4.1.3.1. Learning phase. In the learning phase, participants were presented with two blocks (e.g., morphological and historical) of four target-property pairs. The order of the two blocks as well as the order of the specific item pairs within each block was randomized across participants. Prior to the block of morphological items, children were told that they would be seeing people from around the world and learning about the ‘‘insides of people’s bodies.’’ Prior to the block of historical items, children were also told that they would be seeing people from around the world and learning about ‘‘things that happened to people.’’ At the beginning of each trial, the experimenter introduced the target according to its novel category name (e.g., ‘‘This is a Foru’’). Then, a color illustration representing the property appeared and was ascribed to the target (e.g., ‘‘She has plasma in her blood.’’). The target illustration then moved towards the property to focus children’s attention on the screen and to increase the amount of exposure children had to the stimuli.
4.1.3.2. Distraction phase. After the learning phase, children played a simple computer game that required them to click on pictures of puppets that appeared intermittently with pictures of the targets and distractors. Younger children saw pictures in two-second intervals and older children saw pictures in one-second intervals. Performance on this task was not recorded. The two-minute delay was instituted so that children had the opportunity to forget the stimuli.
4.1.3.3. Memory test. Following the distraction phase, children were asked to remember what they had learned about the different people in the learning phase. Memory trials appeared in the same order as in the learning phase. On each trial, children first indicated which individual they had seen, given choices of the target and two distractors, all from the same social group (see Fig. 1). After identifying the target, children then chose which property was associated with the target. For the morphological property items, children were asked which body part was associated with a specific characteristic (e.g., ‘‘did you learn that she has plasma in her blood, nails, or bones?’’). Children chose the correct body part from a choice of three illustrations (see Fig. 2). For the historical property items, children were asked which location or object was associated with a specific event (e.g., ‘‘did she hurt her jezo when she tripped over a stump, root, or rock?’’). Again, children chose the correct location or object from a choice of three illustrations. We used different illustrations to represent the correct property from those the children had seen in the learning phase. The positions in which the correct target and property appeared were counterbalanced across trials. Children were not given feedback about their performance on the memory task.