Developmental Changes in Reasoning about Biological Kinds

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project will develop new strategies to facilitate efficient scientific reasoning in young children. From early in development, children use categories to learn about the world around them. For example, upon learning something about an individual animal, children can generalize this information to the category as a whole and use it to guide behavior. In this way, if a child learns that a particular spider will bite, the child might infer that all spiders bite, and use that information to avoid spiders in the future. A critical challenge of this type of reasoning is determining whether a limited sample of evidence--for example, a specific spider observed on a particular day--provides information likely to be true of other category members as well. Young children often evaluate samples of evidence much less efficiently than older children or adults, which can impede their biological, social, and scientific reasoning. This project will enhance basic understanding of how and why inductive learning changes across childhood. Through a series of experiments, it will reveal the cognitive and developmental mechanisms that underlie the age-related changes in children's reasoning strategies that have been documented in previous studies. This project will then use this knowledge to devise and test new strategies for facilitating efficient reasoning in children. By developing new educational strategies, partnering with a major informal educational institution, and providing training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, this project maximizes opportunities for this research to influence educational practices and benefit educators, children, and future researchers. The present studies test the hypothesis that younger children seek out samples of evidence that they think best exemplify what members of a category should be like, whereas older children and adults seek out samples that cover the broad variation that exists within categories. For example, young children might think that birds should be relatively small and fly, so when they are seeking information about birds in general, they might choose to consider primarily birds with these traits, such as robins and bluebirds. In contrast, older children might seek out more diverse samples, containing birds such as robins and penguins. To test this hypothesis experimentally, children will be presented with samples of animals and asked to choose which are most informative for learning about the category as a whole. To chart the trajectory of developmental change in children's strategies, the first set of studies will examine whether 5- to 10-year-olds select samples that maximize values on key properties (e.g., choosing to examine the two fastest cheetahs in the world to learn about cheetahs) or diversity (e.g., choosing to examine some fast and some slow cheetahs). The second set of experiments will test two possible accounts of the developmental and cognitive mechanisms underlying observed age-related changes. The third set of studies will develop and test new strategies for facilitating efficient biological and scientific reasoning in educational contexts. Thus, in addition to addressing key theoretical questions in cognitive and developmental psychology, this project will also have immediate implications for education.