This proposal examineshow children and adults develop understandings of the world around them given clear evidence of the incompleteness of their knowledge. This knowledge, known here as """"""""folkscience"""""""", is explored through three strands: tracking of casual structure, evaluating the quality of one's own knowledge and that of others, and having the ability to grasp the social infrastructure that supports the partial knowledge in any one mind. Tracking of causal structure will be explored by conducting studies on 1. the conditions under which young children attribute changes in regular events to animmate agents., 2. the ways in which children and adults overextend essentialism and related causal mechanisms to inessential categories, 3. the limitations of Bayes nets as models of partial causal representations 4. how the structure of causal chains influences perceived quality of explanations and 5. how different cognitive """"""""stances"""""""" emerge and interact.. The evaluation of knowledge will be examined through studies that 1. uncover mechanisms for 'illusions of explanatory depth"""""""" and for """"""""illusions of insight"""""""", 2. examine how children and adults understand what makes a good vs. bad summary of an initially elaborate explanation, 3. examine the basis for udgments of the relative complexity of explanations and the ways in which suchjudgments influence deference and the seeking of expertise, and 4. examine how children evaluate the legitimacy of areas of explanatory expertise. Studies on grasping the social infrastructure will look at 1. how children infer causally mportant features from intentional actions of others, 2. how children learn to distinguish expertise on biological phenomena from psychological phenomena, 3. how notions of the divison of cognitive labor might vary across children and adults from different groups and backgrounds, 4. how children understand the need o shift patterns of knowledge deference in different contexts, and 5. how and why children underestimate he extent to which one's own knowledge is dependent on knowledge in other minds.
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) VII. FOLK MEDICINE AND FOLK CURES. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:140-158 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) II. THE PROPER REALMS OF MEDICINES AND THEIR ALTERNATIVES: WHAT COUNT AS CURES? Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:33-62 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) IV. AGENCY AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF ILLNESSES AND TREATMENTS. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:83-99 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) I. INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING MEDICINES AND MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:7-32 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) VI. TREATMENTS AND TRADEOFFS. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:123-139 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) V. REASONING ABOUT SIDE EFFECTS: INFLUENCES OF TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL EXPECTATIONS. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:100-122 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Keil, Frank C (2018) III. TIME COURSES OF ILLNESSES AND TREATMENTS. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 83:63-82 |
| Strickland, Brent; Silver, Ike; Keil, Frank C (2017) The texture of causal construals: Domain-specific biases shape causal inferences from discourse. Mem Cognit 45:442-455 |
| Kominsky, Jonathan F; Langthorne, Philip; Keil, Frank C (2016) The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance. Dev Psychol 52:31-45 |
| Lockhart, Kristi L; Goddu, Mariel K; Smith, Eric D et al. (2016) What Could You Really Learn on Your Own?: Understanding the Epistemic Limitations of Knowledge Acquisition. Child Dev 87:477-93 |
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