We are able to think about, or construe, a given entity in more than one way. For example, a given entity may be thought of as a table, or as some wood. These distinct construals are linked to the linguistic distinction in English between count nouns and mass nouns. Thus we can talk of two tables, but not two woods, similarly we can say a little bit of wood, but not a little bit of table. This is because kinds of objects (e.g. tables) come in discrete amounts, whereas kinds of substances (e.g. wood) come in continuous amounts. The experiments in this proposal investigate what factors lead children and adults to construe solid entities as either objects, and thus quantify them discretely, or as substances, and thus quantify them continuously. Specifically, we will be investigating whether cues that suggest that the structure an entity possesses is non-arbitrary (couldn't have been just any other way) lead us to construe it as an object of some kind, whereas cues that suggest that the structure an entity possesses is arbitrary (could have been any other way) lead us to construe the entity as an amount of solid material instead. It is expected that in addition to providing important data on how conceptual representations are related to the linguistic distinction between count- and mass nouns, the experiments will shed light on the nature of conceptual representations during development, and how they are related to representations within other knowledge systems (e.g. systems for representing and reasoning about quantities).
