scholarly journals The emerging causal understanding of institutional objects

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Noyes ◽  
Frank Keil ◽  
Yarrow Dunham
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Physical Properties ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Social Collective

Institutional objects, such as money, drivers’ licenses, and borders, have functions because of their social roles rather than their immediate physical properties. These objects are causally different than standard artifacts (e.g. hammers, chairs, and cars), sharing more commonality with other social roles. Thus, they inform psychological theories of human-made objects as well as children’s emerging understanding of social reality. We examined whether children (N = 180, ages 4-9) differentiate institutional objects from standard artifacts. Specifically, we examine whether children understand that mutual intentions (i.e., the intentions of a social collective) underlie the functional affordances of institutional objects in ways that they do not for standard artifacts. We find that young children assimilate institutional objects into their intuitive theories of standard artifacts; children begin to differentiate between the domains in the elementary school years.

scholarly journals All Families Are Special: Experiences of Lesbian-Parented Families

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel T. Gall ◽  
Lia Softas-Nall ◽  
Kiersten M. Eberle
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Lesbian Couples ◽  
Dialectical Tension

This study explores the lived experiences of members of lesbian-parented families incorporating a systemic perspective to include both the voices of mothers and their young children. Eight whole-family interviews were conducted with lesbian couples with at least one child in elementary school (aged 5–11). Six themes emerged from the study: intentionality in finding places to live and travel, having children, and having discussions with their children; views of themselves as advocates and being “out” in their communities; noticing how times are changing; identifying assumptions as a two-way street; perceptions of gender surrounding parenting and the salience of various identities; and the dialectical tension between wanting to be perceived as normal and wanting to acknowledge their uniqueness. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Metabolic Syndrome Among Elementary School Young Children

Epidemiology ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (Suppl) ◽  
pp. S410
Author(s):  
B Park ◽  
K Kong ◽  
J Min ◽  
J Hong ◽  
S Lee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Metabolic Syndrome ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Environmental Tobacco Smoke ◽  
Tobacco Smoke

scholarly journals The scope and limits of overimitation in the transmission of artefact culture

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1567) ◽  
pp. 1158-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek E. Lyons ◽  
Diana H. Damrosch ◽  
Jennifer K. Lin ◽  
Deanna M. Macris ◽  
Frank C. Keil
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Learning Function ◽  
Intentional Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Learning Processes ◽  
Unfamiliar Object

Children are generally masterful imitators, both rational and flexible in their reproduction of others' actions. After observing an adult operating an unfamiliar object, however, young children will frequently overimitate , reproducing not only the actions that were causally necessary but also those that were clearly superfluous. Why does overimitation occur? We argue that when children observe an adult intentionally acting on a novel object, they may automatically encode all of the adult's actions as causally meaningful. This process of automatic causal encoding (ACE) would generally guide children to accurate beliefs about even highly opaque objects. In situations where some of an adult's intentional actions were unnecessary, however, it would also lead to persistent overimitation. Here, we undertake a thorough examination of the ACE hypothesis, reviewing prior evidence and offering three new experiments to further test the theory. We show that children will persist in overimitating even when doing so is costly (underscoring the involuntary nature of the effect), but also that the effect is constrained by intentionality in a manner consistent with its posited learning function. Overimitation may illuminate not only the structure of children's causal understanding, but also the social learning processes that support our species' artefact-centric culture.

scholarly journals Developmental Disconnects: Adults and Teachers Deprioritize Mechanistic Content when Introducing Young Children to STEM

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Betz ◽  
Amanda McCarthy ◽  
Frank Keil
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
School Science ◽  
Experienced Teachers ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Science Content ◽  
Learning Abilities ◽  
Mechanistic Explanations ◽  
Functional Explanations ◽  
K 12

How do adults consider explaining science to young children? We examined adult prioritization of different kinds of explanatory science content when teaching young children both in and outside of the classroom. Across five studies, we predicted and found that adults and K-12 teachers deprioritized mechanistic content relative to comparatively superficial content (e.g., labels and functional explanations) when introducing areas of science to young school age children. Beyond perceiving mechanistic explanations to be relatively infrequent in elementary school science curricula, adults appear to perceive mechanistic content as excessively challenging for students, reporting that in-depth, mechanistic content is less important for early elementary school children to learn compared to broader, superficial content. The same misperceptions were found among experienced teachers and lay adults, suggesting a general intuition that science learning should start with relatively superficial content before describing causal relations that produce a scientific phenomenon. These findings contradict widely adopted educational standards emphasizing the importance of in-depth content such as mechanistic explanations. Such in-depth, mechanistic content supports children’s scientific engagement, combats potential misconceptions, and bolsters future learning. Despite this, lay adults and experienced teachers support teaching science to young children in ways that do not fit with children’s learning abilities and interests.

scholarly journals Young children do not require perceptual-motor feedback to solve Aesop’s Fable tasks

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e3484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachael Miller ◽  
Sarah A. Jelbert ◽  
Elsa Loissel ◽  
Alex H. Taylor ◽  
Nicola S. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Water Level ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Water Levels ◽  
Current Experiment ◽  
Water Displacement ◽  
Tube Size ◽  
Causal Understanding ◽  
Object Properties

Aesop’s Fable tasks—in which subjects drop objects into a water-filled tube to raise the water level and obtain out-of-reach floating rewards —have been used to test for causal understanding of water displacement in both young children and non-human animals. However, a number of alternative explanations for success on these tasks have yet to be ruled out. One hypothesis is that subjects may respond to perceptual-motor feedback: repeating those actions that bring the reward incrementally closer. Here, we devised a novel, forced-choice version of the Aesop’s Fable task to assess whether subjects can solve water displacement tasks when this type of feedback is removed. Subjects had to select only one set of objects, or one type of tube, into which all objects were dropped at once, and the effect the objects had on the water level was visually concealed. In the current experiment, fifty-five 5–9 year old children were tested in six different conditions in which we either varied object properties (floating vs. sinking, hollow vs. solid, large vs. small and too large vs. small objects), the water level (high vs. low) and/or the tube size (narrow vs. wide). We found that children aged 8–9 years old were able to solve most of the water displacement tasks on their first trial, without any opportunity for feedback, suggesting that they mentally simulated the results of their actions before making a choice. Children aged 5–7 years solved two conditions on their first trial (large vs. small objects and high- vs. low-water levels), and learnt to solve most of the remaining conditions over five trials. The developmental pattern shown here is comparable to previous studies using the standard Aesop’s Fable task, where eight year olds are typically successful from their first trial and 5–7 year olds learn to pass over five trials. Thus, our results indicate that children do not depend on perceptual-motor feedback to solve these water displacement tasks. The forced-choice paradigm we describe could be used comparatively to test whether or not non-human animals require visual feedback to solve water displacement tasks.

scholarly journals Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-Five Cents: A Story About Choices by K. Cole

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patti Sherbaniuk
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Youth Advocacy ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
School Yard

Cole, Kathryn.  Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-Five Cents: A Story About Choices. Illus. Qin Leng. Second Story Press: Toronto, 2015. Print.Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-Five Cents. A Story About Choices is part of the I am a Great Little Kid Series by Second Story Press, published in conjunction with Boost Child & Youth Advocacy Centre.Fifteen Dollars and Thirty-Five Cents tells a simple story, yet successfully brings across some bigger themes. It takes place at an elementary school. Joseph, who is with his friend Devon, finds some money in the school yard- fifteen dollars and thirty-five cents. He is very excited and wants to keep it, but Devon has second thoughts and thinks that someone they know might have lost it and that they should turn it in. Joseph says “finders’ keepers” and offers Devon five of the dollars not to tell. Devon is very tempted but then sees his classmate Lin crying and has the feeling that it is her money they have found. His suspicion is confirmed when they are back in the classroom and the teacher, Ms. Crosby, asks sad Lin what is wrong. Lin’s friend Claire says it was money for her mother’s birthday present that she has been saving for weeks. Devon is increasingly uncomfortable but Joseph pressures him to stay quiet because they are friends and because he is also worried that people will think he stole it. The teacher suspects something and gives Devon a chance to explain what has happened. He doesn’t tell on his friend but lets his teacher know her suspicions are correct. Ms. Claire comes up with a way for Devon and Joseph to give the money back without them getting in trouble and everyone is happy with the outcome.The story is simple but gets the point across about making the right choices, about friendship, honesty, and “doing the right thing”, without being too preachy. The cast of characters are diverse and the issues dealt with in the story are ones that kids can relate to.The illustrations by Qin Leng are vibrant and colourful and enhance the telling of the story. I would recommend this book for young children from ages 5-8 years of age.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Patti SherbaniukPatti is a Liaison Librarian at the Winspear School of Business at the University of Alberta. She holds a BA in English and an MLIS, both from the University of Alberta. She is passionate about food, travel, the arts and reading books of all shapes and sizes.

scholarly journals Monkey’s Friends by R. Brown

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Young Children ◽  
School Libraries ◽  
Health Sciences ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
The University

Brown, Ruth. Monkey’s Friends.  [London, England], Andersen Press Ltd, 2012. Print. Prolific English children’s author/illustrator Ruth Brown has created a delightful book in Monkey’s Friends. It is a simple rhymed text telling the story of monkey going through the forest, meeting different animals and greeting them. Each two page spread shows monkey greeting an animal whom we can see peeking out of the bushes. Every facing page is covered by a half-page flap. When the half-page is turned, the hidden animal is revealed and the animal’s name is printed on the flap. Brown’s acrylic paintings are fun. Monkey is doing something different in each image.  Sometimes he hangs by his tail. Other times he is sitting on a branch or a rock or peering through grass. Each time his expression is alive. Brown also does an excellent job of communicating motion in her paintings. When you lift the flap to see crocodile, he seems to explode out of the water and you see water flying in all directions. While Brown’s animals are realistic, her vegetation is quite unusual. The leaves are highly-textured and look like they might have been done with block prints. The vegetation seems to be simultaneously dense and see-through. The result is a bright and colourful environment for Monkey and his friends. Young children will enjoy looking for the hidden animals and finding them when the flap is turned. Highly recommended for public and elementary school libraries. Recommendation:  4 stars out of 4 Reviewer:  Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

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