Mechanisms of conceptual change in preschool-aged children

在学龄前的几年里，孩子们的概念理解从最初的天真想法转变为更能反映世界潜在因果结构的更成熟的想法。这些转变影响了广泛的内容领域，包括他们对物理、生物学和心理学的天真理解。到目前为止，我们的工作主要集中在了解认知和神经认知因素，这些因素影响学龄前儿童对幼稚心理或“心理理论”的理解的概念变化的时机。这项工作的目标是扩展和发展在这项工作中获得的洞察力，以更广泛地理解使学龄前阶段成为概念变化的肥沃时期的认知和神经认知变化。 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。无论是当这些预测与实际发生的事情不符，还是当一些无法解释的事情发生时，概念上的改变或信念的改变都是必要的。关于儿童改变信念的基本能力--即识别他们持有与现实不符的信念并根据他们收到的新信息改变这种信念的能力--是否存在发展变化，我们知之甚少。因此，本研究的主要目标是提炼我们开发的一些简单的行为和脑电生理范式，以更好地理解儿童在学龄前几年信念改变能力的发展轨迹。 除了了解儿童信念改变能力的发展轨迹外，我们还建议进行研究，将个体差异研究用于两个目的。首先是为了更好地理解信念变化的发展轨迹是否与我们用脑电和多巴胺活动的非侵入性标记物测量的神经发育变化的种类有关，也可能在学龄前几年表现出快速变化。第二个问题是解决信念改变的个体差异是否构成限制儿童在生物、物理和心理学等更广泛概念领域改变的速度的限制因素。 HQP团队将接受培训，掌握相关理论问题和我们使用的特定方法的专业知识，他们将获得在整个生命周期内具有潜在应用价值的见解。要应对社会、政治和教育方面的挑战，往往需要个人改变他们对世界因果结构的信念，使之与科学共识相一致。了解在儿童时期出现的信念改变的重要因素，为如何最好地促进对社会和个人福祉至关重要的信念改变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.