Children’s naïve biology

Ruth Laidler MRes.

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What we’ll be covering…What we’ll be covering…

• What types of theories children may have about the world.

• What a naïve theory is.

• What naïve theory of biology is.

• An empirical study looking at how knowledge may differ across

sub-domains in naïve biology.

• An empirical study on how knowledge may shift from abstract to

concrete ideas or vice versa.

• Potential future directions for the project.

Naïve theoriesNaïve theories

•Sets of knowledge systems about important aspects of the world

(Carey, 1985).

• Include coherent pieces of knowledge involving causal principles or

devices.

•Help us to make interpretations of observed events

•Help us to make novel predictions (Inagaki & Hatano, 2002)

•Guide learning for new pieces of information

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Naïve theoriesNaïve theories

•No rigorous testing

•Require no special knowledge or

formal schooling

•Data interpreted in a qualitatively

different manner to scientists

Gelman & Noles (2011)

Naïve theory is different to scientific theory:Naïve theory is different to scientific theory:

• The theory-theory view of cognitive development. (Carey, 1985).

What types of naïve theories do children have?

What types of naïve theories do children have?

Naïve theory of biologyNaïve theory of biology

• Naïve biology is: a cognitive product of children’s interactions with a part of the world they engage with spontaneously (Inagaki & Hatano, 2004)

Piaget (1939)

Carey (1985)

Schult & Wellman (1997)

Why study children’s understanding of biology?Why study children’s understanding of biology?

Animate inanimate distinctionAnimate inanimate distinction

Massey & Gelman (1988)

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Vital power Vital power

Inagaki & Hatano (2004)

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Contagion/contamination Contagion/contamination

Piko & Bak, (2006)

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Kinship Kinship

Hirschfield (1995)

Naïve theory of biologyNaïve theory of biology

Between ages 3-4 yearsGottfried & Gelman (2010)

After age 7 yearsSolomon, Johnson, Zaitchik & Carey (1996)

Between ages 4-7 yearsSolomon, Johnson, Zaitchik & Carey (1996)

To some degree in infancy,Hermann, Waxman & Medin (2011)

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How limited is their knowledge?How limited is their knowledge?

• Hypothetical constructs like energy may act as causal placeholders until a more complete theory is formulated (Gopnik and Wellman, 1994)

• Much of this therefore depends on the chosen methodology

• To demonstrate knowledge in younger children the most appropriate methodology needs to be chosen.

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Limits to their knowledge depends on methodology Limits to their knowledge depends on methodology

• Feature projection task (Carey, 1985) – project a novel feature to an entity:

Adults and children over 7 years of age can project the novel property.

• The same task with a yes or no format (Gelman, 2003)

3 year olds can project the novel property to the entity

• Deference method (Erickson, Keil & Lockhart, 2010) – cluster properties

together e.g. biological versus psychological

• Open ended questioning (Taralowski, 2006)

Limited results with preschoolers aged 3-4 years, but an explanation

advantage for older children over 7 years.

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Study 1 Research QuestionsStudy 1 Research Questions

• Can preschool children aged 2-4 years systematically respond to forced

choice questions across the four sub-domains of naïve biology?

• Does ability in the sub-domains emerge simultaneously or are the sub-

domains independent of one another?

• Is emergence of the sub-domains resultant from increasing age or does

language ability impact this substantially?

Study 1 MethodStudy 1 Method

Piloting:

•20 children from a private nursery provision

•Change of biology assessment presentation to e-prime forced

choice task rather than paper based card sort to reduce task time.

Materials and procedures:

•1 visit to each child in the nursery provision

•30 minutes in total

•BPVS 3 administered

•Naïve biology assessment administered

4 sub-domains

4 trials for each

Study 1 MethodStudy 1 Method

Naïve biology measure:

Study 1 ParticipantsStudy 1 Participants

• 60 Children aged 24-48 months recruited

• Recruited from 4 nursery provisions (sure-start & private) in the North West

Characteristic n % of participants

Mean Age (SD)

Provision

Sure Start 29 49.4

Private nursery 31 51.6

Gender

Male 33 55.0 37.35 (7.62)

Female 27 45.0 38.74 (6.32)

Table of means and standard deviations for scores on the measure of naïve biological knowledge: of a picture slide, impact statement to go here. This is an example of a picture slide.

Study 1 ResultsStudy 1 Results

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Study 1 ConclusionsStudy 1 Conclusions

• Preschool children aged 2-4 years are able to systematically respond

to the forced choice format of the tasks

• On first glance it appears that the data also support the presence of

biological knowledge

• But the data demonstrates an above chance performance for only two

of the four sub-domains

• Above chance performance is evident for the animate inanimate sub-

domain and the vital power sub-domain only

• The results also indicate that development of scientific knowledge

development may be dependent on receptive language abilities

Theory enrichment versus conceptual change Theory enrichment versus conceptual change

• One key issue in naïve theories is regarding what changes the theory

undergoes.

• This is a question of whether children have a generally appropriate

framework that persists from early on, or whether they have one that must

undergo considerable conceptual restructuring over time (Morris, Taplin &

Gelman, 2000).

• The is the enrichment account versus the conceptual change account.

• Study 2 doesn’t really delve into this, so study 2 is designed to begin

broaching this question…

And so a new direction… Study 2And so a new direction… Study 2

• So still to answer was how much do children know about each of the

sub-domains?

• They can answer some forced choice correctly but does this

demonstrate a casual knowledge?

• Study 2 looks at the extent to which children may have concrete or

abstract knowledge.

• Do children have a broad framework that serves to answer forced

choice questions correctly without a knowledge of the concrete entities

involved?

• Or do the concrete entities need to be known before reasoning can be

made at an abstract level?

Study 2Study 2

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Concrete to Abstract or abstract to concrete?Concrete to Abstract or abstract to concrete?

• Historically researchers thought concrete facts needed to be learnt

first.

• This reflected a belief that children relied on simple interactions

between physical entities.

• However more recent research suggests that children are sensitive

to more abstract information first.

• E.g. Gelman (2003) - children to be more sensitive to categories of

kind than to perceptual details.

• E.g. Mandler and McDonough (1993) - children can make global

level categories (animal, vehicle) before they can make

differentiations of levels (fish, cat, dog).

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Simons & Keil (1995)Simons & Keil (1995)

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Gottfried & Gelman (2005)Gottfried & Gelman (2005)

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How the empirical study will expand from Gottfried & Gelman (2005)

How the empirical study will expand from Gottfried & Gelman (2005)

• Compare changes between abstract and concrete across four sub-

domains of naïve biology: animate inanimate distinction, vital power,

contagion contamination and kinship

• To explore two sub-domains that have not previously been explored in

terms of abstract and concrete concepts: contagion contamination and

kinship

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Study 2 Research questions Study 2 Research questions

• Is there a developmental shift from abstract to concrete thinking across

the sub-domains of naïve biology between four years of age and eight

years of age?

• Is this shift apparent across all four of the sub-domains being explored

in the current study?

• Does concrete thought in one sub-domain predict concrete thought in

another sub-domain and the same for abstract thought?

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Study 2 MethodsStudy 2 Methods

• Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods

• 4 sub-domains, 4 trials for each of these.

• Picture card choosing task with three levels of abstraction depicted in

for each trial.

• Open ended questioning following each picture card choosing task.

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Study 2 Hypotheses and potential outcomesStudy 2 Hypotheses and potential outcomes

• Younger children will have more abstract knowledge.

• Older children will have more concrete facts.

• Older children will use these concrete facts to make explanations to the

open ended questioning more complex and longer.

• Alternatively if the historical perspective is true then it would be

expected that younger children will possess more concrete facts where

as older children may have a more abstract understanding.

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What might the findings mean for theory enrichment versus conceptual change?

What might the findings mean for theory enrichment versus conceptual change?

• The presence of a shift indicates that conceptual change is most

likely occurring.

• If there was an increase in knowledge but neither a shift from

abstract to concrete or vice versa then this would be more likely

enrichment.

• As conceptual change is a slow process and is not an instant

change therefore it is expected that changes would only be evident

between 4 year old and 8 year olds rather than in age groups.

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Future directionsFuture directions

• Data collection for study 2

• If knowledge if more concrete knowledge forms an abstract theory does

teaching about concrete facts allow children to form abstract categories

more easily?

• Does providing children with an abstract category allow them to generate

more concrete facts?

• Ending with an intervention to improve science learning in younger

children. E.g. in other domains it has been demonstrated that analogies

can aid conceptual change to a higher order level of reasoning (Venville &

Treagust, 1996).

Thank you for listening!

Any questions?

Thank you for listening!

Any questions?

ReferencesReferences

Carey, S. (1985). Conceptual change in early childhood. Cambridge, MA: Bradford.

Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., Whetton, C., & Burley, J.(1999). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Windsor:NFER-Nelson.

Erickson, J.E., Keil, F.C. & Lockhart, K.L. (2010). Sensing the coherence of biology in contrast to psychology: Young children’s use of causal relations to distinguish two foundational domains. Child Development, 81(1), 390-409.

Gelman, S.A. & Noles, N.S. (2011). Domains and naive theories. Cognitive Science, 2, 490-503

Gottfried, G.M. & Gelman, S.A. (2005). Developing domain-specific causal-explanatory frameworks: The role of insides and immanance. Cognitive Development, 20, 137-158.

Kampf, G., Reichel, M., Feil, Y., Eggerstedt, S. & Kaulfers P.M. (2008). Influence of rub-in technique on required application time and hand coverage in hygienic hand disinfection. BMC infectious diseases, 8, 149-160.

Hirschfeld, L. A. (1995). Do children have a theory of race? Cognition, 54(2), 209–252.

Inagaki K. & Hatano, G. (2006). Young children’s conception of the biological world. Current directions in psychological science, 15, 177-181.

Inagaki, K. & Hatano, G. (2002). Young children’s naïve thinking about the biological world. Psychology Press.

ReferencesReferences

Massey, C. M., & Gelman, R. (1988). Preschooler’s ability to decide whether a photographed unfamiliar object can move itself. Developmental psychology 24(3), 307-317.

Siegal, M., Fadda, R. & Overton, P.G. (2011). Contamination Sensitivity and the development of disease avoidant behaviour. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society of Biology,

Simons, D. J., & Keil, F. C. (1995). An abstract to concrete shift in the development of biological thought: the insides story. Cognition, 56(2), 129–163.

Solomon, G. E. A., Johnson, S. C., Zaitchik, D., & Carey, S. (1996). Like Father, Like Son: Young Children’s Understanding of How and Why Offspring Resemble Their Parents. Child Development, 67(1), 151–171.

Tarlowski, A. (2006). If it’s an animal it has axons: Experience and culture in preschool children's reasoning about animates. Cognitive Development, 21(3), 249–265.