Children’s representation of inheritance as a function of perceptual and label cues

Inheritance representations were examined in a switch-at-birth task using animal stimuli from the same species. Participants (6- and 8-year-old children) had to generalize physical traits and beliefs from birth parents versus adoptive parents to offspring. Influences of perceptual and label cues were analyzed. Results revealed an increase with age in the ability to differentiate physical traits (related to birth origin) from beliefs (related to educational aspects). Participants’ responses depended on perceptual factors (at age 6 but not at age 8), but did not depend on the presence of labels. Complementary analyses performed on individual profiles revealed that ,even at age 8, few participants produced differentiated responses throughout the whole task. The question of how children understand the causal role of birth is discussed.