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How young children learn from different informants has been widely studied. However, most studies investigate how children learn verbally conveyed information. Furthermore, most studies investigate how children learn from humans. This study sought to investigate how 3-year-old children learn from, and come to trust, a competent robot versus an incompetent human when competency is established using a pointing paradigm. During an induction phase, a robot informant pointed at a toy inside a transparent box, whereas a human pointed at an empty box. During the test phase, both agents pointed at opaque boxes. We found that young children asked the robot for help to locate a hidden toy more than the human (ask questions) and correctly identified the robot to be accurate (judgment questions). However, children equally endorsed the locations pointed at by both the robot and the human (endorse questions). This suggests that 3-year-olds are sensitive to the epistemic characteristics of the informant even when its displayed social properties are minimal.

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We examined 3- to 10-year-old U.S. children's naïve biological beliefs about spoken language, probing developing beliefs about where language is located in the body. Experiment 1 (N = 128) introduced children to two aliens, each having eight parts: internal organs (brain and lungs), face parts (mouth and ears), limbs (arms and legs), and accessories (bag and hat). Participants were assigned to the Language condition (in which the aliens spoke two different languages) or the control Sports condition (in which the aliens played two different sports). We assessed children's reasoning about which parts were necessary to speak a language (or play a sport) by asking children to (a) create a new alien with the ability to speak a language (or play a sport) and (b) remove parts of an alien while preserving its ability to speak a language (or play a sport). In the Language condition, with age, children attributed language-speaking abilities to internal organs and face parts. In Experiment 2 (N = 32), a simplified language task revealed that 3- and 4-year-old children demonstrated a weaker, albeit present, biological belief about language. In Experiment 3 (N = 96), children decided at what point an alien would lose its ability to speak the language as the experimenter added or removed parts. Children attributed language-speaking abilities to specific internal organs and face parts (brain and mouth). We demonstrate that children believe that language is contained to specific parts of the body and that this "metabiological" reasoning increases with age.

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How people reason about disease transmission is central to their commonsense theories, scientific literacy, and adherence to public health guidelines. This study provided an in-depth assessment of U.S. children's (ages 5-12, N = 180) and their parents' (N = 125) understanding of viral transmission of COVID-19 and the common cold, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary aim was to discover children's causal models of viral transmission, by asking them to predict and explain counter-intuitive outcomes (e.g., asymptomatic disease, symptom delay) and processes that cannot be directly observed (e.g., viral replication, how vaccines work). A secondary aim was to explore parental factors that might contribute to children's understanding. Although even the youngest children understood germs as disease-causing and were highly knowledgeable about certain behaviors that transmit or block viral disease (e.g., sneezing, mask-wearing), they generally failed to appreciate the processes that play out over time within the body. Overall, children appeared to rely on two competing mental models of viruses: one in which viruses operate strictly via mechanical processes (movement through space), and one in which viruses are small living creatures, able to grow in size and to move by themselves. These results suggest that distinct causal frameworks co-exist in children's understanding. A challenge for the future is how to teach children about illness as a biological process without also fostering inappropriate animism or anthropomorphism of viruses.

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Prior work has yielded contradicting evidence regarding the age at which children consistently and correctly categorize things as living or non-living. The present study tested children's animacy judgments about robots with a Naïve Biology task. In the Naïve Biology task, 3- and 5-year-olds were asked if robots, animals, or artifacts possessed mechanical or biological internal parts. To gauge how much children anthropomorphize robots in comparison to animals and artifacts, children also responded to a set of interview questions. To examine the role of morphology, two robots were used: a humanoid robot (Nao) and a non-humanoid robot (Dash). To investigate the role of dynamic characteristics, children saw one robot behave in a goal-directed manner (i.e., moving towards a ball) and one robot exhibit non-goal-directed behavior (i.e., moving away from a ball). Children of both age groups correctly attributed biological insides to the animal and mechanical insides to the artifact. However, 3-year-olds seemed confused about what belonged inside both robots and assigned biological and mechanical insides equally. In contrast, 5-year-olds correctly assigned mechanical insides to both robots, regardless of the robot's morphology or goal-directedness. Regarding the Animacy Interview, 3-year-olds performed at chance level when asked about the animacy of robots, animals, and artifacts. In contrast, 5-year-olds correctly attributed animacy to animals and accurately refrained from anthropomorphizing artifacts and the non-humanoid robot Dash. However, 5-year-olds performed at chance for Nao, suggesting they may be confused about the psychological properties of a human-looking robot. Taken together, these findings reveal a developmental transition during the preschool years in the attribution of biological and psychological properties to social robot.

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Children are exposed to anthropomorphized animals in a variety of contexts. The literature that analyzes this phenomenon suggests that exposure to anthropomorphic media may strengthen children's anthropocentric representation of animals. There is an as yet unexplored difference between anthropomorphized and realistic depictions of multiple animal species presented simultaneously in films. The anthropomorphized animals all behave like humans, so they are more behaviorally similar to one another than animals depicted realistically. We asked whether witnessing multiple species depicted anthropomorphically or realistically influences the way 5-year-old children perceive internal commonalities among animals. One group of children (n = 37) watched a cartoon presenting multiple species of anthropomorphized animals, the other group (n = 38) watched a nature documentary that also presented multiple species. Both groups extended a novel internal feature from an animal to a variety of items including diverse animal species. Children watching a cartoon made significantly stronger projections to non-human animals than children watching the documentary. Children's projections to humans and inanimate objects did not differ between the groups and were uniformly low. One of the possible explanations of the results is in terms of children's essentialist expectation that behavior is caused by internal properties.

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Children's thinking about prenatal development requires reasoning about change that cannot be observed directly. How do children gain knowledge about this topic? Do children have mental models or is their knowledge fragmented? In Experiment 1, results of a forced-choice questionnaire about prenatal development (6- to 13-year-olds; N = 317) indicated that children do have a variety of coherent, grade-related, theories about early shape of the fetus, but not about bodily functions. Coherence of the mental models was enhanced by a preceding generative task. Children's mental models were in agreement with reasoning about natural transformations (Rosengren et al., 1991) and constraints in representational flexibility (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992). In Experiment 2, an open-question interview was administered (6- to 12-year-old children; N = 38). The interview resulted in grade-unrelated, incoherent responses. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of naïve biology and to the effects of different methodologies being used in the area of mental models.

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There is a lively debate concerning the role of conceptual and perceptual information in young children's inductive inferences. While most studies focus on the role of basic level categories in induction the present research contributes to the debate by asking whether children's inductions are guided by ontological constraints. Two studies use a novel inductive paradigm to test whether young children have an expectation that all animals share internal commonalities that do not extend to perceptually similar inanimates. The results show that children make category-consistent responses when asked to project an internal feature from an animal to either a dissimilar animal or a similar toy replica. However, the children do not have a universal preference for category-consistent responses in an analogous task involving vehicles and vehicle toy replicas. The results also show the role of context and individual factors in inferences. Children's early reliance on ontological commitments in induction cannot be explained by perceptual similarity or by children's sensitivity to the authenticity of objects.

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Mounting evidence suggests that endorsement of psychological continuity and the afterlife increases with age. This developmental change raises questions about the cognitive biases, social representations, and cultural input that may support afterlife beliefs. To what extent is there similarity versus diversity across cultures in how people reason about what happens after death? The objective of this study was to compare beliefs about the continuation of biological and psychological functions after death in Tanna, Vanuatu (a Melanesian archipelago), and the United States (Austin, Texas). Children, adolescents, and adults were primed with a story that contained either natural (non-theistic) or supernatural (theistic) cues. Participants were then asked whether or not different biological and psychological processes continue to function after death. We predicted that across cultures individuals would be more likely to endorse the continuation of psychological processes over biological processes (dualism) and that a theistic prime would increase continuation responses regarding both types of process. Results largely supported predictions; U.S. participants provided more continuation responses for psychological than biological processes following both the theistic and non-theistic primes. Participants in Vanuatu, however, provided more continuation responses for biological than psychological processes following the theistic prime. The data provide evidence for both cultural similarity and variability in afterlife beliefs and demonstrate that individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the same events.

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People across highly diverse cultural contexts use both natural and supernatural explanations to explain questions of fundamental concern such as death, illness, and human origins. The present study examines the development of explanatory coexistence within and across domains of existential concern in individuals in Tanna, Vanuatu. We examined three age groups: 7- to 12-year-old children, 13- to 18-year-old adolescents, and 19- to 70-year-old adults (N = 72). Within the domain of death, biological and spontaneous explanations were most common across all ages. For illness, children showed the highest rates of explanatory coexistence, while adolescents and adults favoured biological explanations. Within the human origins domain, theistic explanations were most common across the age groups. Overall, these data show that coexistence reasoning in these domains is pervasive across cultures, yet at the same time it is deeply contextually specific, reflecting the nuanced differences in local ecologies and cultural beliefs. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Individuals across highly diverse cultural contexts use both natural and supernatural explanations to understand the events that occur in their lives. Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations. The development of explanatory coexistence has primarily studied explanations for isolated domains. What does this study add? We examined explanatory coexistence in a culture with recent conversion to Christianity and formal education. The current research examines how individuals reason within and across the domains of human origins, illness, and death. Developmental differences associated with explanatory coexistence are examined.

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Do children attribute mortality and other life-cycle traits to all minded beings? The present study examined whether culture influences young children's ability to conceptualize and differentiate human beings from supernatural beings (such as God) in terms of life-cycle traits. Three-to-5-year-old Israeli and British children were questioned whether their mother, a friend, and God would be subject to various life-cycle processes: Birth, death, ageing, existence/longevity, and parentage. Children did not anthropomorphize but differentiated among human and supernatural beings, attributing life-cycle traits to humans, but not to God. Although 3-year-olds differentiated significantly among agents, 5-year-olds attributed correct life-cycle traits more consistently than younger children. The results also indicated some cross-cultural variation in these attributions. Implications for biological conceptual development are discussed.

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The philosophical and scientific debate about definitions of life-as-we-know-it and its value is very diverse. How do non-biologists characterize these issues? We held focus groups to shed light on the role of the term life in laypeople's understanding. Results show that features of early childhood cognition dominate the understanding of the term life even in adulthood. Textbook knowledge and definitions derived from specific knowledge systems and beliefs are of minor importance. For an ethical differentiation between life forms the ability to feel and to suffer is seen as the crucial criterion. We conclude that lay perspectives on the concept of life can shape a normative discourse on existing as well as on new life forms in a crucial way. In addition, these perspectives may also strongly influence the expectations towards the life-as-it-could-be that is brought forward by the artificial life community. While some concepts like metabolism exist both in scientific and in everyday reasoning as criteria for life, the normative discussion on life is dominated by such ideas as a hierarchical order of living kinds, which emphasize "easy to think" concepts of a moral differentiation. These can also form a basis for the moral standing of artificial life.

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A person's belief about whether intelligence can change (called their implicit theory of intelligence) predicts something about that person's thinking and behavior. People who believe intelligence is fixed (called entity theorists) attribute failure to traits (i.e., "I failed the test because I'm not smart.") and tend to be less motivated in school; those who believe intelligence is malleable (called incremental theorists) tend to attribute failure to behavior (i.e., "I failed the test because I didn't study.") and are more motivated in school. In previous studies, researchers have characterized participants as either entity or incremental theorists based on their agreement or disagreement with three statements. The present study further explored the theories-of-intelligence (TOI) construct in two ways: first, we asked whether these theories are coherent, in the sense that they show up not only in participants' responses to the three standard assessment items, but on a broad range of questions about intelligence and the brain. Second, we asked whether these theories are discrete or continuous. In other words, we asked whether people believe one thing or the other (i.e., that intelligence is malleable or fixed), or if there is a continuous range of beliefs (i.e., people believe in malleability to a greater or lesser degree). Study (1) asked participants a range of general questions about the malleability of intelligence and the brain. Study (2) asked participants more specific questions about the brains of a pair of identical twins who were separated at birth. Results showed that TOI are coherent: participants' responses to the three standard survey items are correlated with their responses to questions about the brain. But the theories are not discrete: although responses to the three standard survey items fell into a bimodal distribution, responses to the broader range of questions fell into a normal distribution suggesting the theories are continuous.

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Objective:To explore effect of relevant training on understanding of theory of naive biology for plant reproduction in 5- and 6-years old,and to attempt to provide demonstration for a debate of different views between domain universality and domain specificity cognitive development.Methods:48 preschoolers who did not comprehend concept of plant reproduction screened from 64 preschoolers ages 5 to 6 were surveyed by clinical method.Half of the 48 children were assigned to intervention group,the other to control group.The effects of intervention were compared by the experimental before-after design.Results:Relevant biological knowledge might widely accelerate 5- and 6-year-olds' understandings for plant reproduction,and 6-year-olds had more enhancement than 5-year-olds.Pass rates of intervention group were more 29.2% than control group in 5 year olds,and more 54.1% in 6 year olds.Conclusion:Acquiring specific knowledge will generally improve preschoolers' cognition on plant reproduction.Children' cognitive development is influenced jointly by both domain-specific and domain-general thinking.