Preschoolers’ Selective Learning In The Domain Of Causal Knowledge

Early childhood is an important period of knowledge learning.How to selectively learn information has become a hot issue in the field of cognitive development.Through the understanding of the causal relationship between things,people can gradually achieve the purpose of explaining,predicting and controlling the surrounding environment.Exploring children’s selective learning in the field of causal knowledge can expand our understanding of the law of children’s early cognitive development,deepen our understanding of children’s early knowledge learning,and contribute to the development of early education.In the process of causal learning,children are influenced by many cognitive factors and social factors,as the growth of age,children’s perception of cause and effect relationship development will also change,for the factors that affect children in the field of selective learning causal knowledge and process,this study adopts the more ecological validity of single source paradigm to explore respectively from the following angles:Study 1 explored the developmental characteristics of 4-6 year old children’s beliefs about causal knowledge.In this study,188 4-6 year olds were asked about their existing beliefs about events that violated causality.The results showed that the4-6 year olds were skeptical of the information that violated causality,and the higher the degree of violation,the lower the likelihood that the event would happen in real life.Study 2 explored the influencing factors of selective learning in the field of causal knowledge of 4-6 year-old children under the testimony of teachers.In this study,1904-6 year old children were selected to explore the influence of different types of conflicting testimony provided by teachers on children’s selective learning of causal knowledge.It is found that,on the whole,children choose to believe the teacher’s testimony,but with the increase of age,the degree of children choose to believe the teacher decreases.At the same time,compared with the circular explanation of repeated question content,children will revise their existing beliefs more according to the non-circular explanation including causality provided by the teacher,that is,children will revise their existing beliefs according to the causal explanation provided by the teacher to learn.Study 3 explored the influencing factors of 4-6 year old children’s selective learning in the field of causal knowledge under the testimony of strangers,and explored the influence of different informants(teacher VS stranger)on children’s selective learning.In this study,197 4-6 year old children were selected to explore the effects of different types of conflicting testimony provided by strangers on children’s selective learning of causal knowledge.The results showed that 4-year-olds were more likely to believe the testimony of strangers,followed by 5-year-olds and the least by 6-year-olds.By comparing the influence of different informants on children’s belief revision,it is found that when the teacher provides information,the children’s belief revision under the non-circular explanation is significantly more than that under the circular explanation,while when the stranger provides information,the children’s belief revision under the two kinds of explanation has no significant difference.This indicates that the acyclic explanation provided by teachers can promote children’s selective learning more.At the same time,study 3 on the basis of the study 2 that part in choosing children trust phase informant right in belief revision stage insist on existing beliefs don’t adopt informant or that informants say wrong but revision had been belief that adopt informant’s point of view,namely,inconsistent behavior.Therefore,5-6 year old children were selected to explore their inconsistent behaviors in causal knowledge learning and its influencing factors.The research found that,when teachers provided information,4-6 year old children had less inconsistent behaviors under different belief strength and explanation types,that is,they chose to believe others’ information and revise their own beliefs.When the stranger provided information,the children showed more inconsistent behavior under the existing weak belief and causal explanation.Study 4 explored the higher order belief revision of 4-6 year old children in the field of causal knowledge based on the above research.Selected 123 children aged 4to 6,explore its selective learning in testimony with others,in the face of the same type but different events information,influence the rational revising existing beliefs(higher order belief revision)factors,the study found that for strongly against the events of the causal relationship,under the teacher’s testimony of 4 year olds higher-order belief revision significantly more than strangers,but there was no significant difference between 5 and 6 year olds.This suggests that the information provided by teachers has more influence on the higher order belief revision of4-year-olds.In general,children in the process of selectively learning causal knowledge,change with abundant experience and its characteristic,also because of the influence of the cognitive and social factors in the development,this study through to the infant in the field of causal knowledge in the process of selective learning behavior and psychological law of analysis,found that children is not only the wisdom of the learners,is also a relatively rational learner in cognitive development and social development in the process of continuous learning and growth.Future research can focus more on the development and changes of children’s explanatory ability and ability to solve problems in the field of causal knowledge as well as the influencing factors after learning causal knowledge.