Reasoning about artifacts at 24 months: The developing teleo-functional stance

From the age of 2.5, children use social information to rapidly form enduring function-based artifact categories. The present study asked whether even younger children likewise constrain their use of objects according to teleo-functional beliefs that artifacts are “for” particular purposes, or whether they use objects as means to any desired end. Twenty-four-month-old toddlers learned about two novel tools that were physically equivalent but...