Book contents
- The Questioning Child
- The Questioning Child
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Questions about Questions
- 2 Questions in Development
- 3 The Point, the Shrug, and the Question of Clarification
- 4 The Quest for Comprehension and Learning
- 5 Children’s Question-Asking across Cultural Communities
- 6 The Development of Information-Requesting Gestures in Infancy and Their Role in Shaping Learning Outcomes
- 7 Developmental Changes in Question-Asking
- 8 Understanding Developmental and Individual Differences in the Process of Inquiry during the Preschool Years
- 9 “Why Are There Big Squares and Little Squares?”
- 10 Children’s Questions in Social and Cultural Perspective
- 11 Mothers’ Use of Questions and Children’s Learning and Language Development
- 12 Teaching and Learning by Questioning
- 13 Asking “Why?” and “What If?”
- 14 What Makes a Good Question? Towards an Epistemic Classification
- 15 The Questioning Child
- Index
- References
4 - The Quest for Comprehension and Learning
Children’s Questions Drive Both
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2020
Book contents
- The Questioning Child
- The Questioning Child
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- 1 Questions about Questions
- 2 Questions in Development
- 3 The Point, the Shrug, and the Question of Clarification
- 4 The Quest for Comprehension and Learning
- 5 Children’s Question-Asking across Cultural Communities
- 6 The Development of Information-Requesting Gestures in Infancy and Their Role in Shaping Learning Outcomes
- 7 Developmental Changes in Question-Asking
- 8 Understanding Developmental and Individual Differences in the Process of Inquiry during the Preschool Years
- 9 “Why Are There Big Squares and Little Squares?”
- 10 Children’s Questions in Social and Cultural Perspective
- 11 Mothers’ Use of Questions and Children’s Learning and Language Development
- 12 Teaching and Learning by Questioning
- 13 Asking “Why?” and “What If?”
- 14 What Makes a Good Question? Towards an Epistemic Classification
- 15 The Questioning Child
- Index
- References
Summary
Two crucial human cognitive goals are to understand and to learn. Both goals often require active management, actively questing for knowledge. Children’s questions, both purposeful and incidental, both verbal and nonverbal, do this. Questions start early in life, change in nature and influence, but powerfully impact cognitive development all along the way. Often they do so as an antecedent and a consequence of children’s investment in explanatory understanding. I use my research and the research of my collaborators to address these topics as well as describe several of the steps and processes whereby questions and explanations drive the development of children’s comprehension and learning.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Questioning ChildInsights from Psychology and Education, pp. 51 - 72Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
References
Aleven, V., and Koedinger, K. R. (2002). An effective metacognitive strategy: Learning by doing and explaining with a computer-based cognitive tutor. Cognitive Science, 26, 147–79. http://doi:10.1207/s15516709cog2602_1Google Scholar
Amsterlaw, J., and Wellman, H. M. (2006). Theories of mind in transition: A microgenetic study of the development of false belief understanding. Journal of Cognition and Development, 7, 139–72. http://doi:10.1207/s15327647jcd0702_1Google Scholar
Au, T. K., Sidle, A. L., and Rollins, K. B. (1993). Developing an intuitive understanding of conservation and contamination: Invisible particles as a plausible mechanism. Developmental Psychology, 29, 286–99. http://doi:10.1037/0012-1649.29.2.286CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartsch, K., and Wellman, H. M. (1989). Young children’s attribution of action to beliefs and desires. Child Development, 60, 946–64. http://doi:10.2307/1131035CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartsch, K., Campbell, M. D., and Troseth, G. L. (2007). Why else does Jenny run? Young children’s extended psychological explanations. Journal of Cognition and Development, 8, 33–61. http://doi:10.1080/15248370709336992Google Scholar
Bascandziev, I., and Harris, P. L. (2016). The beautiful and the accurate: Are children’s selective trust decisions biased? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 152, 92–105. http://doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2016.06.017CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beal, C. R., and Flavell, J. H. (1982). Effect of increasing the salience of message ambiguities on kindergartners’ evaluations of communicative success and message adequacy. Developmental Psychology, 18, 43–48. http://doi: 10.1037//0012-1649.18.1.43Google Scholar
Begus, K. and Southgate, V. (2012) Infant pointing serves an interrogative function. Developmental Science, 15, 611–17. http://doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01160.xGoogle Scholar
Bjork, R. A. (2018). Being suspicious of the sense of ease and undeterred by the sense of difficulty: Looking back at Schmidt and Bjork (1992). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13, 146–8. http://doi:10.1177/1745691617690642Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Oxford: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Callanan, M. A., and Oakes, L. M. (1992). Preschoolers’ questions and parents’ explanations: Causal thinking in everyday activity. Cognitive Development, 7, 213–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/0885-2014(92)90012-GCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chi, M. T. H., de Leeuw, N., Chiu, M., and LaVancher, L. (1994). Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding. Cognitive Science, 18, 439–77. http://doi:10.1207/s15516709cog1803_3Google Scholar
Chouinard, M. (2007). Children’s questions: A mechanism for cognitive development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 72, no.1, 1–129.Google Scholar
Dunn, J., Brown, J., Slomkowski, C., Tesla, C., and Youngblade, L. (1991). Young children’s understanding of other people’s feelings and beliefs: Individual differences and their antecedents. Child Development, 62, 1352–66. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130811Google Scholar
Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A., and Wellman, H. M. (2009). Preschoolers’ search for explanatory information within adult–child conversation. Child Development, 80, 1592–611. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01356.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A., and Wellman, H. M. (2016). Young children prefer and remember satisfying explanations. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17, 718–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2015.1098649Google Scholar
Harris, P. L. (2012). Trusting what you’re told: How children learn from others. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, J., Heine, S.J., and Norenzayan, A. (2010) The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–135. http://doi:10.1017/s0140525x0999152xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hickling, A. K., and Wellman, H. M. (2001). The emergence of children’s causal explanations and theories: Evidence from everyday conversation. Developmental Psychology, 37, 668–83. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.37.5.668Google Scholar
Kemler Nelson, D. G., Egan, L. C., and Holt, M. B. (2004). When children ask, “What is it?” What do they want to know about artifacts? Psychological Science, 15, 384–9. http://doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00689.xGoogle Scholar
Koenig, M. A., Clément, F., and Harris, P. L. (2004). Trust in testimony: Children’s use of true and false statements. Psychological Science, 15, 694–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00742.xGoogle Scholar
Kurkul, K. E., and Corriveau, K. H. (2017) Question, explanation, follow-up: A mechanism for learning from others? Child Development, 89, 280–94. http://doi:10.1111/cdev.12726Google Scholar
Legare, C. H., Wellman, H. M., and Gelman, S. A. (2009). Evidence for an explanation advantage in naïve biological reasoning. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 177–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.06.002Google Scholar
Legare, C. H., Gelman, S. A., and Wellman, H. M. (2010). Inconsistency with prior knowledge triggers children’s causal explanatory reasoning. Child Development, 81, 929–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01443.xGoogle Scholar
Legare, C. H., Zhu, L., and Wellman, H. M. (2013). Examining biological explanations in Chinese preschool children: A cross-cultural comparison. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 13, 67–93. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342085Google Scholar
Lepper, R., Greene, D., and Nisbett, R. E. (1973) Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 281, 129–37. http://doi:10.1037/h0035519Google Scholar
Lombrozo, T. (2016) Explanatory preferences shape learning and inference. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 748–59. http://doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.08.001Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B., and Snow, C. (1990). The child language data exchange system: An update. Journal of Child Language, 17, 457–72. http://doi:10.1017/s0305000900013866Google Scholar
Miao, X. C. (1986). Young children’s understanding of interrogatives: The developmental peculiarities of answering WH questions in young children. Psychological Science, 5, 1–5.Google Scholar
Mueller, C. M., and Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 33–52. http://doi:10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pine, K. J., and Siegler, R. S. (2003). The role of explanatory activity in increasing the generality of thinking. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. Tampa, FL.Google Scholar
Revelle, G. L., Wellman, H. M., and Karabenick, J. D. (1985). Comprehension monitoring in preschool children. Child Development, 56, 654–63. http://doi:10.2307/1129755Google Scholar
Rhodes, M., and Wellman, H. (2013). Constructing a new theory from old ideas and new evidence. Cognitive Science, 37, 592–604. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12031CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rittle-Johnson, B. (2006). Promoting transfer: The effects of direct instruction and self-explanation. Child Development, 77, 1–15. http://doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00852.xGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E. J., and Mitchell, P. (1995). Making children’s early understanding of representational mind: Backwards explanation versus prediction. Child Development, 66, 1022–39. http://doi:10.2307/1131796CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, E. J., and Robinson, W. P. (1977). Development in the understanding of causes of success and failure in verbal communication. Cognition, 5, 363–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(77)90021-XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowland, C. F., and Pine, J. M. (2000). Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh-questions acquisition: What children do know? Journal of Child Language, 27, 157–81. http://doi:10.1017/s0305000999004055Google Scholar
Sabbagh, M., and Baldwin, D. A. (2001). Learning words from knowledgeable versus ignorant speakers: Links between preschoolers’ theory of mind and semantic development. Child Development, 2, 1054–70. http://doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00334Google Scholar
Siegler, R. S. (1995). How does change occur: A microgenetic study of number conservation. Cognitive Development, 28, 225–73. http://doi:10.1006/cogp.1995.1006Google Scholar
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., et al. (2009) Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking conversations. PNAS, 106, 10587–92. http://doi:10.1073/pnas.0903616106CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardif, T., Wellman, H. M., and Cheung, K. M. (2004). False belief understanding in Cantonese-speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 31, no. 4, 779–800. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000904006580Google Scholar
Wellman, H. M., and Liu, D. (2007). Causal reasoning as informed by the early development of explanations. In Gopnik, A. and Schulz, L. E. (eds.), Causal learning: Psychology, philosophy, and computation (pp. 261–79). New York: Oxford University Press. http://doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176803.003.0017Google Scholar
Wellman, H. M., Song, J. H., and Peskin‐Shepherd, H. (2019). Children’s early awareness of comprehension as evident in their spontaneous corrections of speech errors. Child Development, 90, 196–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12862CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wimmer, H., and Mayringer, H. (1998). False belief understanding in young children: Explanations do not develop before predictions. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 22, 403–22. http://doi:10.1080/016502598384441CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, R. M. F., Lawson, M. J., and Keeves, J. (2002). The effects of self- explanation training on students’ problem solving in high-school mathematics. Learning and Instruction, 12, 233–62. http://doi:10.1016/s0959-4752(01)00027-5Google Scholar
- 3
- Cited by