4.3.1. Participants
Forty-four children participated in this study. Half of the children were preschool-aged (n = 22, 12 females; M age = 4.3; range: 3.3–4.11) and the other half were young school-aged (n = 22, 10 females; M age = 6.9; range: 6.1– 7.10). Two children were excluded for failing to complete the study. Half of the children in each age group received the block of normative properties first and the other half received the block of preference properties first. None of the children had participated in Study 1 or Study 1b.
4.3.2. Stimuli
The target stimuli were identical to those used in Study 1. The stimuli for both the norms and preferences were illustrations of the objects presented in the property descriptions (e.g., a floor for ‘‘likes to sit on the floor when eating’’). To control for property salience, all eight property stimuli could be predicated as either a norm or a preference (see Table 2). We included both positively and negatively valenced norms and preferences so that any differentiation children made between the two types of properties could not be due solely to a specific linguistic marker (e.g., ‘‘likes’’). Distractor items for properties were related to the object of the original property (e.g., pictures of a chair and couch appeared with floor).
4.3.3. Design and procedure
The design and procedure used for Study 2 were identical to Study 1, with a few notable exceptions. First, children learned normative properties and preference properties. Second, all property stimuli were randomized across both blocks, such that items were evenly represented as either norms or preferences across participants. Lastly, norms and preferences were either positively framed (e.g., ‘‘has to’’ or ‘‘likes to’’) or negatively framed (e.g., ‘‘is not allowed to’’ or ‘‘doesn’t like to’’). For example, the property item ‘‘walks to church’’ could be framed as ‘‘has to walk to church’’ or ‘‘is not allowed to walk to church’’ (norm) or as ‘‘likes to walk to church’’ or ‘‘doesn’t like to walk to church’’ (preference).
Children in each age group were randomly assigned to receive either the norm items first or the preference items first. Prior to the norm block, children were told that they would be seeing people from around the world and learning about things that people have to do and are not allowed to do. Prior to the preference block, children were again told that they would be seeing people from around the world, but learning about things that people like and do not like. The study took between 7 and 10 min to complete.
4.3.4. Results and discussion
A 2 (age: younger and older) 2 (property type: norm or preference) 2 (memory measure: target or property) mixed model analysis of variance was conducted on memory performance. There were significant main effects