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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Development Of Possibility Judgment Within And Across Domains, Andrew Shtulman
The Development Of Possibility Judgment Within And Across Domains, Andrew Shtulman
Andrew Shtulman
The ability to differentiate possible events from impossible ones is an invaluable skill when reasoning about claims that transcend the perceptual evidence at hand, yet preschool-aged children do not readily make this differentiation when reasoning about physically extraordinary events [Shtulman, A., & Carey, S. (2007). Improbable or impossible? How children reason about the possibility of extraordinary claims. Child Development, 78, 1015–1032]. The present study sought to determine whether this failure stems from deficits in domain-specific knowledge or deficits in the domain-general procedure by which possibility judgments are made. Participants (48 children aged 4-9 years olds and 16 adults) were asked …
Rethinking The Role Of Resubsumption In Conceptual Change., Andrew Shtulman
Rethinking The Role Of Resubsumption In Conceptual Change., Andrew Shtulman
Andrew Shtulman
Why is conceptual change difficult yet possible? Ohlsson (2009/this issue) proposes that the answer can be found in the dynamics of resubsumption, or the process by which a domain of experience is resubsumed under an intuitive theory originally constructed to explain some other domain of experience. Here, it is argued that conceptual change is difficult in two distinct senses—that is, difficult to initiate and difficult to complete—and that Ohlsson's proposal addresses the latter but not the former. The implications of this argument for how conceptual change might be best facilitated in the science classroom are discussed as well.