Abstract

The present study examined the issue of domain specificity in cognitive development. We investigated 3- to 11-year-old children's physical, psychological and biological knowledge to examine whether they were distinctive knowledge systems and have developed domain specifically with increasing age. To assess children's distinctive knowledge systems, we analyzed ontological distinctions and cross domain explanations. Results indicated that the physical and psychological domains were independent from at 3 years of age, but the biological domain was not until at 7 years of age. To assess domain specific developmental changes, we analyzed rank order correlations of between domain tasks and within domain tasks. Results indicated that the correlations of between domain tasks were not very high. This suggested that the levels of performances in each domain were not the same or homogeneous and supported the domain specificity hypothesis. However, the correlations of within domain tasks were also not very high. These were unexpected results and inconsistent with the domain specificity hypothesis. There were no systematic changes in the correlations of each age group. So we couldn't find any systematic developmental changes in the domain specificity. The findings of this study were discussed for further empirical testing of domain specificity hypothesis in cognitive development.