Psychology Seminar Series 2013 - Ruth Laidler
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14th February 2013: Young children’s naïve biological knowledge Ruth Laidler (University of Salford) Event Information here: http://hub.salford.ac.uk/salfordpsych/news-and-events/seminar-series/
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- 1. Children’s naïve biology Ruth Laidler MRes.
- 2. What we’ll be covering… What we’ll be covering… This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • What types of theories children may have about the world. • What a naïve theory is. • What naïve theory of biology is. • An empirical study looking at how knowledge may differ across sub-domains in naïve biology. • An empirical study on how knowledge may shift from abstract to concrete ideas or vice versa. • Potential future directions for the project.
- 3. Naïve theories Naïve theories •Sets of knowledge systems about important aspects of the world (Carey, 1985). • Include coherent pieces of knowledge involving causal principles or devices. •Help us to make interpretations of observed events •Help us to make novel predictions (Inagaki & Hatano, 2002) •Guide learning for new pieces of information
- 4. Naïve theories Naïve theories This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a Naïve theory is different to scientific theory: picture slide. •No rigorous testing •Require no special knowledge or formal schooling •Data interpreted in a qualitatively different manner to scientists Gelman & Noles (2011)
- 5. What types of naïve theories do What types of naïve theories do children have? children have? • The theory-theory view of cognitive development. (Carey, 1985).
- 6. Naïve theory of biology Naïve theory of biology • Naïve biology is: a cognitive product of children’s interactions with a part of the world they engage with spontaneously (Inagaki & Hatano, 2004) Piaget (1939) Carey (1985) Schult & Wellman (1997)
- 7. Why study children’s understanding of biology? Why study children’s understanding of biology?
- 8. Animate inanimate distinction Animate inanimate distinction Massey & Gelman (1988)
- 9. Vital power Vital power This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. Inagaki & Hatano (2004)
- 10. Contagion/contamination This is an example of a pictureContagion/contamination slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. Piko & Bak, (2006)
- 11. Kinship Kinship This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. Hirschfield (1995)
- 12. Naïve theory of biology Naïve theory of biology To some degree in infancy, Hermann, Waxman & Medin (2011) Between ages 3-4 years Gottfried & Gelman (2010) Between ages 4-7 years Solomon, Johnson, Zaitchik & Carey (1996) After age 7 years Solomon, Johnson, Zaitchik & Carey (1996)
- 13. How limited is their knowledge? How limited is their knowledge? This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Hypothetical constructs like energy may act as causal placeholders until a more complete theory is formulated (Gopnik and Wellman, 1994) • Much of this therefore depends on the chosen methodology • To demonstrate knowledge in younger children the most appropriate methodology needs to be chosen.
- 14. Limits to their knowledge depends on methodology Limits to their knowledge depends on methodology This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a • picture slide. Feature projection task (Carey, 1985) – project a novel feature to an entity: Adults and children over 7 years of age can project the novel property. • The same task with a yes or no format (Gelman, 2003) 3 year olds can project the novel property to the entity • Deference method (Erickson, Keil & Lockhart, 2010) – cluster properties together e.g. biological versus psychological • Open ended questioning (Taralowski, 2006) Limited results with preschoolers aged 3-4 years, but an explanation advantage for older children over 7 years.
- 15. Study 1 Research Questions Study 1 Research Questions This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Can preschool children aged 2-4 years systematically respond to forced choice questions across the four sub-domains of naïve biology? • Does ability in the sub-domains emerge simultaneously or are the sub- domains independent of one another? • Is emergence of the sub-domains resultant from increasing age or does language ability impact this substantially?
- 16. Study 1 Method Study 1 Method Piloting: •20 children from a private nursery provision •Change of biology assessment presentation to e-prime forced choice task rather than paper based card sort to reduce task time. Materials and procedures: •1 visit to each child in the nursery provision •30 minutes in total •BPVS 3 administered •Naïve biology assessment administered 4 sub-domains 4 trials for each
- 17. Study 1 Method Study 1 Method Naïve biology measure:
- 18. Study 1 Participants Study 1 Participants • 60 Children aged 24-48 months recruited • Recruited from 4 nursery provisions (sure-start & private) in the North West Characteristic n % of Mean Age participants (SD) Provision Sure Start 29 49.4 Private nursery 31 51.6 Gender Male 33 55.0 37.35 (7.62) Female 27 45.0 38.74 (6.32)
- 19. Study 1 Results Study 1 Results Table of means and standard deviations for scores on the measure of naïve biological knowledge: of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide.
- 20. Study 1 Conclusions Study 1 Conclusions This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is anchildren aged 2-4 years are able to systematically respond to • Preschool example of a picture slide. the forced choice format of the tasks • On first glance it appears that the data also support the presence of biological knowledge • But the data demonstrates an above chance performance for only two of the four sub-domains • Above chance performance is evident for the animate inanimate sub- domain and the vital power sub-domain only • The results also indicate that development of scientific knowledge development may be dependent on receptive language abilities
- 21. Theory enrichment versus conceptual change Theory enrichment versus conceptual change • One key issue in naïve theories is regarding what changes the theory undergoes. • This is a question of whether children have a generally appropriate framework that persists from early on, or whether they have one that must undergo considerable conceptual restructuring over time (Morris, Taplin & Gelman, 2000). • The is the enrichment account versus the conceptual change account. • Study 2 doesn’t really delve into this, so study 2 is designed to begin broaching this question…
- 22. And so a new direction… Study 2 And so a new direction… Study 2 • So still to answer was how much do children know about each of the sub-domains? • They can answer some forced choice correctly but does this demonstrate a casual knowledge? • Study 2 looks at the extent to which children may have concrete or abstract knowledge. • Do children have a broad framework that serves to answer forced choice questions correctly without a knowledge of the concrete entities involved? • Or do the concrete entities need to be known before reasoning can be made at an abstract level?
- 23. Study 2 Study 2
- 24. Concrete to Abstract or abstract to concrete? Concrete to Abstract or abstract to concrete? This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Historically researchers thought concrete facts needed to be learnt first. • This reflected a belief that children relied on simple interactions between physical entities. • However more recent research suggests that children are sensitive to more abstract information first. • E.g. Gelman (2003) - children to be more sensitive to categories of kind than to perceptual details. • E.g. Mandler and McDonough (1993) - children can make global level categories (animal, vehicle) before they can make differentiations of levels (fish, cat, dog).
- 25. Simons & Keil (1995) Simons & Keil (1995) This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide.
- 26. Gottfried & Gelman (2005) Gottfried & Gelman (2005) This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide.
- 27. How the empirical study will expand from How the empirical study will expand from This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to goGottfried& Gelman (2005) Gottfried & Gelman (2005) here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Compare changes between abstract and concrete across four sub- domains of naïve biology: animate inanimate distinction, vital power, contagion contamination and kinship • To explore two sub-domains that have not previously been explored in terms of abstract and concrete concepts: contagion contamination and kinship
- 28. Study 2 Research questions Study 2 Research questions This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Is there a developmental shift from abstract to concrete thinking across the sub-domains of naïve biology between four years of age and eight years of age? • Is this shift apparent across all four of the sub-domains being explored in the current study? • Does concrete thought in one sub-domain predict concrete thought in another sub-domain and the same for abstract thought?
- 29. Study 2 Methods Study 2 Methods This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods • 4 sub-domains, 4 trials for each of these. • Picture card choosing task with three levels of abstraction depicted in for each trial. • Open ended questioning following each picture card choosing task.
- 30. Study 2 Hypotheses and potential outcomes Study 2 Hypotheses and potential outcomes This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • Younger children will have more abstract knowledge. • Older children will have more concrete facts. • Older children will use these concrete facts to make explanations to the open ended questioning more complex and longer. • Alternatively if the historical perspective is true then it would be expected that younger children will possess more concrete facts where as older children may have a more abstract understanding.
- 31. What might the findings mean for theory enrichment What might the findings mean for theory enrichment This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement toversusconceptual change? versus conceptual change? go here. This is an example of a picture slide. • The presence of a shift indicates that conceptual change is most likely occurring. • If there was an increase in knowledge but neither a shift from abstract to concrete or vice versa then this would be more likely enrichment. • As conceptual change is a slow process and is not an instant change therefore it is expected that changes would only be evident between 4 year old and 8 year olds rather than in age groups.
- 32. Future directions Future directions This is an example of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a • Data collection for study 2 picture slide. • If knowledge if more concrete knowledge forms an abstract theory does teaching about concrete facts allow children to form abstract categories more easily? • Does providing children with an abstract category allow them to generate more concrete facts? • Ending with an intervention to improve science learning in younger children. E.g. in other domains it has been demonstrated that analogies can aid conceptual change to a higher order level of reasoning (Venville & Treagust, 1996).
- 33. Thank you for listening! Thank you for listening! Any questions? Any questions?
- 34. References References Carey, S. (1985). Conceptual change in early childhood. Cambridge, MA: Bradford. Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., Whetton, C., & Burley, J.(1999). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Windsor: NFER-Nelson. Erickson, J.E., Keil, F.C. & Lockhart, K.L. (2010). Sensing the coherence of biology in contrast to psychology: Young children’s use of causal relations to distinguish two foundational domains. Child Development, 81(1), 390-409. Gelman, S.A. & Noles, N.S. (2011). Domains and naive theories. Cognitive Science, 2, 490-503 Gottfried, G.M. & Gelman, S.A. (2005). Developing domain-specific causal-explanatory frameworks: The role of insides and immanance. Cognitive Development, 20, 137-158. Kampf, G., Reichel, M., Feil, Y., Eggerstedt, S. & Kaulfers P.M. (2008). Influence of rub-in technique on required application time and hand coverage in hygienic hand disinfection. BMC infectious diseases, 8, 149- 160. Hirschfeld, L. A. (1995). Do children have a theory of race? Cognition, 54(2), 209–252. Inagaki K. & Hatano, G. (2006). Young children’s conception of the biological world. Current directions in psychological science, 15, 177-181. Inagaki, K. & Hatano, G. (2002). Young children’s naïve thinking about the biological world. Psychology Press.
- 35. References References Massey, C. M., & Gelman, R. (1988). Preschooler’s ability to decide whether a photographed unfamiliar object can move itself. Developmental psychology 24(3), 307-317. Siegal, M., Fadda, R. & Overton, P.G. (2011). Contamination Sensitivity and the development of disease avoidant behaviour. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society of Biology, Simons, D. J., & Keil, F. C. (1995). An abstract to concrete shift in the development of biological thought: the insides story. Cognition, 56(2), 129–163. Solomon, G. E. A., Johnson, S. C., Zaitchik, D., & Carey, S. (1996). Like Father, Like Son: Young Children’s Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents. Child Development, 67(1), 151–171. Tarlowski, A. (2006). If it’s an animal it has axons: Experience and culture in preschool children's reasoning about animates. Cognitive Development, 21(3), 249–265.
Notas del editor
- Inagaki and Hatano (2004) and Gelman (1979) have argued that young children possess bodies of knowledge about specific aspects of the world, put alternately young children are believed to possess only a select number of knowledge domains presumably those that are critical for survival of the human species . Erickson, Keil and Lockhart (2010) report that pre-schoolers aged 3-5 years have a clear sense of there being fundamentally different things in the world in that when asked to cluster triads of biological and psychological processes separately it was demonstrated that they can differentiate biological processes from psychological ones and understand that these require different causal mechanisms. This therefore demonstrates a presence of naive biological knowledge being distinct from other frameworks. According to research this naive theory allows the child to make predications and explanations about a domain in a coherent way guided by principle by relying on the causal understanding
- Gelman and Noles (2011) describe these theories as ’ common sense ’ theories, however the theories young children possess are also described as naïve theory as they are somewhat similar to a scientific theory, however they do not have any deep causal explanatory principles. The theories include a set of coherent pieces of knowledge which are reasoned about using causal principles. Naïve common sense theories are similar to the more global general framework than the more specific theories. Gelman and Noles (2011) report that common sense theory is rarely rigorously tested, as lay people and young children often engage in advanced hypothesis testing, instead engaging in much more general processes relating to a domain. Thus children consider and evaluate data in a different way to the scientific method (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1997). Perhaps most apparently scientific theory is generated by scientific enquiry and hypothesis testing by the adult scientist, where as naïve common sense theory requires no specialised knowledge and is constructed in early childhood.
- The theory theory view in the context of developmental research relates to how children's concepts are structured, acquired and deployed. Concepts refer to mental representations that are implicated in out higher order thought processes. The view states that these concepts are then based within and around a theory, and in order to learn a concept you need to have a theory. Carey proposes that children possess around a dozen of these so called theory theories. These include: Physics, Psychology, History, Economics, mechanics and of course biology. These theories don’t all emerge at the same time and develop along the same trajectory however, for example it is demonstrated in developmental data that naïve physics is developed before naïve psychology and naïve biology develops out of naïve psychology. Different domains have also received varying levels of research focus, naïve biology until recently was relatively under researched, however there is currently a ever growing body of knowledge for this domain. The current seminar presentation will therefore focus on this domain.
- Despite considerable disagreement about children ’ s concepts of living things it is widely accepted that children can discriminate animals from non-living entities. Behl-Chadah, Eimas and Quinn show that 3 month old infants can form taxonomic like categories, with categorical representations for items such as beds, chairs couches and tables, where animals are clearly discriminated. Most would however refute that these infants understand little about these categories in the lexical sense that older children and adults would (Quinn and Eimas, 1996; Rakison, 2000). Thus what occurs is a period of change where the knowledge about these categorical differences becomes more refined (Gelman & Opfer, 2004). The ability to understand the properties of these different categories over time develops over time and emerges later, the exact age to which this emerges remains under question, with researchers presenting several findings differing based on the paradigm being implemented. Demonstrated in the early research by Carey (1985) children as young as 3 or 4 years can attribute several animalistic properties to other animals but not to non-living artefacts such as dolls and stuffed animals, furthermore they can project newly learned bodily organs onto other animates but do not do so for inanimate artefacts. Gelman et al. (1983) support this finding and go further by explaining that preschool children have organised knowledge about animates and inanimate objects and can use this to classify a wide variety of animate and inanimate objects.
- Inagaki and Hatano conceptualise vital power as an unspecified substance, or information for preserving, maintaining and enhancing life. Vital energy is taken to be an example of an imminent cause, one that is somehow generated by and therefore ementates from the living thing itself (Michotte, 1963) Research in vital power was initaiated by Inagaki and Hatano, the research agenda was to investigate how children develop a framework based on the concept of vital power, which guides children in their reasoning about naïve biology. In vitalistic causality a target phenomenon can either be attributable to internal workings by an organ that has ‘ agency ’ for the transfer of power or can simply be the notion of a life force of energy (Gottfried and Gelman, 2005). A key piece of evidence for the existence of vital power is that preschool children expect animals to grow and are aware that this is caused by internal parts (Gelman and Kremer, 1991).
- There has for some time been an interest in how children understand the process of illness (Myant and Williams, 2005). In the process of understanding how children reason about illness an area of research focus is how the illness occurs; the process of contagion and contamination. The terms contagion and contamination have developed many meanings however for the purpose of the current thesis, the terms refer to the broad model that contact with an object may produce illness (Kalish, 1999). Kalish (1999) suggests that contamination refers to that a normally innocuous object can become negatively affected with contact from a substance; contagion refers to the transfer of contamination from one object to another. In this model the focus is limited to the effects of infection and illness rather than the sociological or psychological outcomes such as disgust (Rozin, 1990), thus infection is seen as a series of biological causal relationships.
- Children ’ s concepts of inheritance and kinship has received considerable research, in particular extensive research has been conducted on children ’ s understanding on how parents pass characteristics to their offspring and what the biological mechanism is for this process. Carey (1985) outlined that children cannot distinguish between social transition and biological inheritance, however this has since received considerable challenge. An alternative view to Carey (1985) is that a more continuously present theory of kinship is present and this allows children to use scientifically principled thinking when making judgements on the kind membership of plants and animals (Keil, 1986). Springer and Keil (1989) were some of the first researchers to systematically test which of the above accounts are true of the sub-domain of inheritance. In their series of studies the researchers presented pictures of a parent and an offspring and explained two abnormal features of the parent to the child being tested, the child was then asked whether the baby would be born with the normal features or the abnormal feature that that parent possessed; each item abnormality represented three pairs of interest inborn vs. acquired features, functional vs. non functional, and internal vs. external. The research demonstrates a strong preference for the heritability of features that have functional rather than non-functional properties;
- . The data from study 1 suggest that preschool children aged 2-4 years are able to systematically respond to the forced choice format of the tasks, this is demonstrated by an above chance performance on the control task for all participants. On first glance it appears that the data also support the presence of biological knowledge, however closer inspection of the data demonstrates an above chance performance for only two of the four sub-domains of biology assessed in the study. Age is does not have
- Why bother studying this, well its because this should be seen as distinct from other areas of cognitive shifts, for example it needs to be considered separately to the shift from perceptual to category decisions. An abstract to concrete transition does not preclude a more general shift from perceptual to conceptual representations across domains (or even within the domain of biological thought). Perceptual knowledge can be both concrete (i.e., focusing on low-level stimulus characteristics such as edges or perceptual primitives) and abstract (i.e., focusing on higher-order perceptual invariants or relationships). Conceptual knowledge can also be both concrete (e.g., a thought of a particular number) and abstract (e.g., a thought of an arithmetic principle). These two contrasts are often confounded in developmental discussions.
- Historically, there has been a tendency to consider development in mechanistic explanations as having a concrete to abstract shift, where children ’ s earliest explanatory models rely on simple interactions between physical entities. This view posits that if children lack knowledge of the concrete physical entities they will be unable to form explanations on higher order abstract concepts. For example in biology this view would propose that only children who have the concept of animal ’ s insides would be able to provide mechanistic explanations of why we eat.4 At a minimum, the abstract to concrete shift suggests that lower, concrete layers should not be fully articulated prior to the formation of abstract layers. In addition, the abstract layers should guide the elaboration of the concrete layers
- Simons and Keil conducted a series of five studies aimed at demonstrating that the historical belief of a concrete to abstract shift is not correct and instead an abstract to concrete shift is true. In the five studies children’s expectations of the insides of animals plants and machines were explored. The study utilized materials such as these shown on the slide where the child slides acetate with potential insides printed on over the image to indicate which they believed belonged inside. Children of all ages responded systematically, revealing abstract expectations for how the insides of animals and machines should differ, but the younger children though they can consistently pick the right sort of inside this isn’ t always correct, for example they understand that natural things are inside animals but simply divide their responses between rocks and organs . By 8 years, children seem to have more concrete expectations for the nature of insides, and are substantially more accurate than preschoolers.
- Extended from Simons and Keil (1995). Triangulated quantitative and qualitative methods Looked at both animate inanimate distinction and vital power across 2 studies Study 1: showed that domain-specific knowledge of internal parts develops between ages 3 and 4. Study 2: tested whether children knew what insides were for and observed if they made correct casual attributions for the insides results showed that children’s correct causal attributions increase with age, additionally causal attributions are more easily made for animals than for machines.
- Participants will be aged 4 and 8 years, these ages are separated as if a shift is observed this is likely to be due to conceptual change, as conceptual change is a slow ongoing process ages need to be dstinct in order to observe whether this has occurred or not. The age groups are consistent with that of Gottfried and Gelman. Each of the children will be tested individually in their school provision and will participate in one session around 30 minutes long.