The Importance of Clarifying Evolutionary Terminology Across Disciplines and in the Classroom: A Reply to Kampourakis

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111218/1/cogs12197.pd

You Get What You Need: An Examination of Purpose‐Based Inheritance Reasoning in Undergraduates, Preschoolers, and Biological Experts

This set of seven experiments examines reasoning about the inheritance and acquisition of physical properties in preschoolers, undergraduates, and biology experts. Participants ( N =  390) received adoption vignettes in which a baby animal was born to one parent but raised by a biologically unrelated parent, and they judged whether the offspring would have the same property as the birth or rearing parent. For each vignette, the animal parents had contrasting values on a physical property dimension (e.g., the birth parent had a short tail; the rearing parent had a long tail). Depending on the condition, the distinct properties had distinct functions (“function‐predictive”) were associated with distinct habitats (“habitat‐predictive”), or had no implications (“non‐predictive”). Undergraduates' bias to view properties as inherited from the birth parent was reduced in the function‐ and habitat‐predictive conditions. This result indicates a purpose‐based view of inheritance, whereby animals can acquire properties that serve a purpose in their environment. This stance was not found in experts or preschoolers. We discuss the results in terms of how undergraduates' purpose‐based inheritance reasoning develops and relates to larger‐scale misconceptions about Darwinian evolutionary processes, and implications for biology education.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106669/1/cogs12097.pd

Children and Consumer Behavior: Insights, Questions, and New Frontiers

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148425/1/jcpy1096.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148425/2/jcpy1096_am.pd

Who’s the Boss? Concepts of Social Power Across Development

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137499/1/cdev12643.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137499/2/cdev12643_am.pd

Domains and naïve theories

Human cognition entails domain‐specific cognitive processes that influence memory, attention, categorization, problem‐solving, reasoning, and knowledge organization. This article examines domain‐specific causal theories, which are of particular interest for permitting an examination of how knowledge structures change over time. We first describe the properties of commonsense theories, and how commonsense theories differ from scientific theories, illustrating with children's classification of biological and nonbiological kinds. We next consider the implications of domain‐specificity for broader issues regarding cognitive development and conceptual change. We then examine the extent to which domain‐specific theories interact, and how people reconcile competing causal frameworks. Future directions for research include examining how different content domains interact, the nature of theory change, the role of context (including culture, language, and social interaction) in inducing different frameworks, and the neural bases for domain‐specific reasoning. WIREs Cogni Sci 2011 2 490–502 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.124 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs websitePeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/87128/1/124_ftp.pd

Children, Object Value, and Persuasion

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148408/1/jcpy1097_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148408/2/jcpy1097.pd

Cognitive science and the cultural challenge

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111778/1/soca12120.pd

Putting the “Noun Bias” in Context: A Comparison of English and Mandarin

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66101/1/1467-8624.00045.pd

The development of induction within natural kind and artifact categories

Recent studies have shown that children as young as age 31/2 use category membership as the basis of their inductive inferences. The present studies examine how children determine which category-based inductive inferences are warranted and which are unwarranted. Preschool and elementary school children learned various facts (e.g., "This apple has pectin inside") and reported whether they thought the facts generalized to other items varying in similarity to the target (e.g., other apples, a banana, and a stereo). Categories included both natural kinds and artifacts and varied as to how similar category members were to one another (category homogeneity, as rated by adults). Results indicate that even the youngest children placed certain constraints on their inferences. However, the preschoolers made few principled distinctions among categories, basing their inferences primarily on category homogeneity. In contrast, older children made several distinctions that seemed based on domain-specific knowledge. Most importantly, they drew more inferences within natural kinds than within artifact categories, at times even overextending the distinction. Comparison with other research suggests that increasing scientific knowledge exerts powerful effects on patterns of induction within basic-level categories.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27462/1/0000503.pd

Children's Understanding of Psychogenic Bodily Reactions

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/65537/1/1467-8624.00289.pd