Knowing or Not Knowing: Children’s Concept of ‘Having Life’

Knowledge development in children has long been investigated. Generally two main streams of thoughts have evolved. One approach suggests that knowledge is built up in a progressive manner based on some underlying principles which can be modified by experiences (Murphy & Medin, 1985). Alternatively, a pragmatic-shift approach argues that restructuring in concept structure is common in development (Kitcher, 1988). When certain amount of experience cannot be accommodated into the existing knowledge structure, restructuring is necessary. However, experimental support for the latter approach mostly focuses on the performance of children of different ages which makes it difficult to differentiate whether the performance difference is due to a progressive incremental of the knowledge or a restructured concept structure. The present study tried to provide an alternative method in examining the pragmatic-shift approach which illustrated that children at the same age could perform qualitatively different in mastering the concept of ‘having life’.