Traits as Dimensions or Categories? Developmental Change in the Understanding of Trait Terms

• Published in: Developmental psychology 2010-09, Vol.46 (5), p.1078-1088
• Main Authors: Gonzalez, Celia M, Zosuls, Kristina M, Ruble, Diane N
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adults; Age Differences; Age Factors; Analysis of Variance; Appearance; Appreciation; Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Character; Characters; Child; Child Behavior - physiology; Child development; Child Development - physiology; Child psychology; Child, Preschool; Childhood Development; Children; Children & youth; Classification (Cognitive Process); Comparative Analysis; Concept Formation - physiology; Cues; Developmental psychology; Evaluation Methods; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Human development; Humans; Inference; Inferences; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Personality; Personality Traits; Photic Stimulation - methods; Preschool Education; Preschool Students; Private Schools; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Research Methodology; Undergraduate Students; United States (Northeast); Young Adult; Young children
• ISSN: 0012-1649; 1939-0599
• DOI: 10.1037/a0020207

Recent research has suggested that young children have relatively well-developed trait concepts. However, this literature overlooks potential age-related differences in children's appreciation of the fundamentally dimensional nature of traits. In Study 1, we presented 4-, 5-, and 7-year-old children and adults with sets of characters and asked them to indicate the preferences of a target character who shared appearance attributes with one character (appearance match) and shared a common trait with the other character (trait match). Traits were presented in a way that emphasized either their categorical or their dimensional nature. When the dimensional nature of trait terms was emphasized, the youngest children made fewer trait-based inferences, and the use of traits increased with age. In Study 2, we gave 4-year-old children and adults the same task except that the extent to which appearance cues could serve as a meaningful basis of judgment was varied. Results were consistent with the findings of Study 1, although children were more likely to rely on dimensional presentations of traits in the absence of strong appearance cues.