Harris, Paul L. (2001) Thinking about the unknown. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5 (11). pp. 494-498. ISSN 1364-6613
Full content URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01789-7
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Item Type: | Article |
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Item Status: | Live Archive |
Abstract
A long tradition of research suggests that children and adults with no formal education are prone to reason only on the basis of their first-hand experience, and do not encode and reason from novel generalizations supplied by other people. However, recent research reveals that when given simple prompts, even pre-school children can reason from adults’ unfamiliar claims. A radical implication of these findings is that young children arrive at school with a pre-existing capacity for thinking and reasoning about the unknown. The assumption that early learning should be rooted in children's own empirical experience could be mistaken.
Additional Information: | A long tradition of research suggests that children and adults with no formal education are prone to reason only on the basis of their first-hand experience, and do not encode and reason from novel generalizations supplied by other people. However, recent research reveals that when given simple prompts, even pre-school children can reason from adults’ unfamiliar claims. A radical implication of these findings is that young children arrive at school with a pre-existing capacity for thinking and reasoning about the unknown. The assumption that early learning should be rooted in children's own empirical experience could be mistaken. |
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Keywords: | Thinking, Reasoning, Memory, Categorisation, Categorization |
Subjects: | C Biological Sciences > C800 Psychology C Biological Sciences > C850 Cognitive Psychology C Biological Sciences > C820 Developmental Psychology |
Divisions: | College of Social Science > School of Psychology |
ID Code: | 757 |
Deposited On: | 26 Jun 2007 |
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