These charac- as ontological distinctions by children, one must demonstrate that children have an ex- teristics include those bodily traits, such as skin color, that do not change during a per- planatory framework that includes knowl- son's lifetime. Finally, children's under- edge of biological causal mechanisms perti- standing of inheritance is part of a larger nent to such animal-specific phenomena. framework of biological causal explanation The question, then, is whether pre- only if birth is implicated in the origin of school children know any causal explanatory bodily features and not in the origin of be- mechanisms that are uniquely biological. liefs and other properties that children know Studies from several laboratories have been to be learned. Inheritance judgments must taken as providing evidence that children distinguish among properties in a manner know at least one such mechanism, one that that is consistent with the finding that pre- explains why blond parents tend to have school children know minds and bodies to blond children. That is, it is claimed that be ontologically distinct (Inagaki & Hatano, preschool children have a biological under- 1993; Keil, 1989; Wellman & Gelman, 1992). standing of the inheritance of properties (Gelman & Wellman, 1991; Springer, 1992; In this article we explore whether 4-7- Springer & Keil, 1989). However, a close re- year-olds understand biological inheritance. view of these studies reveals them to be in- We grant that preschool children understand conclusive. the general notion of Resemblance to Par- ents. For example, Springer (1992) found A biological understanding of the inher- that 4-8-year-olds understand that offspring itance of properties includes, at a minimum, resemble their parents. He told children that two essential components: Resemblance to a pictured animal has an unusual property Parents and Mediation by Reproduction. (e.g., "this horse has hair inside its ears"). First, there must be some understanding He probed for projection of this property to that offspring will resemble their parents a physically similar animal, described as a with respect to variation among species (e.g., friend unrelated by birth to the target, and dogs have baby dogs not baby cats) and with to a physically dissimilar animal, described respect to variation among individuals of the as the target's baby. At all ages, the property same species (e.g., black parents tend to was projected more to the baby than to the have black children). And, second, there friend. This important result confirms the must be some understanding of the ways by mounting evidence that preschool children which children may come to resemble their are not appearance bound (Flavell, Flavell, parents that entails a uniquely biological (as & Green, 1983; Wellman & Gelman, 1988) opposed to a psychological or mechanical) and establishes the Resemblance to Parents chain of causation. To be credited with a bio- component of an understanding of biological logical concept of inheritance, children need inheritance.