Chapter 6:  The Development of Folk Knowledge

I.                   Theory theories

A.                Children have set of intuitive explanations that are modified with time

B.                 Cognitive development similar to scientific discovery; initial theories are formed, revised as needed given new evidence

C.                 These theories assume children possess naive theories that are modified by experience

1.                  Some propose core-knowledge (nativists); innate processes are revealed when sensory and motor skills allow their expression

2.                  Most propose children born with rules for operating on representations, which are altered by experience

D.                Takes evolutionary perspective

E.                 Cognition is constrained but children are able to make sense of information in core domains

II.                Folk Psychology:  Developing a Theory of Mind (TOM)

A.                Children’s concepts of mental activity; used to explain others’ actions as a function of their beliefs/desires

B.                 Basic social-cognitive skills

1.                  TOM requires viewing self and others as individuals who cause things to happen and whose behavior is to achieve some goal

2.                  Also requires ability to take another’s perspective

3.                  These skills develop gradually

a.       Shared attention develops about 9 months, involves triadic interaction:  two social partners and a third object/person

b.      May involve pointing, eye gaze, directional cues

4.                  Babies more likely to copy a behavior if model does it intentionally rather than accidentally; may be able to discern intent even when model was  unsuccessful

5.                  18-month olds discern intentional and inattentional action, and may offer help when intentional (but not inattentional) action fails

C.                 Development of mind reading – understanding that others have beliefs/desires that are different from one’s own that motivate behavior

1.                  False belief

a.       Children are asked to predict whether a person will search where that person thinks something is or where it really is

b.      3-year olds may forget what they had believed earlier

c.        Children may be limited by poor executive skills (e.g., unable to inhibit, plan, etc.)

f.       Social factors may also play a role, such as having older siblings, interacting with multiple adults

g.      The ability to contend with false beliefs may develop as an implicit skill earlier than as an explicit one

2.                  Deception – requires knowledge of someone else’s mind

a.       Children as young as 2 demonstrated strategic deception

b.      Planning and executing a deception may make it easier for a young child to take another’s perspective

D.                Do three-year-olds have a theory of mind – evidence suggests a conceptual change across preschool years; 3-year olds in general do not appear to have the conceptual understanding needed to perform false belief tasks

III.             Folk biology:  Understanding biological world

A.                Is it alive and can it act intentionally?

B.                 What young children know and don’t know about biology

1.                  Knowledge base seems to play a role in children’s tendency towards personification; more likely to attribute traits correctly in familiar domain

2.                  Preschool-aged children understand concepts such as intentionality, involuntary control of some body functions (such as heartbeat), dead animals aren’t capable of movement but sleeping animals can move when they wake up

3.                  Despite these impressive capabilities, young children still retain some erroneous beliefs about biological properties

IV.             Folk physics:  Understanding physical world

A.                Development of spatial cognition – coding information about spatial relations,  how objects look from different perspectives, how to regulate actions in time and space

1.                  Spatial orientation – where is it and how do I get to it?

2.                  Spatial visualization – mentally changing spatial orientation of an object

a.       Example – Piaget/Inhelder’s water level problem (see picture of tilted bottle then imagine it half full of water and draw the line showing water level.  Piaget/Inhelder found most children able to do this correctly by Concrete Operational stage;  others have found adolescents have difficulty with the task

3.                  Object and location memory – where was it? 

a.       5-year-olds can perform as well as adults in nonstrategic task despite less effective memory

b.      Gender differences are apparent on many of these tasks, perhaps produced by gender differences in tasks that promote survival (natural selection)

B.     Object-oriented play and tool use

1.                  Development

a.       Transition from object exploration to object play around 1 year

b.      Boys engage in more object play

c.       Includes moving object (usually with sound effects), building something with obects

d.      Inverted U shaped frequency of object play (low in preschool, peaks in childhood, declines in adolescence)

e.       Object play may allow discovery of affordances of objects

C.    Children’s understanding of time

1.                  Includes simple understanding of the order in which events occur to understanding when a specific event will occur

2.                  Temporal order and causality

a.        infants can recognize when events happen out of order or words are spoken out of order

b.      Infants use movement to understand agency (e.g. a moving object hits a stationary object and causes it to move)

3.                  Yesterday, today, and tomorrow – understanding sequence of recurring events