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 Value of Perception

This paper develops a form of transcendental naïve realism. According to naïve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naïve realism, the naïve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. Rather, naïve realism enjoys a special status in debates in the philosophy of perception because it represents part of the transcendental project of explaining how it is possible that perceptual experience has the distinctive characteristics it does. One of the potentially most interesting prospects of adopting a transcendental attitude towards naïve realism is that it promises to make the naïve realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental naïve realism modelled loosely on the account of the reactive attitudes provided by Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, and suggests one way of understanding the claim that naïve realism is immune to falsification.     

Forecasting outcomes of the World Cup 2006 in football: Performance and confidence of bettors and laypeople

ObjectivesMotivated by a paucity of research on sports forecasting, this paper examines how well individuals with varying degrees of relevant knowledge predict football (soccer) and how much confidence they have in their predictions.Design and procedureThree groups of participants (110 art students, 81 sports students, and 85 bettors) representing three levels of knowledge (poor, moderate, and expert) performed five forecasting tasks with relation to the outcome of the first round of the World Cup 2006. The tasks were assumed to reflect different degrees of complexity. About half of the participants obtained relevant information (world rankings). The participants stated their confidence in connection to conducting those tasks.ResultsWhereas the groups had roughly similar levels of performance in three tasks (i.e., predicting the teams qualifying for the second round as well as two types of match statistics), the knowledgeable and expert participants were better at predicting scores and percentage of ball possession in the matches than the naïve participants. Relatively few participants performed better than the simple rule that followed world rankings. Regardless of task complexity, the knowledgeable and expert participants were found to be significantly more confident about their forecasts than the naïve participants. Access to information had limited influence on forecasting performance and confidence.ConclusionThe present study shows that the forecasting performance of football experts and laypeople varies dependent on task. For easy tasks, they tend to predict equally well, partly because laypeople might use well-adapted heuristics. Once the prediction tasks become more difficult, the experts may take advantage of their domain-specific skills and produce forecasts that excel those of the laypeople.     

How to achieve synergy in group decision making: Lessons to be learned from the hidden profile paradigm

Based on over 25 years of research on hidden profiles and information sharing in groups, and particularly our own work in this area, we outline a general model of how groups can achieve better decisions in a hidden profile situation than their individual members would have been capable of (i.e., synergy). At its core the model defines intensity and bias as the two key parameters that have to be optimised with regard to both the discussion of information and the processing of information in order to ensure synergy in group decision making. We review the empirical literature on information sharing and group decision making in the hidden profile paradigm (with a particular focus on our own studies) to illustrate how group decision quality can be enhanced by increasing intensity and decreasing bias in the discussion and processing of information. Finally we also outline why we think that the lessons learned from research using the hidden profile paradigm can be generalised to group decision-making research in general, and how these lessons can stimulate studies in other fields of group decision-making and group performance research.     

The dissemination of critical,unshared information in decision‐making groups: the effects of pre‐discussion dissent

Previous research in group decision making has found that in situations of a hidden profile (i.e. the best choice alternative is hidden from individual members as they consider their pre‐discussion information), unshared information is disproportionately neglected and sub‐optimal group choices are highly likely. In an experimental study, three‐person groups decided which of three candidates to select for a professorial appointment. We hypothesised that minority dissent in pre‐discussion preferences improves the consideration of unshared information in groups and increases the discovery rate of hidden profiles. As predicted, consideration of unshared information increased with minority dissent. The expectation of an improvement of group decision quality was partially supported. In diversity groups (i.e. each member prefers a different alternative) consideration of unshared information and group decision quality was significantly higher than in simple minority groups. Results are discussed in the light of theories of minority influence. The benefits of using the hidden profile paradigm with minority and diversity groups for theory development in the area of group decision making are highlighted. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preference-consistent evaluation of information in the hidden profile paradigm: beyond group-level explanations for the dominance of shared information in group decisions

Common explanations for the failure of groups to solve so-called hidden profiles focus on group processes, namely insufficient discussion of unshared information and premature consensus on a suboptimal alternative. As 2 experiments show, even in the absence of such group processes, hidden profiles are hardly ever solved. In Experiment 1, participants first received individual information about a personnel selection task and then read a group discussion protocol containing full information exchange. If the individual information was misleading (hidden profile), most participants failed to detect the correct alternative. In Experiment 2, it was determined that this effect is due to preference-consistent evaluation of information that constitutes an individual-level process mediating the failure of group members to solve hidden profiles.     

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.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The usual and the unusual suspects: level of suspicion and counter-interrogation tactics

The present study investigated guilty mock-suspects' counter-interrogation tactics with respect to the disclosure of possibly self-incriminating information, specifically, to what extent the disclosure of this information was moderated by (1) the suspects' criminal experience (naïve versus experienced) and (2) the degree of suspicion directed towards the suspects (low versus high). We found that experienced (versus naïve) suspects volunteered less self-incriminating information in an initial free recall phase. In a similar vein, when asked crime-specific questions, naïve (versus experienced) suspects admitted having committed more actions fitting with the crime under investigation. Furthermore, experienced suspects' willingness to report information was not affected by the degree of suspicion, whereas naïve suspects in a high-suspicion (versus low-suspicion) condition were more willing to report information. The results were discussed in the light of the psychology of guilt, the Strategic Use of Evidence technique for detecting deception, and the (over)use of naïve suspects as mock-suspects in psycho-legal research. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Communication of Naïve Theories of the Social World in Parent–Child Conversation

Three studies examined the communication of naïve theories of social groups in conversations between parents and their 4-year-old children (N = 48). Parent–child dyads read and discussed a storybook in which they either explained why past social interactions had occurred (Study 1) or evaluated whether future social interactions should occur (Studies 2 and 3). In all 3 studies, the content of parents’ and children's explanations reflected an intuitive theory of social groups as markers of intrinsic obligations, whereby individuals are obligated to avoid harm to and direct positive actions toward their in-group members. Furthermore, Studies 2 and 3 suggested that when discussing the normative obligations that guide behavior, parents covertly reinforce their children's developing beliefs about social categories. Implications for the development of social cognition are discussed.     

Naïve Realism,Hallucination, and Causation: A New Response to the Screening Off Problem

This paper sets out a novel response to the ‘screening off’ problem for naïve realism. The aim is to resist the claim (which many naïve realists accept) that the kind of experience involved in hallucinating also occurs during perception, by arguing that there are causal constraints that must be met if an hallucinatory experience is to occur, ones that are never met in perceptual cases. Notably, given this response, it turns out that, contra current orthodoxy, naïve realists need not adopt any particular view about the psychological nature of hallucinatory experience to handle the screening off problem. Consequently, room opens up for naïve realists to endorse whatever theory of hallucinatory experience seems to best capture the distinctive nature of such episodes.     

The intuitive case for naïve realism

Naïve realism, the view that perceptual experiences are irreducible relations between subjects and external objects, has intuitive appeal, but this intuitive appeal is sometimes thought to be undermined by the possibility of certain kinds of hallucinations. In this paper, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism, and explain why this intuitive case is not undermined by the possibility of such hallucinations. Specifically, I present the intuitive case for naïve realism as arguing that the only way to make sense of the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences is by means of a naïve realist ontology. I then explain why this intuitive argument is not undermined by the possibility of hallucinatory experiences that possess the phenomenal character associated with perceptual experiences but, being hallucinations, do not have the ontological nature specified by naïve realism.     

On What Empiricism Cannot Be

Bas C. van Fraassen, in his Terry Lectures at Yale University (subsequently published as The Empirical Stance), is concerned to elucidate what empiricism is, and could be, given past and current failures of characterization. He contends that naïve empiricism—the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of a thesis—is self‐refuting, and he offers a reductio ad absurdum to substantiate this claim. Moreover, in place of naïve empiricism, van Fraassen endorses stance empiricism: the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of certain attitudes and commitments. The present article, however, argues that van Fraassen begs the question in his reductio of naïve empiricism, and thus that his primary defense of stance empiricism is inadequate.     

Naïve realism and capturing the “wisdom of dyads”

Two studies provided evidence for the role of naïve realism in the failure of individuals to give adequate weight to peer input, and explored two strategies for reducing the impact of this inferential bias. Study 1 demonstrated that dyad members see their own estimates as more “objective” than those of their partners and that this difference in perceived objectivity predicts the degree of underweighting. Compelling participants to assess their own versus their partners' objectivity prior to revising estimates decreased underweighting, an effect that was mediated by differences in perceived objectivity. Study 2 showed that the increase in accuracy that results from requiring dyad members to offer joint estimates via discussion is largely retained in subsequent individual estimates. Both studies showed that underweighting is greater when dyad members disagree on the issue about which they are making consensus estimates—a finding that further supports a “naïve realism” interpretation of the phenomenon.     

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.     

Concepts of kinship relations and inheritance in childhood and adolescence

This paper examines the development and consistency of children's (4, 7, 10, and 14 years) naïve concepts of inheritance using three tasks. A modified adoption task asked participants to distinguish between biological and social parentage in their predictions and explanations of the origins of different feature types (physical characteristics, disabilities, and personality traits). The causal mechanisms task asked participants to rate their preference for various mechanisms of inheritance for physical features. The family relatedness task required participants to provide judgements on the relatedness of family members and explain their understanding of kinship terms. Developmental trends were revealed in all three tasks. There was a trend towards increased consistency in judgements across tasks with age, but low correlations between explanations given in different task contexts. Findings are discussed with reference to the onset and variability of inheritance concepts and the implications for education and future research.     

Comprehension of human pointing gestures in young human-reared wolves (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis lupus</Emphasis>) and dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>)

Dogs have a remarkable skill to use human-given cues in object-choice tasks, but little is known to what extent their closest wild-living relative, the wolf can achieve this performance. In Study 1, we compared wolf and dog pups hand-reared individually and pet dogs of the same age in their readiness to form eye-contact with a human experimenter in an object-choice task and to follow her pointing gesture. The results showed that dogs already at 4 months of age use momentary distal pointing to find hidden food even without intensive early socialization. Wolf pups, on the contrary, do not attend to this subtle pointing. Accordingly in Studies 2 and 3, these wolves were tested longitudinally with this and four other (easier) human-given cues. This revealed that wolves socialized at a comparable level to dogs are able to use simple human-given cues spontaneously if the human’s hand is close to the baited container (e.g. touching, proximal pointing). Study 4 showed that wolves can follow also momentary distal pointing similarly to dogs if they have received extensive formal training. Comparing the wolves to naïve pet dogs of the same age revealed that during several months of formal training wolves can reach the level of dogs in their success of following momentary distal pointing in parallel with improving their readiness to form eye-contact with a human experimenter. We assume that the high variability in the wolves’ communicative behaviour might have provided a basis for selection during the course of domestication of the dog.     

Taking a naïve other's perspective to debias the hindsight bias: Did it backfire?

Hindsight bias is a phenomenon that occurs when outcome knowledge interferes with the ability to accurately recall judgments made in a previous, naïve state. Also known as the “knew it all along” bias, we aimed to diminish the bias by having individuals take the perspective of a naïve other, as a way of encouraging acceptance that they had, in fact, not known it all along. Adult participants were given blurry-to-clear images incrementally until they were able to identify the object and were then re-presented with the same sequence of images and asked to make a judgment about when they had identified the item correctly the first time. They were also asked to judge when they thought a naïve peer (Experiments 1 and 2), or a naïve child (Experiment 2) could identify the objects. Results showed a robust hindsight bias in all perspectives, and sporadic success at eliminating the bias. When taking the perspective of a naïve peer, there were failures and successes; when taking the perspective of a naïve child, there was an ultra-debiasing, or a reverse hindsight bias. However, did the manipulation backfire? We conclude that while the manipulation of thinking like a naïve child may have eliminated the bias, participants seemed to use an “adults know best” rule rather than accepting past naivete for themselves.     

Group decision making in hidden profile situations: dissent as a facilitator for decision quality

The effect of diversity in individual prediscussion preferences on group decision quality was examined in an experiment in which 135 three-person groups worked on a personnel selection case with 4 alternatives. The information distribution among group members constituted a hidden profile (i.e., the correct solution was not identifiable on the basis of the members' individual information and could be detected only by pooling and integrating the members' unique information). Whereas groups with homogeneous suboptimal prediscussion preferences (no dissent) hardly ever solved the hidden profile, solution rates were significantly higher in groups with prediscussion dissent, even if none of these individual prediscussion preferences were correct. If dissent came from a proponent of the correct solution, solution rates were even higher than in dissent groups without such a proponent. The magnitude of dissent (i.e., minority dissent or full diversity of individual preferences) did not affect decision quality. The beneficial effect of dissent on group decision quality was mediated primarily by greater discussion intensity and to some extent also by less discussion bias in dissent groups.     

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.