Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Children's Mental Models of Prenatal Development.

Tessa J P van Schijndel1, Sara E van Es2, Rooske K Franse3,4

  • 1Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Frontiers in Psychology
|October 18, 2018
PubMed
Summary

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

A reciprocal model of practice and skill: Navigating between dropout and expertise.

Psychological review·2026
Same author

A psychological network approach to engagement with climate change in Dutch youth.

Acta psychologica·2025
Same author

Integrating lines of research on children's curiosity-driven learning.

Journal of experimental child psychology·2025
Same author

Presenting wicked problems in a science museum: A methodology to study interest from a dynamic perspective.

Frontiers in psychology·2023
Same author

Pupil responses to dynamic negative facial expressions of emotion in infants and parents.

Developmental psychobiology·2021
Same author

Attention Biases to Threat in Infants and Parents: Links to Parental and Infant Anxiety Dispositions.

Research on child and adolescent psychopathology·2021

Children develop coherent theories about fetal development, but not bodily functions. Their mental models improve with generative tasks, showing structured knowledge rather than fragmented ideas about prenatal growth.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Naïve Biology

Background:

  • Children's understanding of unobservable processes like prenatal development is complex.
  • Investigating whether children possess coherent mental models or fragmented knowledge is crucial.
  • Prior research highlights reasoning about natural transformations and representational flexibility.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore children's mental models of prenatal development.
  • To determine if children's knowledge is coherent or fragmented.
  • To examine the impact of different methodologies on assessing children's understanding.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment 1: Forced-choice questionnaire (N=317, ages 6-13) on prenatal development.
  • Experiment 2: Open-question interview (N=38, ages 6-12) on the same topic.
Keywords:
fragmented knowledgelatent variable modelsmental modelsnaïve biologyprenatal developmentrepresentational-redescription

Related Experiment Videos

  • Analysis of coherence and grade-relatedness of children's responses.

    • Main Results:

    • Children demonstrated coherent, grade-related theories about early fetal shape, but not bodily functions.
    • A preceding generative task enhanced the coherence of children's mental models.
    • Responses in the interview (Experiment 2) were incoherent and not grade-related.

    Conclusions:

    • Children appear to possess structured mental models of certain aspects of prenatal development.
    • Methodology significantly influences the observed coherence of children's knowledge.
    • Findings contribute to understanding naïve biology and mental model research.