The role of experience and beliefs in children’s biological reasoning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

From a young age, children form theories of the biological world that allow them to reason about phenomena such as species, death, illness, and genetics (Wellman & Gelman, 1992). These folk theories enable children to make rich inferences about the world around them (Gelman & Legare, 2011), and are influenced by experience with animals and the natural world (Coley, 2012). The focus of this symposium is on understanding how children’s experiences shape biological reasoning, and how these differences influence the acquisition of other biological concepts. Papers 1 and 2 discuss how and when experiences influence children’s biological reasoning. Papers 3 and 4 examine how children’s experience-based differences in biological reasoning influence their inferences and future learning.

Paper 1 focuses on whether children’s experience with particular animal species influences their beliefs about genetic inheritance. Paper 2 examines how the different experiences of rural and urban children are related to their use of ecological relations to classify animals. Paper 3 shows how children’s semantic differentiation, such as their views of how similar animals are to one another, is shaped by experience and predicts their ability to make inferences within a domain. Paper 4 investigates how children’s learning of complex biological topics, such as evolution, is influenced by their prior beliefs about biology.

Together, the papers in this symposium examine the role of experience with the natural world in how children think about biology and how these differences can have far-reaching consequences for both conceptual development and science education.

Sub Unit

• Cognitive Processes

Chair

• David Menendez, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Individual Presentations

• Development of Conceptual Flexibility in Intuitive Biology: Effects of Environment and Experience - Presenting Author: Nicole Betz, Yale University; Non-Presenting Author: John D Coley, Northeastern University

• Not Exactly like your Mother: Children’s Understanding of Genetic Inheritance for Familiar and Unfamiliar Animals - Presenting Author: David Menendez, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor; Non-Presenting Author: Olympia N Mathiaparanam, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Andrea Marquardt Donovan, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Vienne Seitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Author: David Liu, University of Oklahoma; Non-Presenting Author: Karl S Rosengren, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Martha Wagner Alibali, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Chuck Kalish, Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

• Organization helps comprehension: Semantic representations differentiate as a result of experience and support language comprehension - Presenting Author: Catarina Vales, Carnegie Mellon University; Non-Presenting Author: Anna V Fisher, Carnegie Mellon University

• Ready to learn: Features of children’s intuitive theories about evolution predict subsequent learning - Presenting Author: Sarah A Brown, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Samuel Ronfard, University of Toronto; Non-Presenting Author: Erin Doncaster, Boston University; Non-Presenting Author: Deb Kelemen, Boston University