The persuasiveness puzzle about bootstrapping

This paper aims at resolving a puzzle about the persuasiveness of bootstrapping. On the one hand, bootstrapping is not a persuasive method of settling questions about the reliability of a source. On the other hand, our beliefs that our sense apparatus is reliable is based on other empirically formed beliefs, that is, they are acquired via a presumably complex bootstrapping process. I will argue that when we doubt the reliability of a source, bootstrapping is not a persuasive method for coming to believe that the source is reliable. However, when being initially unaware of a source and its reliability, as in the case of forming beliefs about our sense apparatus, bootstrapping can be eventually persuasive.     

The role of inhibitory control in the development of analogical reasoning: From general to specific

This study examined the role of inhibitory control in the development of analogical reasoning using inter-task priming paradigms. In Experiment 1, 25 seven-year-olds, 27 nine-year-olds, and 27 adults completed Stroop tasks, which activated general inhibitory control ability, before analogical reasoning tasks. Children and adults performed faster on analogical reasoning tasks when they were primed by Stroop tasks. This priming effect was found to be stronger in children than in adults. In Experiment 2, 25 seven-year-olds, 28 nine-year-olds, and 28 adults completed relative number matching tasks, a more task-relevant inhibitory control task, before analogical reasoning tasks. The children and adults performed faster on analogical reasoning tasks when primed by relative number matching tasks. The priming effect was greater in seven-year-olds than in nine-year-olds and was greater in nine-year-olds than in adults. Thus, inhibitory control, whether assessed with general or specific tasks, played a priming role in analogical reasoning.     

Developmental Changes in Strategies for Gathering Evidence About Biological Kinds

How do people gather samples of evidence to learn about the world? Adults often prefer to sample evidence from diverse sources—for example, choosing to test a robin and a turkey to find out if something is true of birds in general. Children below age 9, however, often do not consider sample diversity, instead treating non-diverse samples (e.g., two robins) and diverse samples as equivalently informative. The current study (N = 247) found that this discontinuity stems from developmental changes in standards for evaluating evidence—younger children chose to learn from samples that best approximate idealized views of what category members are supposed to be like (e.g., the fastest cheetahs), with a gradual shift across age toward samples that cover more within-category variation (e.g., cheetahs of varying speeds). These findings have implications for the relation between conceptual structure and inductive reasoning, and for the mechanisms underlying inductive reasoning more generally.     

Young infants' reasoning about hidden objects: evidence from violation-of-expectation tasks with test trials only

The present research examined alternative accounts of prior violation-of-expectation (VOE) reports that young infants can represent and reason about hidden objects. According to these accounts, young infants' apparent success in these VOE tasks reflects only novelty and familiarity preferences induced by the habituation or familiarization trials in the tasks. In two experiments, 4-month-old infants were tested in VOE tasks with test trials only. The infants still gave evidence that they could represent and reason about hidden objects: they were surprised, as indicated by greater attention, when a wide object became fully hidden behind a narrow occluder (Experiment 1) or inside a narrow container (Experiment 2). These and control results demonstrate that young infants can succeed at VOE tasks involving hidden objects even when given no habituation or familiarization trials. The present research thus provides additional support for the conclusion that young infants possess expectations about hidden objects. Methodological issues concerning the use of habituation or familiarization trials in VOE tasks are also discussed.     

Illusory Control and Motives for Control: The Role of Connection and Intentionality

An experiment was done to examine the control heuristic perspective on illusory control and the effects of motives on control judgments, using a computer task similar to the light onset task used in previous research. Desire for the outcome and reinforcement were manipulated. As predicted from a control heuristic perspective, the effect of level of reinforcement on judgments of personal control was mediated by the measure of perceived connection: the perception of the number of positive confirming cases. Motives increased illusions of control, but only in the high reinforcement condition. A mediational analysis that examined how motives affect control judgments found that when the motive to get the outcomes was high, participants had higher estimates of having acted intentionally and these estimates partially mediated the relationship between the motivation manipulation and judgments of control. It appears that perceptions of connection mediate the relationship between reinforcement and illusory control, while judgments of intentionality partially mediate the effect of motives for control and illusory control.     

Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief?

There is a change in false belief task performance across the 3-5 year age range, as confirmed in a recent meta-analysis [Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory mind development: The truth about false-belief. Child Development, 72, 655-684]. This meta-analysis identified several performance factors influencing success, including manipulations that highlight the salience of the initial belief content (such as asking where Sally will look first for the marble). However, because a proportion of variance in performance remained unexplained even when identified performance factors were controlled for, the authors concluded from the standpoint of a 'theory-theory' account that children's improvement is the result of conceptual change. Further, the meta-analysis showed that manipulations such as 'look first' improve performance only in children who are in the older part of the 3-5 year range, and thus plausibly operating with a 'transitional' theory of mind--just on the point of realizing conceptual change. Here, we present three studies systematically investigating the 'look first' manipulation which showed that: (i) the advantage for the look first question can be demonstrated in children across different cultures, (ii) look first has an effect that is additive to the improvement with age; there is no interaction such that older children gain more benefit from younger children, (iii) performance in younger children can be, but is not always, elevated to levels that are statistically above chance. These results challenge the theory-theory account and are discussed in terms of models of belief-desire reasoning in which both conceptual competence and performance factors play central roles.     

Is this a dax which I see before me? Use of the logical argument disjunctive syllogism supports word-learning in children and adults

Many authors have argued that word-learning constraints help guide a word-learner's hypotheses as to the meaning of a newly heard word. One such class of constraints derives from the observation that word-learners of all ages prefer to map novel labels to novel objects in situations of referential ambiguity. In this paper I use eye-tracking to document the mental computations that support this word-learning strategy. Adults and preschoolers saw images of known and novel objects, and were asked to find the referent of known and novel labels. Experiment 1 shows that adults systematically reject a known distractor (e.g. brush) before mapping a novel label (e.g. "dax") to a novel object. This is consistent with the proposal that participants worked through a Disjunctive Syllogism (i.e. Process-of-Elimination) to motivate the mapping of the novel label to the novel object. Experiment 2 shows that processing is similar for adults performing an implicit Disjunctive Syllogism (e.g. "the winner is the dax") and an explicit Disjunctive Syllogism (e.g. "the winner is not the iron"). Experiment 3 reveals that similar processes govern preschoolers' mapping of novel labels. Taken together, these results suggest that word-learners use Disjunctive Syllogism to motivate the mapping of novel labels to novel objects.