Developmental Changes in Reasoning about Biological Kinds

该项目将制定新的策略，以促进幼儿有效的科学推理。从发育早期开始，孩子们就使用分类来了解他们周围的世界。例如，当孩子们了解到某一动物个体的一些情况时，他们可以将这些信息概括为整个类别，并用它来指导行为。通过这种方式，如果一个孩子知道某一种蜘蛛会咬人，他可能会推断出所有的蜘蛛都会咬人，并利用这一信息在未来避开蜘蛛。这类推理的一个关键挑战是确定有限的证据样本——例如，在特定的一天观察到的特定蜘蛛——是否也能提供其他类别成员的真实信息。幼儿对证据样本的评估效率往往远低于年龄较大的儿童或成人，这可能妨碍他们进行生物学、社会和科学推理。这个项目将加强对归纳学习如何以及为什么会在童年时期发生变化的基本理解。通过一系列的实验，它将揭示认知和发展机制的基础上的年龄相关的变化，在儿童的推理策略，已记录在以前的研究。然后，该项目将利用这些知识设计和测试促进儿童有效推理的新策略。通过制定新的教育策略，与主要的非正式教育机构合作，并为本科生和研究生提供培训机会，该项目最大限度地提高了本研究影响教育实践的机会，使教育者、儿童和未来的研究人员受益。目前的研究验证了这样一个假设，即年幼的孩子会寻找他们认为最能说明一个类别的成员应该是什么样的证据样本，而年长的孩子和成年人则会寻找涵盖类别中存在的广泛变化的样本。例如，年幼的孩子可能会认为鸟类应该相对较小并且会飞，所以当他们寻找有关鸟类的一般信息时，他们可能会选择主要考虑具有这些特征的鸟类，例如知更鸟和蓝鸟。相比之下，大一点的孩子可能会寻找更多样化的样本，包括知更鸟和企鹅等鸟类。为了通过实验验证这一假设，研究人员将向孩子们展示动物样本，并要求他们选择对整个类别的学习最有帮助的动物样本。为了绘制儿童策略发展变化的轨迹，第一组研究将检验5- 10岁儿童选择的样本是否在关键属性上价值最大化（例如，选择检查世界上最快的两只猎豹来了解猎豹）或多样性（例如，选择检查一些快的和一些慢的猎豹）。第二组实验将测试两种可能的发展和认知机制，这些机制是观察到的与年龄相关的变化的基础。第三组研究将开发和测试在教育环境中促进有效的生物和科学推理的新策略。因此，除了解决认知和发展心理学中的关键理论问题外，该项目还将对教育产生直接影响。

This project will develop new strategies to facilitate efficient scientific reasoning in young children. From early in development, children use categories to learn about the world around them. For example, upon learning something about an individual animal, children can generalize this information to the category as a whole and use it to guide behavior. In this way, if a child learns that a particular spider will bite, the child might infer that all spiders bite, and use that information to avoid spiders in the future. A critical challenge of this type of reasoning is determining whether a limited sample of evidence--for example, a specific spider observed on a particular day--provides information likely to be true of other category members as well. Young children often evaluate samples of evidence much less efficiently than older children or adults, which can impede their biological, social, and scientific reasoning. This project will enhance basic understanding of how and why inductive learning changes across childhood. Through a series of experiments, it will reveal the cognitive and developmental mechanisms that underlie the age-related changes in children's reasoning strategies that have been documented in previous studies. This project will then use this knowledge to devise and test new strategies for facilitating efficient reasoning in children. By developing new educational strategies, partnering with a major informal educational institution, and providing training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, this project maximizes opportunities for this research to influence educational practices and benefit educators, children, and future researchers.The present studies test the hypothesis that younger children seek out samples of evidence that they think best exemplify what members of a category should be like, whereas older children and adults seek out samples that cover the broad variation that exists within categories. For example, young children might think that birds should be relatively small and fly, so when they are seeking information about birds in general, they might choose to consider primarily birds with these traits, such as robins and bluebirds. In contrast, older children might seek out more diverse samples, containing birds such as robins and penguins. To test this hypothesis experimentally, children will be presented with samples of animals and asked to choose which are most informative for learning about the category as a whole. To chart the trajectory of developmental change in children's strategies, the first set of studies will examine whether 5- to 10-year-olds select samples that maximize values on key properties (e.g., choosing to examine the two fastest cheetahs in the world to learn about cheetahs) or diversity (e.g., choosing to examine some fast and some slow cheetahs). The second set of experiments will test two possible accounts of the developmental and cognitive mechanisms underlying observed age-related changes. The third set of studies will develop and test new strategies for facilitating efficient biological and scientific reasoning in educational contexts. Thus, in addition to addressing key theoretical questions in cognitive and developmental psychology, this project will also have immediate implications for education.