Children's Causal Explanations of Animate and Inanimate Motion

Adults frequently refer to nonobvious, internal, or immanent causal mechanisms when explaining certain kinds of movement— such as the movement of animals (e.g., a rabbit hops because of its brain and muscles) and the self-sustained movement of artifacts (e.g., a toy moves on its own because of batteries or gears). This series of studies examined whether and when preschool children are willing to attribute internal and immanent causes to motion. In 3 studies, preschool children and adults viewed animals and artifacts (wind-up toys and transparent objects) either moving independently or being transported by a person. Children explained animal and artifact events differently, even with the kind of movement controlled: They were more likely to attribute immanent cause to animals than to artifacts and more likely to attribute human cause to artifacts than animals. Internal causes were less frequently endorsed overall; however, when asked to describe the insides of artifacts, children who saw them moving alone more often described internal mechanisms (e.g., batteries, electricity) than children who did not see them moving alone. Altogether, the studies suggest that children as young as 3 or 4 years of age honor two principles: For animals more than for artifacts, movement is caused by an immanent source, and across domains, movements without an observable agent have an internal or immanent source.     

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.     

How Does Your Garden Grow? Early Conceptualization of Seeds and Their Place in the Plant Growth Cycle

Although an increasing body of research supports the view that preschoolers hold theory-like conceptions in the biological domain, most studies concerned have focused exclusively on early conceptions of animals and humans. As a complement to such research, the present studies examined 4-year-olds' conceptualization of seeds, a key stage of plant growth, itself a critical biological process. Study 1 examined judgments about seed origins and growth preconditions, in order to tap early understanding of causal mechanisms pertaining to plant growth. Studies 2 and 3 examined specific understandings of the relations that hold among the distinct stages of growth (seed, plant, flower, fruit). Overall, children demonstrated an impressive grasp of seeds and their place in the growth cycle. By age 41/2 years, children realized that natural causal mechanisms and not other sorts (e.g., human intervention) underlie growth, appreciated the unique relation of seeds to the plant domain, and demonstrated an emerging grasp of growth's cyclical nature. Together, these findings suggest that preschoolers may hold theory-like understandings of plants similar to those they hold of animals and humans.     

Children's Judgments of Flags and Flag-Burning

This study examined children's conceptions of flags as social conventions and understandings of the symbolic and psychological consequences associated with transgressions toward flags. Seventy-two children, at 6, 8, and 10 years, answered general questions about flags as social conventions and judged flag-burning scenarios in which intentions of agents and consequences for recipients were varied. Flag-burning acts were motivated by symbolic, accidental, or instrumental intentions and occurred in public or private. Children at all ages viewed flags as social conventions (i.e., alterable), and symbolic acts of flag-burning occurring in public locations were judged more negatively than private transgressions. Age differences were found in evaluations of instrumental violations and in justifications used to evaluate flag-burning incidents. Overall, findings suggest that despite age-related increases in understanding of flags as meaningful collective symbols, children at all ages considered transgressions to be important and to have moral consequences (i.e., psychological harm).     

Categories influence predictions about individual consistency

Predicting how people will behave in the future is a critical social-cognitive task. In four studies (N = 150, ages preschool to adult), young children (ages 4-5) used category information to guide their expectations about individual consistency. They predicted that psychological properties (preferences and fears) would remain consistent over time after hearing one example in which properties followed a category-linked distribution (e.g., children of different genders had different properties) but not when properties varied within a category (e.g., children of the same gender had different properties). The developmental course of these findings is examined. Results suggest the importance of considering how children's emerging theories of behavior and of social groups operate together to inform their expectations about the social world.     

Age of Entry to Kindergarten and Children's Academic Achievement and Socioemotional Development

Research Findings: Data on more than 900 children participating in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care were analyzed to examine the effect of age of entry to kindergarten on children's functioning in early elementary school. Children's academic achievement and socioemotional development were measured repeatedly from the age of 54 months through 3rd grade. With family background factors and experience in child care in the first 54 months of life controlled, hierarchical linear modeling (growth curve) analysis revealed that children who entered kindergarten at younger ages had higher (estimated) scores in kindergarten on the Woodcock—Johnson (W-J) Letter-Word Recognition subtest but received lower ratings from kindergarten teachers on Language and Literacy and Mathematical Thinking scales. Furthermore, children who entered kindergarten at older ages evinced greater increases over time on 4 W-J subtests (i.e., Letter-Word Recognition, Applied Problems, Memory for Sentences, Picture Vocabulary) and outperformed children who started kindergarten at younger ages on 2 W-J subtests in 3rd grade (i.e., Applied Problems, Picture Vocabulary). Age of entry proved unrelated to socioemotional functioning.

Practice: The fact that age-of-entry effects were small in magnitude and dwarfed by other aspects of children's family and child care experiences suggests that age at starting school should not be regarded as a major determinant of children's school achievement, but that it may merit consideration in context with other probably more important factors (e.g., child's behavior and abilities).     

Young Children's Comprehension of Pretend Episodes: The Integration of Successive Actions

In 3 experiments, children's comprehension of successive pretend actions was examined. In Experiment 1, children (25–38 months) watched 2 linked actions (e.g., a puppet poured pretend cereal or powder into a bowl, and then pretended to feed the contents of the bowl to a toy animal). Children realized that the pretend substance was incorporated into the second action. In Experiment 2, children (24–39 months) again watched 2 linked actions (e.g., a puppet poured pretend milk or powder into a container, and then pretended to tip the contents of the container over a toy animal). They realized that the animal would become "milky" or "powdery." In Experiment 3, children (25–36 months) drew similar conclusions regarding a substitute rather than an imaginary entity. The results are discussed with reference to children's causal understanding, their capacity for talking about objects and events in terms of their make-believe and real status, and the processes underlying pretense comprehension.     

Seeing Is Believing: Children's Explanations of Commonplace, Magical, and Extraordinary Transformations

Children's magical explanations and beliefs were investigated in 2 studies. In Study 1, we first asked 4- and 5-year-old children to judge the possibility of certain object transformations and to suggest mechanisms that might accomplish them. We then presented several commonplace transformations (e.g., cutting a string) and impossible events (magic tricks). Prior to viewing these transformations, children suggested predominantly physical mechanisms for the events and judged the magical ones to be impossible. After seeing the impossible events, many 4-year-olds explained them as "magic," whereas 5-year-olds explained them as "tricks." In Study 2, we replaced the magic tricks with "extraordinary" events brought about by physical or chemical reactions (e.g., heat causing paint on a toy car to change color). Prior to viewing the "extraordinary" transformations, children judged them to be impossible. After viewing these events, 4-year-olds gave more magical and fewer physical explanations than did 5-year-olds. Follow-up interviews revealed that most 4-year-olds viewed magic as possible under the control of an agent (magician) with special powers, whereas most 5-year-olds viewed magic as tricks that anyone can learn. In a third study, we surveyed parents to assess their perceptions and conceptions of children's beliefs in magic and fantasy figures. Parents perceived their children as believing in a number of magic and fantasy figures and reported encouraging such beliefs to some degree. Taken together, these findings suggest that many 4-year-olds view magic as a plausible mechanism, yet reserve magical explanations for certain real world events which violate their causal expectations.     

Young Children''s Understanding of the Role That Sensory Experiences Play in Knowledge Acquisition

3 studies investigated whether young children understand that the acquisition of certain types of knowledge depends on the modality of the sensory experience involved. 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were exposed to pairs of objects that either looked the same but felt different, or that felt the same but looked different. In Study 1, 36 children were asked to state, when one of these objects was hidden inside a toy tunnel, whether they would need to see the object or feel it in order to determine its identity. In Study 2, 48 children were asked to state which of 2 puppets knew that an object hidden inside a tunnel possessed a given visual or tactile property, when one puppet was looking at the object and the other was feeling it. In Study 3, 72 children were asked, in a scenario similar to Study 2, to state for each puppet whether he could tell, just by looking or by feeling, that the hidden object possessed a certain visual or tactile property. Children were also asked what was the best way to find out whether a given object possessed a certain visual or tactile property. Results of all 3 studies suggest that an appreciation of the different types of knowledge our senses can provide (i.e., modality-specific knowledge) develops between the ages of 3 and 5. The results are discussed in relation to young children's developing understanding of the role that informational access plays in knowledge acquisition.     

The Development of Children's Beliefs about Social and Biological Aspects of Gender Differences

2 studies examined children's beliefs about the origins of gender differences and addressed 2 main questions: (a) What age-related changes are there in children's beliefs about the contributions of nature and nurture to the development of gender roles? and (b) Do children differentiate between aspects of gender roles that adults believe to be more biologically determined and those they believe to be more socially influenced? 160 4- to 10-year-olds and 32 adults participated in Study 1. Participants were told about a child raised with only opposite-sex individuals and were asked whether the child would grow up to possess a series of gender-stereotyped, biological, and control properties. Until age 9 or 10, children believed that gender-stereotyped properties would develop in an infant regardless of the social context of upbringing. Study 2 provides evidence that children were not merely reporting stereotypical category associations. These studies suggest that young children may have an early bias to view gender categories as predictive of essential, underlying similarities between members, but later come to acknowledge the role of other causal mechanisms (e.g., the social environment) in shaping how category members develop.     

Basic level object categories support the acquisition of novel adjectives: evidence from preschool-aged children

Two experiments examined 3- and 4-year-old children's ability to map novel adjectives to object properties. Sixty-four children were introduced to a target (e.g., a bumpy object), and asked to choose between (1) a matching test object (e.g., a different bumpy object), and (2) a contrasting test object (e.g., a smooth object). Four-year-olds successfully extended novel adjectives from the target to the matching test object whether these objects were drawn from the same, or different, basic level categories. In contrast, 3-year-olds' extensions were more restricted. They successfully extended novel adjectives if the target and test objects were drawn from the same basic level category but failed to do so if the objects were drawn from different basic level categories (Experiment 1). However, if 3-year-olds (n = 20) were first permitted to extend a novel adjective to objects within the same basic level category, they were subsequently able to extend that novel adjective broadly to objects from different basic level categories (Experiment 2). Thus, basic level object categories serve as an initial foundation in the process of mapping novel adjectives to object properties.     

Emerging Differentiation of Folkbiology and Folkpsychology: Attributions of Biological and Psychological Properties to Living Things

Research suggests that for adults, "folkpsychology" and "folkbiology" represent distinct conceptual domains for reasoning about living things. However, it is not clear whether these domains are distinct for children; past work suggests that the 2 systems are confused until age 10, and that radical theory change accounts for eventual differentiation. To examine this claim, 16 subjects each at ages 6, 8, and adult were shown pictures of predatory and domestic animals and asked whether each animal displayed a variety of biological properties (e.g., has blood) and psychological properties (e.g., can think, can feel angry). Subjects at all ages showed clearly different attribution patterns for biological versus psychological properties. This dissociation of attribution patterns provides evidence that by kindergarten, notions of folkpsychology and folkbiology are sufficiently differentiated to constitute distinct and independent conceptual domains. This in turn suggests that radical theory change regarding living things either occurs prior to the beginning of formal education, or does not explain the development of folkbiological knowledge.     

Preschool children's difficulty understanding the types of information obtained through the five senses

Two studies explored 3- and 4-year-olds' (N = 60) understanding that the five senses can each lead to different types of knowledge. In Study 1, 40 children engaged in five scenarios in which they could only perform one sensory action to identify the property of an object (e.g., color, scent). After performing the action, children were asked how they found out the property and to show the experimenter how they had found it out. Using a Mr. Potato Head doll, children were also asked to indicate the sensory organ the doll would need to use to identify the property. In Study 2, 20 children presented with five Mr. Potato Head dolls, each sporting only one sensory organ (e.g., a nose), were asked which Mr. Potato Head could find out the property in question. The 3-year-olds performed significantly poorer than the 4-year-olds on all tasks, suggesting a marked transition in children's ability to recognize the origin of their modality-specific knowledge during the time period between 3 and 4 years of age.     

Children's inductive inferences within superordinate categories: the role of language and category structure

One important function of categories is to allow inferences that extend beyond surface appearances. In 2 studies, preschool and second-grade children were tested on their understanding that members of a category have similar internal parts. In 1 study, children were taught new information about the internal structure of various objects (e.g., an apple), then were probed to determine how far they generalized the new information (e.g., to another apple, to other fruit, to an unrelated object). In a second study, children participated in an open-ended interview that probed whether various types of objects had "the same kinds of stuff inside." Children at both ages and in both studies drew many inferences concerning the internal children to report that members of a basic-level category had the same internal parts. Older children drew more inferences at the superordinate level than did younger children. Older children were also more sensitive to differences in category domain (natural kind vs. artifact) at both basic and superordinate levels. Altogether, these results suggest that preschool children assume that basic-level categories share internal parts. They need to refine this belief at the basic level and to extend it to superordinate-level categories.     

Age Differences in the Dimensions of Perceived Control during Middle Childhood: Implications for Developmental Conceptualizations and Research

2 studies investigated developmental differentiation of children's causal beliefs across middle childhood. Grounded in meta-theories suggesting that development is characterized by progressive differentiation, hypotheses were derived from theory and research on the multiple dimensions of children's perceived control and on developmental changes in children's concepts of causal constructs. Age differences in the organization of children's causal perceptions were explored and replicated ( N 's = 294 and 240, ages 7–12). Analyses of factor structure of children's beliefs about the effectiveness of 5 causes for school success and failure (effort, ability, powerful others, luck, and unknown factors) revealed that beliefs became more differentiated with age. At ages 7–8, 2 dimensions were found, 1 marked by unknown and 1 by the remaining causes. At ages 9–10, 3 factors were present, marked by "internal,""external," and unknown means. By ages 11–12, 4 factors were indicated, marked by effort, ability, "external," and unknown causes. Findings suggested that different theories of perceived control may provide more useful accounts of the dimensions of causal beliefs at different ages. Implications were derived for measurement of perceived control and investigation of developmental change in its effects on children's motivation and behavior.     

The Mind's "I": Children's Conception of the Mind as an Active Agent

1 hypothesis about children's developing conception of the mind is that preschoolers are limited to an understanding that persons have internal, mental contents like thoughts and beliefs, whereas older children and adults conceive of the mind itself as an independent, active structure or processor. Adults' conception of the mind in this independent active fashion seems evident in their use of personified mental metaphor (e.g., "My mind tricked me"). 3 studies examined the development and consolidation of this active, personified view. Study 1 provided an analysis of natural language data regarding 1 child's uses of vision words such as see and look from age 2 1/2 to 8 years. We examined the child's use of such words to refer literally to perception (e.g., "I see the TV") and also to refer nonliterally to active mental processes such as comprehension and inference (e.g., "I see what you mean"). Studies 2 and 3 examined 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds' comprehension and production of mental metaphors. In a metaphor comprehension task, we asked children to interpret personified metaphoric statements about the mind (e.g., "My mind wandered") and 3 comparison domains, mechanics (e.g., "The car is dead"), nature (e.g., "The wind is howling"), and emotion (e.g., "Her heart was smiling"). In an explanation task, we asked children to explain the processes underlying the making of both instant photos and mental images. The findings reveal a developing ability to interpret and produce statements personifying the mind and provide considerable evidence about children's movement toward a conception of the mind as an independent entity deserving reference and conceptualization in its own right.     

Elephants Dancing in My Head: A Developmental Approach to Children''s Concepts of Specific Pains

The present study produced an empirically derived, developmental continuum of children's understanding of specific pains. Subjects of 5 age groups: preschool (ages 3-4), first grade (ages 6-7), third grade (ages 8-10), sixth grade (ages 11-12) and college freshmen (ages 18-23) were interviewed with open-ended questions. The subjects were questioned extensively about 3 specific types of pain: an injury (skinned knee), a medical intervention (injection), and an illness (headache). Subjects were asked to describe each pain, tell why the pain hurt, and state the value of the pain. Their answers were then categorized and the categories ordered developmentally by experts in pediatric pain who were unaware of the children's ages. Then children's specific answers were given developmental scores. Multivariate analyses revealed that older children had more complex and precise understandings of pain, and this pattern differed by type of pain and by aspect of pain being considered. The subjects were also asked to report the frequency of their own pains and their parents' pain; parental and self-reported pains were closely related.     

The Role of Discourse Novelty in Early Word Learning

2 studies of word learning are reported. In Study 1, 24-month-old children and 2 adults played with 3 nameless objects. These objects were placed in a clear box along with a novel nameless object. The adults then displayed excitement about the contents of the box and modeled a new word. Comparison with a control condition indicated significant learning of the new word for the novel object. Study 2 followed the same procedure with one difference: the children played with the novel object while the adults were absent. Thus, at the time of the language model the target object was novel only to the adults, not to the children. Again subjects displayed significant learning of the new word. This last finding suggests that 24-month-old children understand that adults use language for things that are novel to the discourse context and that this novelty is determined from the speaker's point of view.