Psychology Department

Sponsored by
Martin Weiner Colloquium Series

Abstract: The central question for the field of cognitive development is how children’s knowledge changes over time.  Thus, researchers tend to focus on differences between children of different ages of developmental levels. In this talk I will argue, however, that focusing on children’s real time behavior and the processes that bring represented knowledge to bear in a task can take us farther in our understanding of developmental change.  I will use data from a line of research on the development of work learning biases to illustrate this point.  This work demonstrates how task and stimulus factors influence children’s novel noun generalizations, thereby making it difficult to attribute changes in performance directly to changes in knowledge.  I will also present a process model of how children’s knowledge about names and categories is brought to bear in a task in a moment in time and show how this model illuminates the nature of developmental changes in children’s  know ledge.