Lin and Murphy (1997) have studied how adults learn to
associate a new theory about an object with specific
perceptual features of the object. In the present experiment,
their paradigm was adapted for three- and four-year olds
who were compared with adults. The role of perceptual
similarity between the learning stimulus and transfer stimuli
was also assessed. Data show that children aged three were
able to understand the relationship between a new microtheory
and perceptual data (the stimuli). However, their
generalization to new objects was more constrained by
perceptual similarity between the learning object and
transfer stimuli than adultsÕ generalization was.