Early Differentiation of Causal Mechanisms Appropriate to Biological and Nonbiological Kinds

Abstract

Although Piaget characterized young children as precausal until about 7-8 years of age, recent work indicates that preschoolers do honor fundamental principles of causality. This literature has mainly focused on general principles invoked in reasoning about mechanical events. By contrast, the present study examined whether children differentiate between the causal mechanisms appropriate for different conceptual domains. The results of 3 preliminary investigations and 1 main experiment suggested that preschoolers prefer natural mechanisms for color inheritance in biological kinds, particularly when causal substrates resemble their consequences. By contrast, the same children recognized the importance of human intentions in producing the color of an artifact, and also judged that mechanical mechanisms serve to mediate between intentions and outcomes. The results are relevant to recent studies on the development of biological thought, and overall suggest that early causal reasoning reflects both domain-specific and domain-general principles.

The development of the concept of alive by preschoolers through a cognivive conflict teaching intervention

“…Carey suggests that children do not develop sophisticated biological theories until the age of 9 or 10. In contrast, there is a growing number of studies showing that children do have naive biological knowledge and apply this knowledge when they are asked to classify objects as living or nonliving (Gelman et aI., 1983;Hatano & Inagaki, 1994;Springer & Keil, 1991). Thus Inagaki and Hatano (Inagaki & Hatano, 1994;Hatano, Siegler, Richards, Inagaki, Stavy, & Wax, 1993), have reported that young children hold some biological beliefs distinct from psychology.…”

“…It has been studied mainly as a concept showing the degree of cognitive development of a child (Piaget, 1929;Laurendeau & Pinard, 1962;Looft, 1974;Brown & Desforges, 1977;Lucas, Linke, & Sedgwick, 1979;Tamir, Gal-Chopin, Nussinovitz, 1981;Gelman, Spelk, & Meek, 1983;Carey, 1985;Springer & Keil, 1991;Rosengren, Gelman, Kalish, & McCormick, 1991;Backscheider, Shatz, & We would ike to thank Marianthi Sarmonika and Christina Tyrosvouti for their help in collection of the experimental data. and preparation of the teaching intervention.…”

“…In recent years there has been a growing number of investigations of children's intuitive knowledge of biology and biological processes (Gelman et aI., 1983;Carey, 1985;Stavy & Wax, 1989;Rosengren et aI., 1991;Gelman & Kremer, 1991;Springer & Keil, 1991;Backscheider, Shatz, & Gelman, 1993;Hatano & Inagaki, 1997). Carey has suggested that young children have a poor understanding of biology that is best described as based on a social theory of human behaviour rather than on biological theory.…”

Preschool Children's Explanations of Plant Growth and Rain Formation: A Comparative Analysis

“…Despite a) the indications that preschool children often invoke natural causes rather than restricting their accounts to animistic, artificialistic or teleological elements (Stepans & Kuehn, 1985;Springer & Keil, 1991;Backscheider, Shatz & Gelman, 1993), and b) the importance of explanation in the educational process, systematic empirical attempts to focus on the characteristics of preschool children's explanations on natural phenomena are limited. Taking into consideration the importance of explanation in children's scientific learning and the fact that even before entering the formal structures of education they have already developed the capability of manipulating explanations of different types involving early causal schemas (Donaldson & Elliot, 1990), this paper sets out to explore the characteristics of children's explanations of two natural phenomena: plant growth and rain formation.…”

“…Thus, preschoolers can be proficient in causal thinking and capable of applying physical causality to familiar objects, probably directly experienced by them, such as changes concerning plants. On the other hand, even older children revert to non-naturalistic causal explanations when an event is unfamiliar, i.e., beyond their direct experience, such as cloud formation and movement (Springer & Keil, 1991).…”