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Where the Wild Things Are: Informal Experience and Ecological Reasoning
Author(s) -
Coley John D.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01751.x
Subject(s) - psychology , inference , ecology , context (archaeology) , population , developmental psychology , ecological psychology , geography , social psychology , demography , sociology , biology , epistemology , philosophy , archaeology
Category‐based induction requires selective use of different relations to guide inferences; this article examines the development of inferences based on ecological relations among living things. Three hundred and forty‐six 6‐, 8‐, and 10‐year‐old children from rural, suburban, and urban communities projected novel diseases or insides from one species to an ecologically or taxonomically related species; they were also surveyed about hobbies and activities. Frequency of ecological inferences increased with age and with reports of informal exploration of nature, and decreased with population density. By age 10, children preferred taxonomic inferences for insides and ecological inferences for disease , but this pattern emerged earlier among rural children. These results underscore the importance of context by demonstrating effects of both domain‐relevant experience and environment on biological reasoning.