Elizabeth Bonawitz
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 5153383 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Elizabeth Bonawitz |
| NOMBRES | Elizabeth |
| APELLIDO | Bonawitz |
| FIRMA | BONAWITZ E |
| AFILIACIONES | Harvard University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7005-9345 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 18 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 18 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2007 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
Children’s exploration distinguishes necessary and merely possible outcomes.
Preschoolers often fail tasks that require that they select between a necessary and a merely possible outcome. Prior work has interpreted these failures as evidence that children hold a minimal representation of possibility or as reflecting performance factors. However, all previous paradigms have operationalized children's modal understanding as a discrete choice or outcome, making it difficult to distinguish between these accounts. We introduce…
Considering Psychological Mechanisms Can Change the Interpretation of Bayesian Models
A significant challenge for Bayesian models of cognition is understanding how the abstract assumptions behind these models connect to psychological mechanisms. We examine the consequences of considering one of the psychological processes involved in inductive inference: generating hypotheses. We analyze the predictions of a simple model that separates the processes of generating hypotheses and evaluating those hypotheses. This analysis shows that…
The codevelopment of children’s general causal reasoning and their causal reasoning of illness transmission
108, Ages 4-8, North American) with a series of animated vignettes in which four characters were exposed to illness with varying degrees of (a) duration of exposure to a sick individual, (b) proximity to a sick individual, and (c) number of transfers of germs between sick individual and target. In addition, children were presented with three analogous control (contagion-irrelevant) causal reasoning vignettes that mirrored transmission principles …
Parent-child interaction styles relate to preschooler’s causal play, learning, and generalization
This study investigated the effects of a brief instructional intervention on parent-child interactions and children’s learning. • Parents were assigned to one of three conditions: teaching (teach the child), helping (help the child), or no-involvement (watch the child). • Parents in the no-involvement condition asked fewer questions and provided less feedback and encouragement than those in the other two conditions. • Parents’ use of questioning …
Prosodic Cues Support Inferences About the Question’s Pedagogical Intent
Questions may be asked with an intent to acquire new information from the recipient (i.e., information-seeking questions) or with the intent to teach (i.e., pedagogical questions). Understanding how the questions’ recipients infer the intent of questions is important, because the recipients’ inferences have important consequences for reasoning and learning. In the present series of studies, we tested the hypothesis that i) askers use prosodic cue…
Fun isn't easy
Play is important in many cultures and species, but the basic motivations behind play remain unclear. In two preregistered experiments, we examined what 5- to 10-year-old children ( n = 124) think makes play rewarding under internally and externally motivated contexts using a novel game design task. We specifically compared children's choices about how to best configure a novel tossing game when either playing for fun or playing to win . We found…
The development of the “first thing that comes to mind”
When children encounter information about the world that is descriptive (e.g., frequency distributions) or prescriptive (e.g., value judgments), can they keep track of both types of information together? Do they, like adults, integrate these two kinds of information to come up with the "first thing that comes to mind"? Can children separate these types of information when needed? In two experiments, we examined how children ( N = 397, ages 4-9 ye…
Do reflection prompts promote children's conflict monitoring and revision of misconceptions
We tested whether reflection prompts enhance conflict monitoring and facilitate the revision of misconceptions. German children (N = 97, Mage = 7.20, 56% female) were assigned to a prediction or a prediction with reflection condition that included reflection prompts. Children in the prediction with reflection condition (1) showed greater error-related response times and pupil dilation responses, indicating better conflict monitoring, and (2) perf…
What’s in the Box? Preschoolers Consider Ambiguity, Expected Value, and Information for Future Decisions in Explore-Exploit Tasks
Self-directed exploration in childhood appears driven by a desire to resolve uncertainties in order to learn more about the world. However, in adult decision-making, the choice to explore new information rather than exploit what is already known takes many factors beyond uncertainty (such as expected utilities and costs) into account. The evidence for whether young children are sensitive to complex, contextual factors in making exploration decisi…
The effects of information utility and teachers’ knowledge on evaluations of under-informative pedagogy across development
Evaluating recall error in preschoolers
Inconvenient Samples
In studies involving human subjects, voluntary participation may lead to sampling bias, thus limiting the generalizability of findings. This effect may be especially pronounced in developmental studies, where parents serve as both the primary environmental input and decision maker of whether their child participates in a study. We present a novel empirical and modeling approach to estimate how parental consent may bias measurements of children’s …
Children’s developing theory of mind and pedagogical evidence selection
Natural pedagogy emerges early in development, but good teaching requires tailoring evidence to learners' knowledge. How does the ability to reason about others' minds support early pedagogical evidence selection abilities? In 3 experiments ( N = 205), we investigated preschool-aged children's ability to consider others' knowledge when selecting evidence in the service of teaching. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that 4-year-olds reliably sele…
Occam's rattle
A growing literature suggests that generating and evaluating explanations is a key mechanism for learning and inference, but little is known about how children generate and select competing explanations. This study investigates whether young children prefer explanations that are simple, where simplicity is quantified as the number of causes invoked in an explanation, and how this preference is reconciled with probability information. Both prescho…
The double-edged sword of pedagogy
Word, thought, and deed
Previous research (e.g., S. A. Gelman & E. M. Markman, 1986; A. Gopnik & D. M. Sobel, 2000) suggests that children can use category labels to make inductive inferences about nonobvious causal properties of objects. However, such inductive generalizations can fail to predict objects' causal properties when (a) the property being projected varies within the category, (b) the category is arbitrary (e.g., things smaller than a bread box), or (c) the …
Can being scared cause tummy aches? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence, and preschoolers' causal inferences
Causal learning requires integrating constraints provided by domain-specific theories with domain-general statistical learning. In order to investigate the interaction between these factors, the authors presented preschoolers with stories pitting their existing theories against statistical evidence. Each child heard 2 stories in which 2 candidate causes co-occurred with an effect. Evidence was presented in the form: AB?E; CA?E; AD?E; and so forth…
Serious fun
Researchers, educators, and parents have long believed that children learn cause and effect relationships through exploratory play. However, previous research suggests that children are poor at designing informative experiments; children fail to control relevant variables and tend to alter multiple variables simultaneously. Thus, little is known about how children's spontaneous exploration might support accurate causal inferences. Here the author…
Serious fun
Researchers, educators, and parents have long believed that children learn cause and effect relationships through exploratory play. However, previous research suggests that children are poor at designing informative experiments; children fail to control relevant variables and tend to alter multiple variables simultaneously. Thus, little is known about how children's spontaneous exploration might support accurate causal inferences. Here the author…
Can being scared cause tummy aches? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence, and preschoolers' causal inferences
Causal learning requires integrating constraints provided by domain-specific theories with domain-general statistical learning. In order to investigate the interaction between these factors, the authors presented preschoolers with stories pitting their existing theories against statistical evidence. Each child heard 2 stories in which 2 candidate causes co-occurred with an effect. Evidence was presented in the form: AB?E; CA?E; AD?E; and so forth…
Occam's rattle
A growing literature suggests that generating and evaluating explanations is a key mechanism for learning and inference, but little is known about how children generate and select competing explanations. This study investigates whether young children prefer explanations that are simple, where simplicity is quantified as the number of causes invoked in an explanation, and how this preference is reconciled with probability information. Both prescho…
Word, thought, and deed
Previous research (e.g., S. A. Gelman & E. M. Markman, 1986; A. Gopnik & D. M. Sobel, 2000) suggests that children can use category labels to make inductive inferences about nonobvious causal properties of objects. However, such inductive generalizations can fail to predict objects' causal properties when (a) the property being projected varies within the category, (b) the category is arbitrary (e.g., things smaller than a bread box), or (c) the …
Children’s developing theory of mind and pedagogical evidence selection
Natural pedagogy emerges early in development, but good teaching requires tailoring evidence to learners' knowledge. How does the ability to reason about others' minds support early pedagogical evidence selection abilities? In 3 experiments ( N = 205), we investigated preschool-aged children's ability to consider others' knowledge when selecting evidence in the service of teaching. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that 4-year-olds reliably sele…
Can being scared cause tummy aches? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence, and preschoolers' causal inferences
Causal learning requires integrating constraints provided by domain-specific theories with domain-general statistical learning. In order to investigate the interaction between these factors, the authors presented preschoolers with stories pitting their existing theories against statistical evidence. Each child heard 2 stories in which 2 candidate causes co-occurred with an effect. Evidence was presented in the form: AB?E; CA?E; AD?E; and so forth…
Serious fun
Researchers, educators, and parents have long believed that children learn cause and effect relationships through exploratory play. However, previous research suggests that children are poor at designing informative experiments; children fail to control relevant variables and tend to alter multiple variables simultaneously. Thus, little is known about how children's spontaneous exploration might support accurate causal inferences. Here the author…
Word, thought, and deed
Previous research (e.g., S. A. Gelman & E. M. Markman, 1986; A. Gopnik & D. M. Sobel, 2000) suggests that children can use category labels to make inductive inferences about nonobvious causal properties of objects. However, such inductive generalizations can fail to predict objects' causal properties when (a) the property being projected varies within the category, (b) the category is arbitrary (e.g., things smaller than a bread box), or (c) the …
The double-edged sword of pedagogy
Occam's rattle
A growing literature suggests that generating and evaluating explanations is a key mechanism for learning and inference, but little is known about how children generate and select competing explanations. This study investigates whether young children prefer explanations that are simple, where simplicity is quantified as the number of causes invoked in an explanation, and how this preference is reconciled with probability information. Both prescho…
Children’s developing theory of mind and pedagogical evidence selection
Natural pedagogy emerges early in development, but good teaching requires tailoring evidence to learners' knowledge. How does the ability to reason about others' minds support early pedagogical evidence selection abilities? In 3 experiments ( N = 205), we investigated preschool-aged children's ability to consider others' knowledge when selecting evidence in the service of teaching. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that 4-year-olds reliably sele…
Inconvenient Samples
In studies involving human subjects, voluntary participation may lead to sampling bias, thus limiting the generalizability of findings. This effect may be especially pronounced in developmental studies, where parents serve as both the primary environmental input and decision maker of whether their child participates in a study. We present a novel empirical and modeling approach to estimate how parental consent may bias measurements of children’s …
Evaluating recall error in preschoolers
The effects of information utility and teachers’ knowledge on evaluations of under-informative pedagogy across development
What’s in the Box? Preschoolers Consider Ambiguity, Expected Value, and Information for Future Decisions in Explore-Exploit Tasks
Self-directed exploration in childhood appears driven by a desire to resolve uncertainties in order to learn more about the world. However, in adult decision-making, the choice to explore new information rather than exploit what is already known takes many factors beyond uncertainty (such as expected utilities and costs) into account. The evidence for whether young children are sensitive to complex, contextual factors in making exploration decisi…
Do reflection prompts promote children's conflict monitoring and revision of misconceptions
We tested whether reflection prompts enhance conflict monitoring and facilitate the revision of misconceptions. German children (N = 97, Mage = 7.20, 56% female) were assigned to a prediction or a prediction with reflection condition that included reflection prompts. Children in the prediction with reflection condition (1) showed greater error-related response times and pupil dilation responses, indicating better conflict monitoring, and (2) perf…
Prosodic Cues Support Inferences About the Question’s Pedagogical Intent
Questions may be asked with an intent to acquire new information from the recipient (i.e., information-seeking questions) or with the intent to teach (i.e., pedagogical questions). Understanding how the questions’ recipients infer the intent of questions is important, because the recipients’ inferences have important consequences for reasoning and learning. In the present series of studies, we tested the hypothesis that i) askers use prosodic cue…
Fun isn't easy
Play is important in many cultures and species, but the basic motivations behind play remain unclear. In two preregistered experiments, we examined what 5- to 10-year-old children ( n = 124) think makes play rewarding under internally and externally motivated contexts using a novel game design task. We specifically compared children's choices about how to best configure a novel tossing game when either playing for fun or playing to win . We found…
The development of the “first thing that comes to mind”
When children encounter information about the world that is descriptive (e.g., frequency distributions) or prescriptive (e.g., value judgments), can they keep track of both types of information together? Do they, like adults, integrate these two kinds of information to come up with the "first thing that comes to mind"? Can children separate these types of information when needed? In two experiments, we examined how children ( N = 397, ages 4-9 ye…
Children’s exploration distinguishes necessary and merely possible outcomes.
Preschoolers often fail tasks that require that they select between a necessary and a merely possible outcome. Prior work has interpreted these failures as evidence that children hold a minimal representation of possibility or as reflecting performance factors. However, all previous paradigms have operationalized children's modal understanding as a discrete choice or outcome, making it difficult to distinguish between these accounts. We introduce…
Considering Psychological Mechanisms Can Change the Interpretation of Bayesian Models
A significant challenge for Bayesian models of cognition is understanding how the abstract assumptions behind these models connect to psychological mechanisms. We examine the consequences of considering one of the psychological processes involved in inductive inference: generating hypotheses. We analyze the predictions of a simple model that separates the processes of generating hypotheses and evaluating those hypotheses. This analysis shows that…
The codevelopment of children’s general causal reasoning and their causal reasoning of illness transmission
108, Ages 4-8, North American) with a series of animated vignettes in which four characters were exposed to illness with varying degrees of (a) duration of exposure to a sick individual, (b) proximity to a sick individual, and (c) number of transfers of germs between sick individual and target. In addition, children were presented with three analogous control (contagion-irrelevant) causal reasoning vignettes that mirrored transmission principles …
Parent-child interaction styles relate to preschooler’s causal play, learning, and generalization
This study investigated the effects of a brief instructional intervention on parent-child interactions and children’s learning. • Parents were assigned to one of three conditions: teaching (teach the child), helping (help the child), or no-involvement (watch the child). • Parents in the no-involvement condition asked fewer questions and provided less feedback and encouragement than those in the other two conditions. • Parents’ use of questioning …
Child and Animal Learning Development (18 obras) · Psychology (13 obras) · Cognitive psychology (11 obras) · Developmental psychology (11 obras) · Computer Science (8 obras) · Cognition (6 obras) · Social Psychology (5 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (3 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (3 obras) · Causal reasoning (3 obras)