International Research Fellowship Program: Children's Understanding of Religious Rituals

Richert Rebekah A, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

0301330 Richert The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twenty-four month research fellowship by Dr. Rebekah A. Richert to work with Dr. Harvey Whitehouse at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Dr. Paul Harris at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The goal of this project is to gain experience in cross-disciplinary research methods studying the cognitive science of religion. The PI will explore the development of religious concepts, which can be divided into religious rituals and religious teachings. The first phase of the project will explore the meanings children create for different ritual types as defined by Dr. Whitehouse's theory on 'modes of religiosity.' The second phase will explore how children understand specific underlying features of rituals and how ritual participation interacts with verbal testimony to result in belief in religious entities. Dr. Harris has recently begun research on the role that verbal testimony plays in children's knowledge of religious entities and will provide training in experimental methods in the study of childhood cognition and religious beliefs. The hypothesis is that when children are not provided with an explicit interpretation of a ritual, they will rely on processes of analogical reasoning for interpretation of its meaning.