Mechanisms of conceptual change in preschool-aged children

在学前阶段，儿童的概念理解从最初的天真想法转变为更成熟的想法，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、生物学和心理学的幼稚理解。到目前为止，我们的工作主要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。当前工作的目标是扩展和发展在这项工作中获得的见解，以更广泛地理解认知和神经认知的变化，这些变化使学龄前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事情不相符时，或者当某些事情发生时无法轻易解释时，观念的改变或信念的改变是必要的。关于儿童改变信念的基本能力是否会发生发展变化，我们知之甚少——即当他们持有与现实不符的信念时，认识到这种信念并根据他们收到的新信息改变这种信念的能力。因此，本研究的主要目的是完善我们已经开发的一些简单的行为和脑电生理范式，以更好地理解学龄前儿童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，我们还提出了将个体差异研究用于两个目的的研究。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图和非侵入性多巴胺活动标记测量的神经发育变化有关，这些变化也可能在学龄前表现出快速变化。二是探讨信念变化的个体差异是否构成限制儿童在生物学、物理学和心理学等更广泛概念领域变化的速率因素。HQP团队将接受培训，掌握相关理论问题和我们使用的具体方法的专业知识，从而获得在整个生命周期中具有潜在应用价值的见解。面对社会、政治和教育方面的挑战，经常需要个人改变他们对世界因果结构的看法，使之符合科学共识。了解童年时期信仰变化的重要因素，为如何最好地促进对社会和个人福祉至关重要的信仰变化提供了强有力的假设基础。

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.