“If it's in your mind, it's in your knowledge”: Children's developing anatomy of identity

Young Children's Changing Conceptualizations of Brain Function: Implications for Teaching Neuroscience in Early Elementary Settings

“…In contrast, 5-and 6-year-olds were much less likely to endorse this view and tended not to attribute human characteristics to the creature. In another study of children's responses to a series of vignettes about body=brain transformations (Corriveau et al, 2005), 7-year-olds (but not 5-year-olds) saw the continuity of the brain as being important for the preservation of characteristics such as the name, preferences, memory, and skills of the transformed character (see also Gottfried et al, 1999).…”

“…First, young children hear very few instances of the word brain in everyday conversation (Corriveau, Pasquini, & Harris, 2005). Second, because children cannot observe their own brains, they rely on others' testimony about them (Gelman, 2009).…”

When I Met my brain: Participating in a neuroimaging study influences children’s naïve mind–brain conceptions

“…Corriveau et al [15] observed in natural language that parents use the term mind more frequently than the term brain when they talk to their children about mental functions. In that case, parents certainly impart some misconceptions.…”

“…Children learn information about the brain through testimony [21] and often informally. The mind is included more often in reference to mental functions, whereas the brain is confined to cognition [15]. Developing neuroscience programs in schools may be useful to remediate to this misconception [17,22], modify implicit theories of intelligence, and improve motivation and academic learning in adolescents [23,24].…”

“…Older children judged that the new creature (i.e., a cat with a dog's brain) kept the behavioral properties or mental contents of the new brain (here, for instance, "It barks"). Corriveau et al [15] pursued this question by also exploring the role of the mind. Children were told stories in which a magical transformation occurred and resulted in a creature with either a mismatch between its mind and its body or a mismatch between its brain and its body (i.e., a magician turns the body of a character "Chris" into the body of a horse and leaves his mind or brain unchanged).…”