Examined whether a rating-based procedure that has already been used by other investigators can be used for derivation of typicality ratings from children. In Exp 1, 96 kindergartners (aged 4.3-6 yrs) generated typicality for items belonging to each of 4 categories. The same Ss participated in Exp 2, in which they were asked to generate attributes for the members of 4 categories for the benefit of 2 people from another planet who had no knowledge about the particular items. In Exp 3, with 120 university students (aged 19-21.3 yrs), the correspondence between adults' family resemblance and typicality ratings on the same materials was tested. Results show that the procedure cannot be reliably used for this purpose; children rated category items in terms of personal preferences rather than as a function of how representative they considered the items to be of their superordinate category. On the basis of these findings, the authors propose an alternative method based on the family resemblance scores of the category members to derive typicality ratings from young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The children were asked to rate category items in order to help a person from another planet understand the meaning of the categories. The task required the children to rate the items on a 3-point scale in a playful context.