Mechanisms of conceptual change in preschool-aged children

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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.