'Inhabitants of the earth': Reasoning about folkbiological concepts in Wichi children and adults.

TAVERNA, A. S.; WAXMAN, S. R.; MEDIN, D. L.

Young children's developing understanding of the Biological World

Routledge

Lugar: Abingdon; Año: 2018; p. 7 - 27

Across the world, people form folkbiological categories¬ to capture their commonsense organization of the natural world. Structured in accordance with universal principles, folkbiological categories are also shaped by experience. Three powerful shaping forces have been implicated: language, contact with the natural world, and culture. Here, we provide new evidence from the Wichí -- an understudied indigenous community who live in the Chaco rainforest and speak their heritage language. Forty-four Wichí (5- to 8-year-olds; 9- to 12-year-olds, and adults) participated in an induction task designed to identify how broadly they attribute an invisible biological property (e.g., an internal organ) from one individual (either a human, non-human animal, or plant) to other humans, non-human animals, plants, natural kinds, and artifacts. These results (1) clarify the content of the Wichi?s categories and the words they use to describe them, (2) showcase the power of covert (unnamed) categories, and (3) fortify the view that human-centered reasoning is not a universal starting point for reasoning about the natural world. This work underscores the complex interaction of language, culture, and experience in reasoning about the natural world. It also has essential implications for science education, not only among the Wichi, but in early education more broadly