Mechanisms of conceptual change in preschool-aged children

在学龄前，儿童的概念理解从最初的天真想法过渡到更成熟的想法，更好地反映了世界的潜在因果结构。这些转变影响了广泛的内容领域，包括他们对物理学，生物学和心理学的天真理解。迄今为止，我们的工作集中在理解影响学龄前儿童对幼稚心理学或“心理理论”理解的概念变化时间的认知和神经认知因素。“目前工作的目标是扩展和发展在这项工作中获得的见解，以更普遍地理解认知和神经认知的变化，使学龄前时期成为概念变化的肥沃时期。 关于世界的概念和信念为预测接下来会发生什么或解释刚刚发生的事情提供了基础。当这些预测与实际发生的情况不相符时，或者当发生了一些不容易解释的事情时，概念上的改变或信念上的改变是必要的。关于儿童改变信念的基本能力是否发生了发展变化，人们知之甚少，也就是说，当他们持有与现实不符的信念时，他们有能力认识到这一点，并根据他们收到的新信息改变信念。因此，本研究的主要目标是完善一些简单的行为和大脑电生理的范例，我们已经开发出更好地了解儿童的能力的发展轨迹，在学龄前的信念改变。 除了了解儿童的信念改变能力的发展轨迹，我们还提出了研究，将使用个体差异研究两个目的。首先是更好地了解信念变化的发展轨迹是否与我们用脑电图和多巴胺活动的非侵入性标记物测量的神经发育变化有关，并且也可能在学龄前表现出快速变化。第二个是要解决的信念变化的个体差异是否构成一个限速因素起搏儿童的变化在更广泛的概念领域，如生物学，物理学和心理学。 HQP团队将接受培训，以掌握关键理论问题的专业知识和我们使用的具体方法，并将获得在整个生命周期中具有潜在应用的见解。面对社会、政治和教育的挑战，人们往往需要改变他们对世界因果结构的信念，使之符合科学共识。了解在童年时期出现的信念变化的重要因素，为关于如何最好地促进对社会和个人福祉至关重要的信念变化的假设提供了坚实的基础。

Over the preschool years, children's conceptual understandings transitions from initial naive ideas to more mature ones that better reflect the underlying causal structure of the world. These transitions affect a wide range of content domains, including their naive understandings of physics, biology and psychology. Our work to date has focused on understanding the cognitive and neurocognitive factors that affect the timing of conceptual changes in preschoolers' understanding of naive psychology, or "theory of mind." The goal of the present work is to extend and develop the insights gained in that work to understand more generally the cognitive and neurocogntiive changes that make the preschool years such a fertile time for conceptual change. Concepts and beliefs about the world provide a basis for predicting what will happen next, or explaining what just happened. Conceptual change or belief change is necessary either when those predictions do not comport with what actually happens, or when something occurs that is not readily explainable. Very little is known about whether there are developmental changes in children's basic capacity for belief change -- that is, the capacity to recognize when they hold a belief that does not comport with reality and change that belief based on the new information they receive. Thus, the primary goal of the present studies is to refine some simple behavioral and brain electrophysiological paradigms that we have developed to better understand the developmental trajectory of children's capacity for belief change over the preschool years. In addition to understanding the developmental trajectory of children's capacity for belief change, we also propose studies that will use individual differences studies for two purposes. The first is to better understand whether the developmental trajectories of belief change are linked to the kinds of neurodevelopmental changes that we measure with EEG and non-invasive markers of dopamine activity and also may show rapid change over the preschool years. The second is to address whether individual differences in belief change constitute a rate-limiting factor pacing children's changes in broader conceptual domains, such as biology, physics and psychology. The team of HQP that will be trained to expertise with the theoretical issues at stake and the specific methodologies that we use will gain insights that have potential applications throughout the lifespan. Meeting social, political, and educational challenges frequently require individuals to change their beliefs about the causal structure of the world to ones that comport with scientific consensus. Understanding the factors that are important for belief change as it is emerging in childhood provides a strong basis for hypotheses about how to best foster belief changes that are critical for social and personal well being.