Frank C. Keil - US grants

This research asks how concepts and larger causal beliefs systems, known as theories, interact in development. In doing so, it also asks how such patterns of development are relevant to general models of conceptual structure. One set of studies documents the development of coherent theoretical beliefs in the domain of biological thought. These studies show how different sets of properties may be most critical to the identity of biological kinds at different points in the preschool and elementary school years, and ask whether the youngest children use coherent biological theories to organize kinds or more general atheoretic metrics of similarity. These patterns of development are then contrasted to emerging knowledge of other biological phenomena such as inheritance, mechanisms of growth, disease, and physiology, with specific predictions about differing ways in which these areas of knowledge should be related. Other studies explore how relations between emerging theories and conceptual structure differ in natural kinds and artifacts. Among other tasks, children make inductions about properties, and explain malfunctions, anomalies and correlations. They are also presented with complex artifacts and engineered natural kinds so as to show how the distinctions between these two areas can become blurred. Finally, three studies test the more general model of conceptual and theoretical change as well as looking for certain biases in the causal beliefs underlying natural concepts in adults.

Biological thought is one of the best instances of the 'concepts in theories' theme that has recently become so central to the study of concept structure. But the new consensus on the embedding of concept structure in larger systems of causal-explanatory beliefs has not led to a comparable consensus on how that embedding comes about. A series of studies will explore the emergence of biological concepts in childhood with the general goal of better understanding how concepts and larger systems of explanation become intertwined. This goal leads to the following questions: do biological concepts initially emerge out of other conceptual domains such as a naive psychology or mechanics, do they emerge out of general associative processes with no initial influences of other theoretical biases, or do they appear along yet another path? Are there early influences on biological thought giving it a unique character that perseveres from preschool years on through childhood and into adulthood? How should developmental changes in biological concepts be described when invariant principles might also be present? These issues will be examined through a series of studies on a wide range of biological phenomena including: disease, inheritance, physiology and kindhood. Contrasts are drawn to superficially similar phenomena from the domains of social regularities and physical mechanical laws. It is expected that: 1. young children will see common properties and mechanisms among both animals and plants, suggesting an awareness of living things based neither on absorption into other domains, nor on pre- theoretical similarity relations, nor on animacy; 2. a small set of common principles will reappear in domain after domain, suggesting a unified conceptual approach to living things; 3. these distinctions serve as principles that give unity and coherence to conceptual change in biology; and 4. more general principles will be found concerning how concepts emerge within larger sets of causal/explanatory beliefs. Research of this sort relates to health in two ways. First, by providing insight into basic models of cognitive development, it helps us better understand boundary conditions on the normal course of mental development. Second, since biological thought is the object of study, insights gained will be relevant to issues concerning how both experts and the general public understand bio-medical phenomena.

DESCRIPTION: Concept acquisition, structure and use intimately depend on the larger explanatory systems in which concepts are embedded; yet, there has been little work exploring how such systems of explanation develop and come to influence concepts. Six sets of studies will explore how intuitive explanations and understandings emerge in development and how they are related to notions of cause, mechanism and agency. These issues are then linked to broader questions of what concepts are and how they develop. One set of studies explores how a key aspect of explanatory belief works far above the level of knowledge of specific mechanisms and instead involves knowing what sorts of properties are causally potent in a domain and how they are likely to interact. These patterns vary dramatically across large scale domains of phenomena and a partial understanding of these patterns emerges very early in development and guides learning of more detailed beliefs in domains. A second set of studies show children know that explanations and mechanisms are related even when they know few, if any, details of those explanations and mechanisms. They accomplish this by picking up on abstract relational patterns shared by natural phenomena that might appear on the surface to be quite different. A third set of studies explores how children develop preferences for some novel explanations over others even when there is little or no specific knowledge of the phenomena under explanation. A fourth set of studies examines how emerging knowledge of concrete mechanisms acts a bridge between frequency based information and abstract explanatory principles and how it can distort judgments as well as aid them. A fifth set of studies explores constraints on notions of agency and how limitations on those senses strongly guides explanatory constructs. Finally, a set of studies asks about information that children might use to infer the reliabilities of explanations and how this understanding is related to an emerging appreciation of the necessary division of cognitive labor for detailed explanatory knowledge.

This award provides support for an REU Site in Cognitive Development at Yale University. The goal is to provide undergraduates with an interest in developmental psychology from a cognitive science perspective to gain mentored research experience over the summer. The intellectual focus of the research will be on how children and adults grasp the causal structure o the world around them. Students will be involved in experimental design, data collection, data analysis, and presentation of results of various studies. Weekly laboratory meetings as well as several forms of training and small group meetings form an instructional component to the internship. Six to eight students, recruited nationally, will be involved in the 12-week program.

This award contributes to the Foundation's continuing efforts to attract talented students into careers in science through active undergraduate research experiences.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal examines how children and adults develop intuitive understandings of the world around them given clear evidence of the incompleteness of their knowledge. Much of the proposal is concerned with how children and adults track causal structures and use them to make inferences about categories. One set of studies examines links between children's intuitive notions about the world and their understanding of how knowledge is clustered in the minds of others. They will show that quite young children use their ideas of how the world sorts itself into patterns of regularities to make inferences about how one piece of knowledge might entail another, or the division of cognitive labor around them. This way of clustering knowledge is then compared to other ways, such as around a common goal and the developmental tension between the two is explored. A second set of studies examines how children and adults evaluate the quality of their own knowledge and that of others, revealing a powerful "illusion of explanatory depth" in which people think they know how their world works in far great detail than they actually do. The studies further show how this illusion is much stronger for explanatory forms of knowledge than forms such as knowledge of procedures or narratives and they explore how the specificity of this illusion emerges in development. Other studies in this set look at other ways children evaluate explanations for quality while grasping only few details of the explanation. Finally, a set of studies explores various ways in which children are sensitive to causal patterns that might given them a skeletal or framework kind of knowledge within which more precise notions of mechanism can further develop. [unreadable] [unreadable]

This project, led by a team of researchers from Yale University, will focus on the role of causal mechanistic explanations in children's and adults' learning of STEM content and will examine the relations to engagement with science education. Learning the specific mechanistic details of natural phenomena and devices is often envisioned as an ideal goal of STEM learning, yet such information is typically forgotten soon after instruction by children, as well as by adults. The researchers will pursue the hypothesis that such mechanisms should still be taught because, after the specific details have been forgotten, what remains promotes enduring representations and facilitates higher order learning. This alternative view emphasizes learning that much more closely mirrors how informal science (and often formal science as well) actually works. This project will build on recent cognitive science discoveries about the kinds of knowledge that are most robustly represented both in folk science and in formal science. Four sets of experiments will explore developmental changes in preferences for mechanistic explanations, what is retained from exposure, the effects of different learning goals on the use of mechanistic information in learning STEM content, and the development of abilities to infer internal mechanistic structures. If the hypothesis is supported, the results will suggest that exposure to causal mechanistic information is essential to early science education and that such content should not be omitted even though its details are forgotten. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research program, which supports fundamental research that advances the research literature on STEM learning, and has implications for education in both formal and informal settings.

This project will involve four sets of randomized controlled experiments, primarily with children at grades K, 2, and 4. Study Set 1 will explore the cognitive basis and development of children's preference for explanations that involve a causal mechanism. The researchers will use a choice paradigm that contrasts mechanistic explanations with other forms of information. Children will be asked which explanation they would like to learn more about for a given object. Strong preferences for mechanistic information are predicted at all ages, but with developmental differences relating to overall complexity, the domains queried, and kinds of mechanism involved. Study Set 2 will present children with mechanistic explanations for devices and biological entities. Children will then be assessed for retention of mechanistic details, functional properties, non-mechanistic details, judged complexity, broad causal patterns such as causal centrality and potency, and which of two experts to consult to learn more about the entity. These children will be compared to control children who will also learn about the same internal parts but with no causal or functional language that reveals mechanism. Rapid decay of detailed mechanistic information is expected in both groups, but the mechanism group should show more enduring memories for information relating to complexity, centrality, and expertise domains. Study Set 3 will focus on goal framing. The researchers will first look at children's and adults' intuitions about what is retained after exposure to causal mechanistic explanations, expecting a strong explicit bias favoring retention of vivid details and a neglect of what actually endures and is most often used. Later studies will ask how different learning goals interact with mechanism instruction. Greater enjoyment, engagement, feelings of accomplishment and retention of information are predicted with learning goals stressing more cognitively feasible and useful outcomes. Study Set 4 will focus on complexity intuitions. The investigators will look at how internal complexity is inferred for devices and animals based on behavioral diversity. They will also explore how mechanistic complexity is instantiated in different domains.