Journal of Families and Better Life (가정과삶의질연구)

Korean Home Management Association (가정과삶의질학회)
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Young Chilldren's Causal Reasoning on Psychology and Biology : Focusing on the Interaction between Domain-specificty and Domain-generality

심리와 생물 영역에서의 유아의 인과추론 : 영역특정성과 영역일반성의 상호작용

  • Kim, Ji-Hyun (Dept. of Child Development & Family Studies, Seoul National Univ.)
  • 김지현 (서울대학교 아동가족학과)
  • Published : 2008.10.31
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Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the role of domain-specific causal mechanism information and domain-general conditional probability in young children's causal reasoning on psychology and biology. Participants were 121 3-year-olds and 121 4-year-olds recruited from seven childcare centers in Seoul, Kyonggi Province, and Busan. After participants watched moving pictures on psychological and biological phenomena, they were asked to choose appropriate cause and justify their choices. Results of this study were as follows: First, young children made different inferences according to domain-specific causal mechanisms. Second, the developmental level of causal mechanisms has a gap between psychology and biology, and biological knowledge was proved to be separate from psychological knowledge during the preschool period. Third, young children's causal reasoning was different depending on the interaction effect of domain-specific mechanisms and domain-general conditional probability: children could make more inferences based on domain-specific causal mechanisms if conditional probability between domain-appropriate cause and effect was evident. To conclude, it can be inferred that the role of domain-specific causal mechanisms and domain-general conditional probability is not competitive but complementary in young children's causal reasoning.

Keywords

References

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