Children's evaluative categories and inductive inferences within the domain of food

Evaluative categories include items that share the same value-laden assessment. Given that these categories have not been examined extensively within the child concepts literature, the present research explored evaluative categorization and induction within the domain of food as a test case. Specifically, two studies examined the categories of healthy and junky foods in children aged 4 and 7 years. Study 1 showed that by aged 4 years, children appropriately apply the evaluative categories of healthy and junky foods to a variety of different foods. Study 2 showed that by age 4 years, children also selectively use the evaluative categories of healthy and junky foods for inductive inferences about the human body, but not for arbitrary or unrelated inferences. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of evaluative processing in young children's categorization and induction. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.