We examined whether inductive reaso

We examined whether inductive reasoning development is better characterized by accounts assuming an early category bias versus an early perceptual bias. We trained 264 children aged 3 to 9 years to categorize novel insects using a rule that directly pitted category membership against appearance. This was followed by an induc- tion task with perceptual distractors at different levels of featural similarity. An additional 52 children were given the same training followed by an induction task with alternative stimuli. Categoriza- tion performance was consistently high; however, we found a gradual transition from a perceptual bias in our youngest children to a category bias around 6 or 7 years of age. In addition, children of all ages were equally distracted by higher levels of featural sim- ilarity. The transition is unlikely to be due to an increased ability to inhibit perceptual distractors. Instead, we argue that the transition is driven by a fundamental change in children’s understanding of category membership.