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Related Experiment Videos

Thinking about the unknown.

Paul L. Harris1

  • 1Harvard University, 506 Larsen Hall, Graduate School of Education, Appian Way, 02138, Cambridge, MA, USA

Trends in Cognitive Sciences
|October 31, 2001
PubMed
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Young children can reason from unfamiliar claims, challenging the idea that they only learn from personal experience. This suggests preschoolers possess innate reasoning abilities for novel information before formal schooling.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Epistemology

Background:

  • Traditional research posits that individuals without formal education rely solely on firsthand experience for reasoning.
  • This perspective suggests a limited capacity to encode and reason from novel generalizations provided by others.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether young children can reason from unfamiliar claims presented by adults.
  • To challenge the long-held assumption that early learning must be grounded in direct empirical experience.

Main Methods:

  • Utilizing simple prompts to assess reasoning abilities in preschool-aged children.
  • Presenting novel generalizations from adults to gauge children's capacity to process and reason from them.

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Main Results:

  • Recent research indicates that preschool children can, in fact, reason from unfamiliar claims.
  • This finding contradicts the traditional view of limited reasoning capabilities based on personal experience alone.

Conclusions:

  • Young children possess a pre-existing capacity for reasoning about the unknown upon entering formal education.
  • The assumption that early education must be rooted in children's empirical experience may be inaccurate.