Young Children's Causal Learning from Probabilistic Social and Physical Displays

这个项目的目的是通过创新性的实验来探索儿童早期科学推理的起源？S在非正式环境中学习概率因果关系。儿童？S从观察概率因果结果中学习的能力是一个生态学上有效的问题，但对STEM教育理论和实践的影响尚未得到充分研究。很多发生在婴儿期和幼儿期的因果性学习都是通过观察别人的行为来实现的--S。至关重要的是，在非正式的、非实验室的环境中学习原因意味着观察者通常需要从概率证据中学习因果关系--观察不是100%确定地发生的关系或模式。这项建议有三个目标：确定幼儿是否从观察概率证据中了解身体因果关系；调查幼儿是否从观察概率因果证据中了解社会因果关系；调查观察混淆的因果系统的幼儿是否优先将概率结果归因于社会原因的可变性或身体原因的可变性。本项目提出了一系列五个汇聚的实验，使用新建立的方法来考察年仅24个月的儿童概率因果推理的发展根源。在实验1和实验2中，幼儿将观察到涉及物理物体的概率因果展示。在实验3和实验4中，儿童将观察到社会主体(相互作用的人)之间的一种概率因果证据模式，而不是物理对象。在实验5中，儿童将观察到一种混淆的概率因果关系，其中因果关系的概率性质既可以归因于进行干预的人，也可以归因于被作用于物理对象。在每个实验中，独立的衡量标准是儿童自己采取什么目标导向的行动，以实现基于他们观察到的结果。

DRL: 1251702AbstractThis purpose of this project is to explore the origins of scientific reasoning in early childhood through innovative experiments investigating young children?s learning about probabilistic cause-effect relationships in informal settings. Children?s ability to learn from observing probabilistic causal outcomes is an ecologically valid, but understudied issue with implications for STEM educational theory and practice. Much of the causal learning that takes place in infancy and early childhood is by the observation of other people?s actions. Crucially, learning about causes in informal, non-laboratory settings means that an observer often needs to learn cause-effect relationships from probabilistic evidence?observing relations or patterns that do not occur with 100% certainty. This proposal has three objectives: To establish whether young children learn about physical causal relationships from the observation of probabilistic evidence; To investigate whether young children learn about social causal relationships from the observation of probabilistic causal evidence; To investigate whether young children observing a confounded causal system preferentially attribute probabilistic outcomes to variability in social causes or to variability in physical causes.This project proposes a series of five converging experiments using a newly established methodology to examine the developmental roots of probabilistic causal reasoning in children as young as 24 months of age. In Experiments 1 and 2 young children will observe probabilistic causal displays involving physical objects. In Experiments 3 and 4 children will observe a pattern of probabilistic causal evidence between social agents?people interacting with one another?instead of physical objects. In Experiment 5 children will observe a confounded probabilistic causal display in which the probabilistic nature of the causal relationship could either be attributed to the person performing the intervention or to the physical object being acted upon. In each experiment, the dependent measure is what goal-directed action children take on their own to achieve the outcome based on what they observed.