Collaborative Research: Generics in context: Examining mental biases and resources in social and science communication and learning

STEM领域（科学、技术、工程和数学）缺乏多样性，阻碍了科学、技术和社会进步。本项目从两个角度处理这一问题。首先，它产生了新的实证研究结果的认知和语言障碍，站在消除成就差距的方式，第二，它建立了一个合作的跨学科辅导计划，受益于本科生和研究生在两个少数民族服务机构。该项目采用跨学科的方法，研究如何利用儿童和成人可用的心理和语言资源，促进科学学习和有效的科学传播，在更大的社会结构背景下更深入地理解社会不平等。（“结构性思维”），并培养预见社会变革的能力。具体来说，这个项目研究了人们如何学习的发展轨迹，在社会、生物和物理世界中表现和交流可概括的知识。五项大规模的研究将认知科学（心理学、哲学和语言学）的方法论和理论联系起来，探讨了泛化和跨发展的通用语言如何（i）受到时间、地点和其他情况下规律性稳定性的影响，（ii）灵活并限于上下文（例如，（iii）影响教育和跨越政治分歧沟通（失误）。总的来说，该项目阐明了STEM多样化的几个基本认知和沟通障碍，并确定了心理上可行的方法来应对这些障碍，同时提供先进的指导和密集的培训，在切割-该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估来支持的搜索.

Lack of diversity in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) stifles scientific, technological and social progress. This project tackles this issue from two angles. First, it generates new empirical findings on cognitive and linguistic barriers that stand in the way of eliminating achievement disparities, and second, it builds a collaborative interdisciplinary mentoring program benefitting undergraduate and graduate students at two Minority-Serving Institutions. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the project investigates ways to harness the mental and linguistic resources available to children and adults to facilitate science learning and effective science communication, scaffold deeper understanding of social inequities in the context of larger social structures (“structural thinking”), and foster the capacity to envision social change.Specifically, this project examines the developmental trajectory of how people learn, represent and communicate about generalizable regularities in the social, biological and physical world. Bridging methodology and theory from several Cognitive Science disciplines (psychology, philosophy and linguistics), five large-scale studies explore how generalization and generic language across development can (i) be affected by the stability of a regularity across times, places, and other circumstances, (ii) be flexible and restricted to a context (e.g., the US today), and (iii) affect (mis)communication in education and across political divides. Overall, the project elucidates several fundamental cognitive and communicative barriers to diversifying STEM and identifies psychologically feasible ways to counteract them, while offering advanced mentoring and intensive training in cutting-edge research methods to a diverse and inclusive group of students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.