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The present paper presents a review of the literature on the development of concept learning by children. We analyze the development of different general cognitive factors such as attention, memory, inhibition and flexibility, involved in the selection and evaluation of dimensions relevant to categorize stimuli. The role of relevance and of salience of dimensions is also addressed. We discuss the relation between children's cognitive characteristics and the way they treat stimuli.
The impact of category structure (defined by necessary and sufficient features, or by family resemblance) on the way concepts are represented (by stored exemplars or feature abstraction) and on the mode of processing stimuli (analytic vs. holistic) is examined. Finally, we address the role of naive theories and their influence on concept learning by children.
