Children''s Awareness of the Biological Implications of Kinship

Preschoolers' thinking about kinship was explored by means of a simple induction task. A target animal was described as possessing a property, and children were asked whether each of 2 other animals shares the property or not. When no information about kinship was given, children in Experiment 1 based their inductions of biological properties on physical similarity. However, when kinship relations were specified, children judged that dissimilar-looking kin share more biological properties than similar-looking but unrelated members of the same species. In Experiment 2, describing the similar animals as socially related did not change the basic pattern of inductions obtained in the first experiment. Moreover, subjects in Experiment 3 did not induce more acquired physical and psychological properties among families than among unrelated animals. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 illustrate one case where young children favor a nonperceptible relation (kinship) over a perceptible one (similarity) as a basis for judgment. The overall pattern of data suggest that young children distinguish to some extent between the biological and social domains.     

Like Father, Like Son: Young Children's Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents

4 studies investigated the broad claim that preschoolers understand biological inheritance. In Study 1, 4–7-year-old children were told a story in which a boy was born to one man and adopted by another. The biological father was described as having one set of features (e.g., green eyes) and the adoptive father as having another (e.g., brown eyes). Subjects were asked which man the boy would resemble when he grew up. Preschoolers showed little understanding that selective chains of processes mediate resemblance to parents. It was not until age 7 that children substantially associated the boy with his biological father on physical features and his adoptive father on beliefs. That is, it was not until age 7 that children demonstrated that they understood birth as part of a process selectively mediating the acquisition of physical traits and learning or nurturance as mediating the acquisition of beliefs. In Study 2, subjects were asked whether, as a boy grew up, various of his features could change. Children generally shared our adult intuitions, indicating that their failure in Study 1 was not due to their having a different sense of what features can change. Studies 3 and 4 replicated Study 1, with stories involving mothers instead of fathers and with lessened task demands. Taken together, the results of the 4 studies refute the claim that preschoolers understand biological inheritance. The findings are discussed in terms of whether children understand biology as an autonomous cognitive domain.     

On the development of biologically specific beliefs: the case of inheritance

5 experiments investigated children's intuitions about genetic transmission of features. After parent animals possessing an abnormal feature were described, children were asked whether their baby would be born with that feature in abnormal or normal form. Features were either internal or external, inborn or acquired after birth, and had functional or nonfunctional consequences for the parents. Among preschoolers, features with functional consequences were considered inherited much more frequently than any other type, but only when the functional consequences were biological rather than social or psychological. Older children demonstrated more awareness of the inheritance of inborn traits. Overall, the results suggest young children have principled, specifically biological notions of inheritance.     

Acquiring a Naive Theory of Kinship through Inference

The present study focused on how children acquire a naive theory of kinship. Young children appear to have theoretical beliefs about the biological meaning of kinship relations. It was argued here that these beliefs reflect inductive inferences from simple facts about prenatal growth (e.g, where babies grow). An informal model of the inferences linking facts to theory was proposed and tested. In Experiment 1, 4–7-year-olds who knew the basic facts of prenatal growth were most likely to also express the naive theory of kinship. Virtually none of the children who expressed the theory were unaware of the basic facts. In Experiment 2, teaching the facts to a sample of preschoolers led to some increase in their acceptance of the kinship theory. Overall, the results implicate a type of theory building that involves inferences from preexisting knowledge rather than structural change, use of analogy, or acquisition of new knowledge.     

On Wooden Pillows: Multiple Classification and Children''s Category-based Inductions

Previous research has indicated that preschoolers do not distinguish between properties that are generalizable within a given category and those that are not. 2 possible general constraints on children's cognition are proposed to account for these findings. 3 studies are reported that argue against the presence of such general constraints. We examine preschoolers' understanding of the properties associated with material (e.g., wood, cotton) and object (e.g., chair, pillow) categories. In Study 1, subjects consistently made inductions based on the material compositions of items when asked to predict texture and fragility. In Study 2, the same subjects judged that items that shared material would share an unfamiliar dispositional property (e.g., gets sodden in water), but items that shared object kind would share a novel functional property (e.g., used for accelerating). Study 3 tested a younger sample of 3-year-olds and found the same sensitivity to category type, albeit with larger individual differences. By age 3, children use different modes of categorization to generalize different kinds of phenomena. These results argue against general limitations on children's abilities to use categories to make inductions. Even when children lack specific theoretical knowledge, the ability to organize phenomena into domains allows children to recognize which categories are relevant in different situations. This understanding can provide a basis for the development of more specific theories.     

As Time Goes By: Children''s Early Understanding of Growth in Animals

Beliefs about naturally occurring transformations were examined in children aged 3 to 6 years in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 tested children's understanding that animals (but not artifacts) predictably get larger over time. Experiment 1a examined whether the results obtained in the first experiment could be attributed to an added memory component on the artifact task. Experiment 2 further examined beliefs about the aging of artifacts. In Experiment 3, color and shape (metamorphosis) changes of animals were investigated. At all ages, children appeared to understand that animals get larger and not smaller with age. While older children and adults allowed for rather dramatic changes in the size and shape of animals over the life span if the alternative involved decreasing in size with age, preschool children were less willing to accept these changes. Taken together, the results of these studies suggest that even young preschool children have 2 conceptual insights about natural transformations: that they are lawful and nonrandom, and that they are domain and mechanism specific. Further, children as young as age 3 are able to go beyond the perceptual appearance of animals in making judgments about transformations caused by growth. Implications for children's understanding of personal and species identity are discussed.     

Mechanism-based causal reasoning in young children

The hypothesis that children develop an understanding of causal mechanisms was tested across 3 experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 48), preschoolers had to choose as efficacious either a cause that had worked in the past, but was now disconnected from its effect, or a cause that had failed to work previously, but was now connected. Four-year-olds chose the now-connected cause more often than 3-year-olds. Experiment 2 (N = 16) showed 4-year-olds responded appropriately to an irrelevant modification in the same causal system. Experiment 3 (N = 24) demonstrated when the mechanism was batteries rather than connection, 3-year-olds could properly distinguish between relevant and irrelevant modifications. Together, these data suggest that understanding of specific causal mechanisms develops at different ages.     

Young Children’s Reasoning About Physical & Behavioural Family Resemblance: Is There a Place for a Precursor Model of Inheritance?

This paper aims at exploring (a) whether preschoolers recognize that offspring share physical traits with their parents due to birth and behavioural ones due to nurture, and (b) whether they seem ready to explain shared physical traits with a ‘pre-biological’ causal model that includes the contribution of both parents and a rudimentary notion of genes. This exploration is supposed to provide evidence for our next step, which is the development of an early years’ learning environment about inheritance. Conducting individual, semi-structured interviews with 90 preschoolers (age 4.5–5.5) of four public kindergartens in Patras, we attempted to trace their reasoning about (a) whether and why offspring share physical and behavioural traits with parents and (b) which mechanism could better explain the shared physical traits. The probes were a modified six-case version of Solomon et al. (Child Dev 67:151–171, 1996) ‘adoption task, as well as a three-case task based on Springer’s (Child Dev 66:547–558, 1995) ‘mechanism task’ and on Solomon and Johnson’s (Br J Dev Psychol 18(1):81–96, 2000) idea of genes as a ‘conceptual placeholder’. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the interviews showed overlapping reasoning about the origin of physical and behavioural family resemblance. Nevertheless, we did trace the ‘birth-driven’ argument for the attribution of the offspring’s physical traits to the biological parents, as well as a preference for the ‘pre-biological’ model that introduces a rudimentary idea of genes in order to explain shared physical traits between parents and offspring. The findings of the study and the educational implications are thoroughly discussed.     

Drawing insight from pictures: the development of concepts of false drawing and false belief in children with deafness,normal hearing,and autism

Theory-of-mind concepts in children with deafness, autism, and normal development (N = 154) were examined in three experiments using a set of standard inferential false-belief tasks and matched sets of tasks involving false drawings. Results of all three experiments replicated previously published findings by showing that primary school children with deafness or autism, aged 6 to 13 years, scored significantly lower than normal-developing 4-year-old preschoolers on standard misleading-container and unseen-change tests of false-belief understanding. Furthermore, deaf and autistic children generally scored higher on drawing-based tests than on corresponding standard tests and, on the most challenging of the false-drawing tests in Experiment 2, they significantly outperformed the normal-developing preschoolers by clearly understanding their own false intentions and another person's false beliefs about an actively misleading drawing. In Experiment 3, preschoolers outperformed older deaf and autistic children on standard tasks, but did less well on a task that required the drawing of a false belief. Methodological factors could not fully explain the findings, but early social and conversational experiences in the family were deemed likely contributors.     

Whitewashing Nature: Sanitized Depictions of Biology in Children’s Books and Parent–Child Conversation

The biological world includes many negatively valenced activities, like predation, parasitism, and disease. Do children’s books cover these activities? And how do parents discuss them with their children? In a content analysis of children’s nature books (Study 1), we found that negatively valenced concepts were rarely depicted across genres and reading levels. When parents encountered negative information in books (Studies 2–3), they did not omit it but rather elaborated on it, adding their own comments and questions, and their children (ages 3–11) were more likely to remember the negative information but less likely to generalize that information beyond the animal in the book. These findings suggest that early input relevant to biological competition may hamper children’s developing understanding of ecology and evolution.     

Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers

Being able to evaluate the accuracy of an informant is essential to communication. Three experiments explored preschoolers' (N=119) understanding that, in cases of conflict, information from reliable informants is preferable to information from unreliable informants. In Experiment 1, children were presented with previously accurate and inaccurate informants who presented conflicting names for novel objects. 4-year-olds-but not 3-year-olds-predicted whether an informant would be accurate in the future, sought, and endorsed information from the accurate over the inaccurate informant. In Experiment 2, both age groups displayed trust in knowledgeable over ignorant speakers. In Experiment 3, children extended selective trust when learning both verbal and nonverbal information. These experiments demonstrate that preschoolers have a key strategy for assessing the reliability of information.     

Daycare Book-a-thon: Preservice Teachers Enhancing the Reading Experience of Preschool Children

Daycare Book-a-thon is a project that targets at-risk preschoolers, providing them with books their parents can share with them at home. Preservice teachers in a children's literature class donate the books and prepare bookmarks, which highlight ways that parents can read and extend the books with their children. Through this activity, preservice teachers come to understand the diverse student population and learn ways they can help young children to prepare for schools.     

Introducing a Precursor Model of Inheritance to Young Children

This paper reports on a mixed-model case study of designing and implementing a constructivist teaching intervention about reproduction and physical family resemblance for young children. The objective of the study was to explore whether the ways that preschoolers reason about the resemblance between offspring and parents can be improved with a teaching intervention that introduces a rudimentary idea of genes through reproduction. The participants were 60 preschoolers (age 5–5.5 years) from public kindergartens of Patras. The qualitative analysis of their pre- and post semi-structured interviews showed a remarkable improvement in their reasoning, which was found to be statistically significant as well. After the three-part teaching intervention, children appeared to recognize the biological contribution of both parents to a child's creation. Moreover, most of them appeared able to attribute a child's species and body traits to the parental genes passed to the child through reproduction and not to the parents’ or child's intention.     

God's beliefs versus mother's: the development of nonhuman agent concepts

Little research exists on how children understand the actions of nonhuman agents. Researchers often assume that children overgeneralize and attribute human properties such as false beliefs to nonhuman agents. In this study, three experiments were conducted to test this assumption. The experiments used 24 children in New York (aged 2,11-6,11 years), 52 children in Michigan (aged 3,5-6,11 years), and a second group of 45 children in Michigan (3,4-8,5 years) from Christian backgrounds. In the first two experiments, children participated in false-belief tests in which they were asked about human and various nonhuman agents including animals and God. Experiment 3 consisted of a modified perspective-taking task, also including nonhuman agents. The results of the study suggest that children do not consistently use human agent concepts but instead can use different agent concepts for some nonhuman agents like God and special animals. Children are not bound to anthropomorphize, but they often do.     

Young children's attribution of action to beliefs and desires

When and how children understand beliefs and desires is central to whether they are ever childhood realists and when they evidence a theory of mind. Adults typically construe human action as resulting from an actor's beliefs and desires, a mentalistic interpretation that represents a common and fundamental form of psychological explanation. We investigated children's ability to do likewise. In Experiment 1, 60 subjects were asked to explain why story characters performed simple actions, such as looking under a piano for a kitten. Both preschoolers and adults gave predominantly psychological explanations, attributing the actions to the actor's beliefs and desires. Even 3-year-olds attributed actions to beliefs and false beliefs, demonstrating an understanding of belief not evident in previous research. In Experiment 2, 24 3-year-olds were tested further on their understanding of false belief. They were given both false belief prediction and explanation tasks. Children performed well on explanation taks, attributing an anomalous action to the actor's false belief, even when they failed to predict correctly what action would follow from a false belief. We concluded that 3-year-olds and adults share a fundamentally similar construal of human action in terms of beliefs and desires, even false beliefs.     

Young Children's Understanding of the Mind-Body Distinction

4 experiments investigated children's understanding of the mind-body distinction. Children of ages 4 and 5 recognized not only the differential modifiability of changeable versus unchangeable human properties and bodily versus mental properties, but also the independence of activities of bodily organs from a person's intention (Experiment 1). When presented 3 types of causal explanations (i.e., intentional, vitalistic, mechanical), 6-year-olds chose most often as most plausible for bodily functions vitalistic explanations (i.e., those ascribing the phenomena to a relevant bodily organ's initiative and effortful engagement in activity); 8-year-olds chose the vitalistic explanations second most often, following mechanical ones (Experiment 2). However, 6-year-olds, as well as 8-year-olds and adults, did not always choose vitalistic explanations over intentional explanations (Experiment 3); whereas they tended to prefer vitalistic explanations for biological phenomena, they predominantly accepted intentional ones for psychological phenomena (Experiment 3A). These results suggest that children as young as 6 years of age have acquired a form of biology as an autonomous domain which is separate from that of psychology.     

Korean preschoolers' advanced inhibitory control and its relation to other executive skills and mental state understanding

This study assessed executive function and mental state understanding in Korean preschoolers. In Experiment 1, forty 3.5- and 4-year-old Koreans showed ceiling performance on inhibition and switching measures, although their performance on working memory and false belief was comparable to that of Western children. Experiment 2 revealed a similar advantage in a sample of seventy-six 3- and 4-year-old Koreans compared with sixty-four age-matched British children. Korean children younger than 3.5 years of age showed ceiling effects on some inhibition measures despite more stringent protocols and the link between executive function and mental state understanding was not as strong as in the British sample. The results raise key questions about the nature and development of the executive system and its relation to social understanding.     

Young children's understanding of random phenomena

2 experiments on the development of the understanding of random phenomena are reported. Of interest was whether children understand the characteristic uncertainty in the physical nature of random phenomena as well as the unpredictability of outcomes. Children were asked, for both a random and a determined phenomenon, whether they knew what its next outcome would be and why. In Experiment 1, 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds correctly differentiated their responses to the question of outcome predictability; the 2 older groups also mentioned appropriate characteristics of the random mechanism in explaining why they did not know what its outcome would be. Although 3-year-olds did not differentiate the random and determined phenomena, neither did they treat both phenomena as predictable. This latter result is inconsistent with Piaget and Inhelder's characterization of an early stage of development. Experiment 2 was designed to control for the possibility that children in Experiment 1 learned how to respond on the basis of pretest experience with the 2 different phenomena. 5- and 7-year-olds performed at a comparable level to the same-aged children in Experiment 1. Results suggest an earlier understanding of random phenomena than previously has been reported and support results in the literature indicating an early understanding of causality.     

Parent question use during shared reading time: How does training affect question type and frequency?

This study was designed to examine whether participation in a shared reading workshop alters the frequency with which parents ask their children questions during book reading sessions, particularly questions designed to strengthen component reading skills that they may not have known about before training. Participants in the reading workshop series (N = 57) were taught strategies for asking questions about story content and word structure to build children's language and literacy skills. Findings suggest that parents may be somewhat familiar with traditional dialogic reading strategies focused on story content and utilize them without instruction, whereas parents may be less knowledgeable about sound or print‐focused skills and do not employ strategies focused on word structure until instructed to do so. It is also notable that parents do not use all story content prompts equally. This information can be used by school psychologists to refine the messages educators share with parents about how to best support their children's reading development.