Deborah Kelemen

Are Children “Intuitive Theists”? Reasoning About Purpose and Design in Nature

Separate bodies of research suggest that young children have a broad tendency to reason about natural phenomena in terms of purpose and an orientation toward intention-based accounts of the origins of natural entities. This article explores these results further by drawing together recent findings from various areas of cognitive developmental research to address the following question: Rather than being “artificialists” in Piagetian terms, are children “intuitive theists”—disposed to view natural phenomena as resulting from nonhuman design? A review of research on childrens concepts of agency, imaginary companions, and understanding of artifacts suggests that by the time children are around 5 years of age, this description of them may have explanatory value and practical relevance.

Why Are Rocks Pointy? Children's Preference for Teleological Explanations of the Natural World.

Teleological explanations are based on the assumption that an object or behavior exists for a purpose. Two studies explored the tendency of adults and first-, second-, and fourth-grade elementary-school children to explain the properties of living and nonliving natural kinds in teleological terms. Consistent with the hypothesis that young children possess a promiscuous teleological tendency, Study 1 found that children were more likely than adults to broadly explain the properties of both living and nonliving natural kinds in teleological terms, although the kinds of functions that they endorsed varied with age. Study 2 was an attempt to reduce childrens broad teleological bias by introducing a pretrial that described, in nonteleological terms, the physical process by which nonliving natural kinds form. In spite of this attempt, Study 2 replicated the effects of Study 1, with only fourth graders showing any shift in preference for teleological explanation.

Inferring Design Evidence of a Preference for Teleological Explanations in Patients With Alzheimer's Disease

Unlike educated adults, young children demonstrate a “promiscuous” tendency to explain objects and phenomena by reference to functions, endorsing what are called teleological explanations. This tendency becomes more selective as children acquire increasingly coherent beliefs about causal mechanisms, but it is unknown whether a widespread preference for teleology is ever truly outgrown. The study reported here investigated this question by examining explanatory judgments in patients with Alzheimers disease (AD), whose dementia affects the rich causal beliefs adults typically consult in evaluating explanations. The results indicate that unlike healthy adults, AD patients systematically and promiscuously prefer teleological explanations, suggesting that an underlying tendency to construe the world in terms of functions persists throughout life. This finding has broad relevance not only to understanding conceptual impairments in AD, but also to theories of development, learning, and conceptual change. Moreover, this finding sheds light on the intuitive appeal of creationism.

Developmental Continuity in Teleo-Functional Explanation: Reasoning about Nature among Romanian Romani Adults.

Teleo-functional explanations account for objects in terms of purpose, helping us understand objects such as pencils (for writing) and body parts such as ears (for hearing). Western-educated adults restrict teleo-functional attributions to artifact, biological, and behavioral phenomena, considering such explanations less appropriate for nonliving natural entities. In contrast, children extend explanations of purpose to the nonliving natural domain. This cross-cultural study explores whether apparent restrictions in“promiscuous teleology” occur as a function of age and development, generally, or scientific literacy, more specifically. Using methodology from Kelemen (1999b), two groups of adult Romanian Roma from the same community selected explanations for properties of biological and nonbiological natural entities; one group had little or no science training, the other was formally schooled. Compared to their schooled peers and to Western-educated American adults, nonschooled Romani adults were more likely to endorse purpose-based explanations of nonbiological natural entities. Findings challenge assumptions of fundamental conceptual discontinuities between children and adults.

Young Children Can Be Taught Basic Natural Selection Using a Picture-Storybook Intervention

Adaptation by natural selection is a core mechanism of evolution. It is also one of the most widely misunderstood scientific processes. Misconceptions are rooted in cognitive biases found in preschoolers, yet concerns about complexity mean that adaptation by natural selection is generally not comprehensively taught until adolescence. This is long after untutored theoretical misunderstandings are likely to have become entrenched. In a novel approach, we explored 5- to 8-year-olds’ capacities to learn a basic but theoretically coherent mechanistic explanation of adaptation through a custom storybook intervention. Experiment 1 showed that children understood the population-based logic of natural selection and also generalized it. Furthermore, learning endured 3 months later. Experiment 2 replicated these results and showed that children understood and applied an even more nuanced mechanistic causal explanation. The findings demonstrate that, contrary to conventional educational wisdom, basic natural selection is teachable in early childhood. Theory-driven interventions using picture storybooks with rich explanatory structure are beneficial.

Preschool Children's Views on Emotion Regulation: Functional Associations and Implications for Social-Emotional Adjustment.

Previous studies show that preschool children view negative emotions as susceptible to intentional control. However, the extent of this understanding and links with child social-emotional adjustment are poorly understood. To examine this, 62 3- and 4-year-olds were presented with puppet scenarios in which characters experienced anger, sadness, and fear. Forty-seven adults were presented with a parallel questionnaire. Participants rated the degree to which six emotion-regulation strategies were effective in decreasing negative emotions. Results showed that even the youngest preschoolers viewed cognitive and behavioral distraction and repairing the situation as relatively effective; compared to adults, however, preschoolers favored relatively “ineffective” strategies such as venting and rumination. Children also showed a functional view of emotion regulation; that effective strategies depend on the emotion being regulated. All participants favored repairing a negative situation to reduce anger and behavioral distraction to reduce sadness and fear. Finally, the more children indicated that venting would reduce negative emotions, the lower their maternal report of social skills. Findings are discussed in terms of functional emotion theory and implications of emotion-regulation understanding for child adjustment.

Children's Conformity When Acquiring Novel Conventions: The Case of Artifacts

Prior research focused on childrens acquisition of arbitrary social conventions (e.g., object labels) has revealed that both 3- and 4-year-old children conform to majority opinion. Two studies explored whether children show similar conformist tendencies when making category-based judgments about a less socially arbitrary domain that offers an objective basis for judgment: object functions. Three- and 4-year-old children watched a video in which two informants disagreed with a lone dissenter on the function of a novel artifact. Children were asked to categorize the object by stating with whom they agreed. The plausibility of the majoritys response was manipulated across test trials. Results demonstrated that children were more likely to agree with the majority when majority and minority opinions were equally plausible, especially when the majority demonstrated an overt consensus. However, 4-year-olds actively eschewed the majority opinion when it was implausible in context of the artifacts functional design. The current results indicate that expertise in a domain of conventional knowledge reduces conformist tendencies.

Teleo-functional constraints on preschool children's reasoning about living things

These studies explore the degree to which preschool children employ teleological-functional reasoning ‐ reasoning based on the assumption of function and design ‐ when making inferences about animal behavior. Using a triad induction method, Study 1 examined whether a sensitivity to biological function would lead children to overlook overall similarity and instead attend to relevant functional cues (in the presence of overall dissimilarity), as a basis for generalizing behavioral properties to unfamiliar animals. It found that, between 3 and 4 years of age, children, with increasing consistency, attend to functional features rather than overall similarity when drawing inferences about animal behavior. Children’s ability to describe the relevance of functional adaptations to animal behavior also increased with age. Study 2 explored whether Study 1 findings might result from stimulus biases in favor of the function-based choice. It found that children’s attention shifted from functional features to overall similarity when generalizing labels rather than behaviors with the same triads. These results are discussed in relation to the development of biological knowledge.

The Designing Mind: Children's Reasoning About Intended Function and Artifact Structure

There is currently debate about the emergence of childrens ability to reason about artifacts by reference to their intended design. We present two studies demonstrating that, while 3-year-olds have emerging insights, 4-year-old children display an explicit, well-rounded, adult-like understanding of the way design constrains an artifacts physical structure. Study 1 examined childrens recognition that designers generally create artifacts with structures that are optimally efficient for achieving their intended function. Three- and 4-year-olds explored pairs of objects—one physically optimal and one suboptimal for a given function—and judged which one had been designed for the purpose. Despite both age groups recognizing the relative physical optimality of the objects, only 4-year-olds judged the optimal tool as designed for the function. Study 2 examined childrens recognition that designers generally create artifacts with structures that primarily subserve a single intended function rather than other functions. Participants explored pairs of objects that were equally physically optimal for a given purpose; however, one object had additional salient features suggestive of an alternative function. Both 3- and 4-year-olds recognized the equivalent physical optimality of the objects. Both also showed evidence of explicit design understanding, identifying the more physically specific tool as created for the function. Implications for childrens broad functional attributions to artifacts and natural phenomena are discussed.

Cultural influences on the teleological stance: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Recent research has suggested that humans have a robust tendency to default to teleological (i.e., purpose-based) explanations of natural phenomena. However, because samples have previously been heavily drawn from Western cultures, it is unclear whether this is a universal cognitive bias or whether prior findings are a product of Western philosophical and theological traditions. We evaluated these possibilities by administering a speeded judgment task to adults in China – a country that underwent nearly 40 years of institutionally enforced atheism in the Maoist era and which has markedly different cultural beliefs than those found in Western societies. Results indicated that Chinese adults, like Western adults, have a propensity to favor scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations under processing constraints. However, results also yielded suggestive evidence that Chinese culture may attenuate baseline tendencies to be teleological. Overall, this study provides the strongest evidence to date of the cross-cultural robustness of a teleological explanatory bias.