Development of Conceptual Flexibility in Intuitive Biology: Effects of Environment and Experience

Abstract

Living things can be classified in many ways, such as taxonomic similarity (lions and lynx), or shared ecological habitat (ducks and turtles). The present studies used cardsorting and triad tasks to explore developmental and experiential changes in conceptual flexibility-the ability to switch between taxonomic and ecological construals of living things-as well as two processes underlying conceptual flexibility: salience (i.e., the ease with which relations come to mind outside of contextual influences) and availability (i.e., the presence of relations in one's mental space) of taxonomic and ecological relations. We were also interested in the extent to which salience and availability of taxonomic and ecological relations predicted inductive inferences. Participants were 452 six to ten-year-olds from urban, suburban, and rural communities in New England. Across two studies, taxonomic relations were overwhelmingly more salient than ecological relations, although salience of ecological relations was higher among children from rural environments (Study 1) and those who engaged in unstructured exploration of nature (Study 2). Availability of ecological relations, as well as conceptual flexibility, increased with age, and was higher among children living in more rural environments. Notably, salience, but not availability, of ecological relations predicted ecological inferences. These findings suggest that taxonomic categories (i.e., groups that share both perceptual similarities and rich underlying structure) are a salient way to organize intuitive biological knowledge and that, critically, environmental richness and relevant experience contribute to the salience and availability of ecological knowledge, and thereby, conceptual flexibility in biological thinking. More generally, they highlight important linkages between domain-specific knowledge and domain-general cognitive abilities.

Plant Experience Questionnaire (Rioux & Wertz 2021)

“…These types of scores would be particularly helpful to explore the possible influence of prior experience with plants on participants' responses during behavioral studies investigating aspects of plant-relevant cognition in infancy and early childhood. For example, studies investigating behavioral avoidance of plants in infancy (e.g., Elsner & Wertz, 2019;Wertz & Wynn, 2014a;Wertz & Wynn, 2014b;Włodarczyk et al, 2018), studies of young children's behaviors toward plant foods (e.g., fruits and vegetables; Rioux, 2019), and studies investigating folk biological reasoning (e.g., Betz & Coley, 2020).…”

“…From an early age children recognize both animals and plants as distinct from non-living entities in term of growth (Inagaki & Hatano, 1996;Hickling & Gelman, 1995), death (Nguyen & Gelman, 2002), communication abilities (Ojalehto, Medin, & García, 2017) or origin of object properties (Gelman & Kremer, 1991), while they understand that plants do not intentionally move as humans and animals do (Brule et al, 2014). Reasoning about plants is also highly dependent to one's own experience with them (Betz & Coley, 2020;Medin, Lynch, Coley & Atran, 1997;Ojalehto et al, 2017).…”

“…Environmental richness and experiences contribute to the salience and availability of ecological knowledge when reasoning about plants and enhance conceptual flexibility in biological thinking (e.g., Betz & Coley, 2020).…”

“…Studies investigating infants' and young children's responses to, and reasoning about plants, would benefit greatly from validated psychometric tools that provide a clear assessment of experience with plants early in life. While infants' and children's behavior in the context of a study is an important and informative indicator, it does not provide a picture of their everyday experience with plants that could plausibly influence their responses (e.g., Betz & Coley, 2020). There is a validated questionnaire for older children (10-to 15-yearolds), that assesses attitudes towards plants (Fancovicova & Prokop, 2010).…”

Of Pandemics and Zombies: The Influence of Prior Concepts on COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Behaviors

“…It is possible to make contrasting predictions about this influence. As people gain more experience with a category, their concepts of that category change and refine [ 9 , 45 , 46 ]. For example, experts’ concepts within their domain of expertise are more detailed and represent different knowledge than laypeople’s concepts in the same domain [ 18 , 19 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ].…”