Conceptual Differences Between Children and Adults

In a talk in which I described an extended case study of the young child's acquisition of biological knowledge (Carey 1985), 1 claimed that the preschool child's concepts animal and baby differ from our adult concepts.' One source of evidence for this claim is that 4and 5-year-olds typically do not realize that all animals have babies, indicating a concept linirnal without reproduction as a core property, and a concept baby not tied to the young of each animal species. A few days after the talk I received a l etter from Barbara Dosher, reporting a conversation with her 4-yeirr-old son. Doubting my claim, she had asked him whether pigeons havei baby pigeons. He had replied, 'Sure, and dogs have baby dogs; cows have baby cows; cats have baby cats...'. At this point, her doubts confirme( she asked 'and what about worms; do worms have baby worms? He stopped dead in his tracks, thought for a long time, and finally replied, slppwly, 'No ...worms have short worms.' Being an articulate youngster, he jcould explain perfectly the difference between baby animals and short w~.Mns. The essence of his account: babies are small, helpless, versions of t igger creatures, who because of their behavioural limitations, require the rigger ones to take care of them. As he explained, baby birds cannot tlyk and need their parents to bring them worms; baby cats and dogs do not , have their eyes open, and cannot walk; and baby people, the archetypical baby creatures, are useless-they can't talk, walk, play, eat by themselve$, use