Video‐game training and naïve reasoning about object motion

Naïve conceptions and associated misconceptions about object motion arise in part from limitations on perceptual experience. Certain commercial video games, such as Enigmo, provide interactive experience with realistic trajectories and practice at purposefully manipulating those trajectories. We tested the possibility that this experience could modify naïve intuitions about object motion, bringing them into closer alignment with Newtonian principles of mechanics. Fifty‐one middle‐school children were randomly assigned to play either Enigmo or a strategy game for six sessions. Only the Enigmo group improved their ability to generate realistic trajectories, but this improvement was limited to learning about the general parabolic shape of trajectories. After training, both groups received a 30‐minute tutorial on Newtonian principles which generated a much larger improvement in producing realistic trajectories than did game play. This improvement was of similar magnitude in both training groups, indicating that gaming experience provided no advantage in deriving benefits from direct instruction. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's conceptions of mental illness: A naïve theory approach

This paper reports two studies that investigated children's conceptions of mental illness using a naïve theory approach, drawing upon a conceptual framework for analysing illness representations which distinguishes between the identity, causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of an illness. The studies utilized semi‐structured interviewing and card selection tasks to assess 6‐ to 11‐year‐old children's conceptions of the causes and consequences (Study 1) and the curability and timeline (Study 2) of different mental and physical illnesses/ailments. The studies revealed that, at all ages, the children held coherent causal–explanatory ideas about the causes, consequences, curability, and timeline of both mental and physical illnesses/ailments. However, while younger children tended to rely on their knowledge of common physical illnesses when thinking about mental illnesses, providing contagion and contamination explanations of cause, older children demonstrated differences in their thinking about mental and physical illnesses. No substantial gender differences were found in the children's thinking. It is argued that children hold coherent conceptions of mental illness at all ages, but that mental illness only emerges as an ontologically distinct conceptual domain by the end of middle childhood.     

Beyond naïve cue combination: salience and social cues in early word learning

Children learn their earliest words through social interaction, but it is unknown how much they rely on social information. Some theories argue that word learning is fundamentally social from its outset, with even the youngest infants understanding intentions and using them to infer a social partner's target of reference. In contrast, other theories argue that early word learning is largely a perceptual process in which young children map words onto salient objects. One way of unifying these accounts is to model word learning as weighted cue combination, in which children attend to many potential cues to reference, but only gradually learn the correct weight to assign each cue. We tested four predictions of this kind of naïve cue combination account, using an eye‐tracking paradigm that combines social word teaching and two‐alternative forced‐choice testing. None of the predictions were supported. We thus propose an alternative unifying account: children are sensitive to social information early, but their ability to gather and deploy this information is constrained by domain‐general cognitive processes. Developmental changes in children's use of social cues emerge not from learning the predictive power of social cues, but from the gradual development of attention, memory, and speed of information processing.     

Children and adolescents’ understandings of family resemblance: A study of naïve inheritance concepts

This paper aims to provide developmental data on two connected naïve inheritance concepts and to explore the coherence of children's naïve biology knowledge. Two tasks examined children and adolescents’ (4, 7, 10, and 14 years) conceptions of phenotypic resemblance across kin (in physical characteristics, disabilities, and personality traits). The first task required participants to predict and explain feature outcomes in both an offspring and a sibling, in a modified version of the phenotypic similarity task. In the second task, participants offered explanations for instances of parent‐offspring dissimilarity and grandparent‐offspring resemblance (phenotypic difference task). The inclusion of two tasks and a broad age range revealed significant age trends between 4 and 10 years in naïve inheritance concepts. However, there was little consistency in children's inheritance explanations within or across tasks. The findings are discussed with reference to debates concerning the development and structure of naïve biology concepts.     

The preference for symmetry in flower-naïve and not-so-naïve bumblebees

Truly flower-naïve bumblebees, with no prior rewarded experience for visits on any visual patterns outside the colony, were tested for their choice of bilaterally symmetric over asymmetric patterns in a radial-arm maze. No preference for symmetry was found. Prior training with rewarded black and white disks did, however, lead to a significant preference for symmetry. The preference was not specific to symmetry along the vertical axis: a preference for horizontal symmetry was found as well. The results challenge the notion that a preference for bilateral symmetry is unlearned. The preference for symmetry was the product of non-differential conditioning.     

Naïve Realism,Privileged Access,and Epistemic Safety

Working from a naïve‐realist perspective, I examine first‐person knowledge of one's perceptual experience. I outline a naive‐realist theory of how subjects acquire knowledge of the nature of their experiences, and I argue that naive realism is compatible with moderate, substantial forms of first‐person privileged access. A more general moral of my paper is that treating “success” states like seeing as genuine mental states does not break up the dynamics that many philosophers expect from the phenomenon of knowledge of the mind.     

Naïve Realism,Seeing Stars,and Perceiving the Past

It seems possible to see a star that no longer exists. Yet it also seems right to say that what no longer exists cannot be seen. We therefore face a puzzle, the traditional answer to which involves abandoning naïve realism in favour of a sense datum view. In this article, however, I offer a novel exploration of the puzzle within a naïve realist framework. As will emerge, the best option for naïve realists is to embrace an eternalist view of time, and claim that in the relevant case, one sees a still existent star‐stage located somewhere in the distant past.     

The Naïve Conception of Properties

The semantic rules that govern ordinary property discourse appear to give rise to a version of Russell's antinomy. Do we therefore have an inconsistent conception of properties? This paper firstly develops a consistent conception of properties and secondly argues that we may indeed interpret ordinary property discourse as expressing the consistent conception rather than an inconsistent one.     

Naïve definitions of action and inaction: The continuum,spread, and valence of behaviors

The cohesiveness of a society depends, in part, on how its individual members manage their daily activities with respect to the goals of that society. Hence, there should be a degree of social agreement on what constitutes action and what constitutes inaction. The present research investigated the structure of action and inaction definitions, the evaluation of action versus inaction, and individual differences in these evaluations. Action–inaction ratings of behaviors and states showed more social agreement at the ends of the inaction–action continuum than at the middle, suggesting a socially shared construal of this definition. Action–inaction ratings were also shown to correlate with the valence of the rated behaviors, such that the more active the behavior, the more positive its valence. Lastly, individual differences in locomotion, need for closure, and Christian religious beliefs correlated positively with a preference for action. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Naïve Groups Can Solve the Hidden‐Profile Problem

Research involving hidden‐profile tasks suggests that groups typically fail to detect hidden profiles. In previous studies, group members always considered the alternatives in the choice tasks prior to joining the group and, thus, entered discussions with preformed preferences (predecided groups). We set up a new condition, in which group members received their information regarding the choice alternatives at the beginning of their group session (naïve groups). When information was provided in the form of common rather than in the form of unique cues, naïve groups detected the hidden profile throughout. The results indicate that naïve groups are able to detect hidden profiles.     

Birth Defects,Causal Attributions,and Ethnicity in the National Birth Defects Prevention Study

In order to translate research findings into effective prevention strategies, it is important to understand people's beliefs about the causes of poor health outcomes. However, with the exception of knowledge and beliefs about folic acid supplementation, little is known regarding women's causal attributions women regarding birth defects. We employed Attribution Theory constructs to analyze open-text interview responses from 2,672 control mothers in the National Birth Defects Prevention Study who gave birth in 1997–2005. Common themes included use of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, and medications during pregnancy. Stress and emotional upset were also suggested as possible causes of birth defects. Genetic- and heredity-related responses were more likely to be mentioned by Asian/Pacific Islander women compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Hispanic women were less likely to suggest several specific possible teratogens, such as paint, pesticides, or other chemicals, but were more likely to suggest events occurring during childbirth. Differences also emerged among ethnic groups for theoretical constructs, although most responses were categorized as controllable, changeable over time, and with an internal locus of causality.     

Context-Specific Learning, Personality, and Birth Order

Most people believe that learning to get along (or not get along) with their siblings played an important role in shaping their personality, and that their position in the family—oldest, youngest, or in the middle—had lasting effects. Yet studies of birth order generally fail to support these beliefs. The apparent contradiction can be resolved by taking into account the context-specific nature of learned behavior. There is abundant evidence that people do not automatically transfer behavior from one context to another: They wait until they have evidence that what they learned in Context 1 will also be useful in Context 2. Because patterns of behavior acquired in the family of origin tend to be useless or inappropriate in other settings, birth order effects show up only in that context. Outside the family they grew up in, firstborns and later-borns are indistinguishable in personality.     

The Consistency of The Naïve Theory of Properties

If properties are to play a useful role in semantics, it is hard to avoid assuming the naïve theory of properties: for any predicate Θ(x), there is a property such that an object o has it if and only if Θ(o). Yet this appears to lead to various paradoxes. I show that no paradoxes arise as long as the logic is weakened appropriately; the main difficulty is finding a semantics that can handle a conditional obeying reasonable laws without engendering paradox. I employ a semantics which is infinite-valued, with the values only partially ordered. Can the solution be adapted to naïve set theory? Probably not, but limiting naïve comprehension in set theory is perfectly satisfactory, whereas this is not so in a property theory used for semantics.     

Naïve and Robust: Class‐Conditional Independence in Human Classification Learning

Humans excel in categorization. Yet from a computational standpoint, learning a novel probabilistic classification task involves severe computational challenges. The present paper investigates one way to address these challenges: assuming class‐conditional independence of features. This feature independence assumption simplifies the inference problem, allows for informed inferences about novel feature combinations, and performs robustly across different statistical environments. We designed a new Bayesian classification learning model (the dependence‐independence structure and category learning model, DISC‐LM) that incorporates varying degrees of prior belief in class‐conditional independence, learns whether or not independence holds, and adapts its behavior accordingly. Theoretical results from two simulation studies demonstrate that classification behavior can appear to start simple, yet adapt effectively to unexpected task structures. Two experiments—designed using optimal experimental design principles—were conducted with human learners. Classification decisions of the majority of participants were best accounted for by a version of the model with very high initial prior belief in class‐conditional independence, before adapting to the true environmental structure. Class‐conditional independence may be a strong and useful default assumption in category learning tasks.     

Two‐year‐olds’ naîve predictions for horizontal trajectories

Hood recently reported that preschool children overgeneralized the prediction that falling objects travel in a straight line in spite of extensive counter‐evidence that the object had been deviated to a non‐aligned box by a tube. This behaviour was interpreted as a na?^ve theory of gravity resulting from an overgeneralization derived from experience of falling objects. The current study set out to test whether there was also a significant tendency for 2‐year‐olds to predict that objects travel in a straight line in the horizontal plane. This was achieved by comparing search for an invisibly displaced object moving either vertically or horizontally. The findings confirmed a gravity bias for falling events but did not reveal a similar tendency in the horizontal condition. In the horizontal task, children were as likely to search at an incorrect non‐aligned box as an aligned incorrect box. This supports the interpretation of a na?^ve gravity bias present from at least 2 years of age.