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Where Is the Essence? Developmental Shifts in Children's Beliefs about Internal Features
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Newman, George E.; Keil, Frank C. – Child Development, 2008
The present studies investigated children's and adults' intuitive beliefs about the physical nature of essences. Adults and children (ranging in age from 6 to 10 years old) were asked to reason about 2 different ways of determining an unknown object's category: taking a tiny internal sample from any part of the object (distributed view of essence)…
Descriptors: Beliefs, Child Development, Intuition, Adults
Children's Understanding of Knowledge Acquisition: The Tendency for Children to Report That They Have Always Known What They Have Just Learned.
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Taylor, Marjorie; And Others – Child Development, 1994
Four experiments investigated children's ability to notice and remember events in which the acquisition of factual information occurs. Results indicated that children tend to report they have known newly learned information for a long time, suggesting that children have some understanding of knowledge acquisition, but not at the level of adults.…
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, Child Development, Cognitive Development, Cognitive Processes
Dimensional Strategies Dominate Perceptual Classification.
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Thompson, Laura A. – Child Development, 1994
Examined the nature of perceptual classification in children and young adults. Found that most children attend selectively to one stimulus dimension when making perceptual classification judgments. Suggests that this developmental trend does not appear to be a holistic-to-analytic shift but rather a trend toward greater consistency in following a…
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, Child Development, Children, Classification
The Mind's "I": Children's Conception of the Mind as an Active Agent.
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Wellman, Henry M.; Hickling, Anne K. – Child Development, 1994
Presents the results of three studies examining children's conception of the mind itself as an independent, active entity. Findings revealed a developing ability in children to interpret and produce statements personifying the mind and provided considerable evidence of children's movement toward a conception of the mind as an active agent…
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, Child Development, Cognitive Development, Cognitive Processes
Developing Theories of Mind: Understanding Concepts and Relations between Mental Activities.
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Schwanenflugel, Paula J.; And Others – Child Development, 1994
Examined 8- and 10-year olds' understanding of the unique features of and potential relations among mental activities. Found a developing tendency to organize mental activities on the degree to which memory was a component of the activity. Results suggest that a constructivist theory of mind develops in later childhood. (AA)
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, Child Development, Children, Cognitive Development
The Effect of Relationship on Children's Distributive Justice Reasoning.
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McGillicuddy-De Lisi, Ann V.; And Others – Child Development, 1994
Investigated how children's decisions about allocating money to story characters were affected by the relationship (friends versus strangers) among the characters. Children's rationales for their decisions showed that equality was the most salient principle for decisions at all ages and that older children provided rationales based on benevolence…
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, Age Differences, Child Development, Children
Seeing Is Believing: Children's Explanations of Commonplace, Magical, and Extraordinary Transformations.
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Rosengren, Karl S.; Hickling, Anne K. – Child Development, 1994
Children's magical explanations and beliefs were investigated in two studies. Found that many four-year olds view magic as a plausible mechanism, yet reserve magical explanations for certain real world events that violate their causal expectations. Parents and culture at large may at first actively support magical beliefs whereas peers and schools…
Descriptors: Abstract Reasoning, Attribution Theory, Beliefs, Child Development