Adult beliefs about cognitive development vary across experience and expertise: A focus group study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore North American adult beliefs and perspectives on how young children develop early cognitive, language, and word learning skills, and how these beliefs vary depending on experience and expertise. While there is a body of literature that uses questionnaires to assess beliefs about how children develop, traditional rating scales (e.g., Likert scales) may miss the nuances of how people think about child development. Thus, we ran six in-person focus groups, differing in parenthood status and expertise, to learn how various adults talk and reason about cognitive development. Questions throughout the focus group sessions were aimed at determining the quality and origins of participants’ beliefs. Four main patterns emerged: developmental psychologists who were also parents were the most certain in their statements, parents used more anecdotes than non-parents, non-parents were more likely to talk about development as controllable compared to parents, and participants in all groups frequently referred to environment-based influences on development. Together, the results suggest that many adults are uncertain about how children develop and that there are differences in how parents and non-parents reason about development. These findings have implications for how we interpret past survey results and motivate future studies about how experience with children changes adult beliefs and reasoning about child development.

Influence of socio-family variables on parental assessment of the pragmatic development of children under 4 years of age

“…The importance of parents' experience and knowledge on development are also related to socioeconomic and educational status, as reported by Hutchinson and Wojcik (2022). In their research they find that many adults with various cultural and professional backgrounds are unsure about how children develop, and the authors note differences in the way parents and nonparents think about development.…”