The Native Mind: Biological Categorization and Reasoning in Development and Across Cultures.

Medin, Douglas L.; Atran, Scott

doi:10.1037/0033-295x.111.4.960

Cited by 358 publications

(334 citation statements)

References 124 publications

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“…Yet PT asserts that teleological misunderstandings and 'unwarranted' beliefs about the natural world persist among non-Western educated adults [7]. Why would indigenous people, whose ecological expertise surpasses that of most Western educated adults [28][29][30], remain unclear about causal relations underlying natural phenomena?…”

Section: Are Clouds 'For' Raining?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Why, then, would children conflate animate beings with artifacts when it comes to reasoning about purpose? The second paradox is cultural: there is considerable evidence that indigenous individuals are expert in reasoning about the natural world [25][26][27][28]. Yet PT asserts that teleological misunderstandings and 'unwarranted' beliefs about the natural world persist among non-Western educated adults [7].…”

Section: Are Clouds 'For' Raining?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An alternative interpretation: the relational-deictic framework To resolve these paradoxes, we propose an alternative framework for 'promiscuous' teleological reasoning about nature that highlights the contribution of relational and ecological reasoning across development and cultural communities [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] and aligns well with recent research on contextual, relational cognition [34][35][36][37][38][39]. Because discussions of teleological reasoning [23,[40][41][42] have not yet engaged this relational dimension, the conceptual distinctions articulated here are new (Table 1).…”

Section: Are Clouds 'For' Raining?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives?

Ojalehto

Waxman

Medin

2013

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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Section: Are Clouds 'For' Raining?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Are Clouds 'For' Raining?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Are Clouds 'For' Raining?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives?

Ojalehto

Waxman

Medin

2013

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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“…The list is not exhaustiveother important IV sets, not covered here for brevity, include cultural differences (Medin & Atran, 2004), personality variables (Ward, 1983;Wills, Longmore & Milton, 2011), and other individual differences (DeCaro, Milton, Longmore & Wills, 2008;Tharp & Pickering, 2009). …”

Section: Defining Domains Through Ivsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the adequacy of current empirical evaluations of formal models of categorization.

Wills

Pothos

2012

Psychological Bulletin

124

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This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: AbstractCategorization is one of the fundamental building blocks of cognition, and the study of categorization is notable for the extent to which formal modeling has been a central and influential component of research. However, the field has seen a proliferation of divergent, non-complementary models with little consensus on the relative adequacy of these accounts.Progress on assessing relative adequacy of formal categorization models against these criteria has, to date, been limited because (a) formal model comparisons are narrow in the number of models and phenomena considered, and (b) models do not often clearly define their explanatory scope. Progress is further hampered by the practice of fitting models with arbitrarily variable parameters to each data set independently. Reviewing examples of good practice in the literature, we conclude that model comparisons are most fruitful when relative adequacy is assessed by comparing well-defined models on the basis of the number and proportion of irreversible, ordinal, penetrable successes (principles of minimal flexibility, breadth, good-enough precision, maximal simplicity, and psychological focus).Keywords: categorization; cluster; exemplar; model selection; modeling; prototype. EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF CATEGORIZATION MODELS 2The study of categorization is a fascinating endeavor. The process of constructing and using categories underpins our capacity to encode and apply information in the world in an efficient and competent manner but also, ultimately, our ability to think in terms of abstract kind of categorization models should we aim to develop? The lack of consensus regarding such key issues has resulted in categorization research being carried out in increasingly independent strands and this has been inhibiting overall progress in the field. Nosofsky, Gluck, Palmeri, McKinley and Glauthier (1994) wrote, "Recent years have seen an avalanche of newly proposed models of category learning and representation. As such models grow increasingly more sophisticated, there is a need to develop increasingly more rigorous testing grounds so that one may choose among them" (p. 352). Almost 20 years later, progress towards this goal remains limited.In the current article, we first provide a definition of the term formal model, consider the principal advantages of formal modeling over other forms of theorizing, briefly summarize some of the leading formal models of categorization, and assess progress to date on the empirical evaluation and comparison of these models. We then set out the approaches EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF CATEGORIZATION MODELS 3 we believe are most likely to lead to progress in the future. We organize our conclusions in terms of a set of criteria for assessing the relative adequacy of models, and a list of dependent and independent variables that any adequate formal model of categorization should be expected to...

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“…From studies in cognitive science and cognitive anthropology several intuitive reasoning modes (see Figure 1) have been identified that are hypothesized to underlie human reasoning about the biological world, including an everyday or intuitive biology and an intuitive psychology (e.g., Atran, 1990;Carey, 1985;Gelman, 2003;Inagaki & Hatano, 2002;Keil, 1994;Medin & Atran, 2004;Wellman & Gelman, 1998). These Figure 1.…”

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confidence: 99%

A conceptual guide to natural history museum visitors' understanding of evolution

et al. 2009

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Museum visitors are an ideal population for assessing the persistence of the conceptual barriers that make it difficult to grasp Darwinian evolutionary theory. In comparison with other members of the public, they are more likely to be interested in natural history, have higher education levels, and be exposed to the relevant content. If museum visitors do not grasp evolutionary principles, it seems unlikely that other members of the general public would do so. In the current study, 32 systematically selected visitors to three Midwest museums of natural history provided detailed openended explanations of biological change in seven diverse organisms. They were not told that these were evolutionary problems. Responses were coded as: informed naturalistic reasoning, featuring some understanding of key evolutionary concepts, novice naturalistic reasoning, featuring intuitive explanations that are also present in childhood, and creationist reasoning, featuring supernatural explanations. All visitors were mixed reasoners, using one or more of these patterns in different permutations across the seven organisms: 72% used a combination of informed naturalistic reasoning and novice naturalistic reasoning, while a further 28% added creationist reasoning to this mix. Correlational analyses indicated that for many visitors these reasoning patterns were coherent rather than fragmented. The theoretical model presented in this article contributes to an analysis of the developmental and cultural factors associated with these patterns. This could help educators working in diverse educational settings understand how to move visitors and students toward more informed reasoning patterns. ß

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The Native Mind: Biological Categorization and Reasoning in Development and Across Cultures.

Cited by 358 publications

References 124 publications

Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives?

Teleological reasoning about nature: intentional design or relational perspectives?

On the adequacy of current empirical evaluations of formal models of categorization.

A conceptual guide to natural history museum visitors' understanding of evolution

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