Developing a Concept of Choice

Advances in Child Development and Behavior

Volumn 43, Issue , 2012, Pages 193-218

  Kushnir, Tamar ^a  

^a Cornell University ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

Agency; Cognitive development; Conceptual development; Culture; Free will; Social cognition; Statistical inference

Indexed keywords

EID: 84866767658     PISSN: 00652407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-397919-3.00007-1     Document Type: Chapter

References (127)

1. Aarts H., Van Den Bos K. On the foundations of beliefs in free will: Intentional binding and unconscious priming in self-agency. Psychological Science 2011, 22:532-537.
2. Aslin R.N. Infant eyes: A window on cognitive development. Infancy 2012, 17(1):126-140.
3. Bandura A. Reconstrual of " free will" from the agentic perspective of social cognitive theory. Are we free? Psychology and free will 2008, 86-127. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. J. Baer, J.C. Kaufman, R.F. Baumeister (Eds.).
4. Bartsch K., Wellman H.M. Children talk about the mind 1995, Oxford University Press, New York.
5. Behne T., Carpenter M., Call J., Tomasello M. Unwilling versus unable: Infants' understanding of intentional action. Developmental Psychology 2005, 41. 328-37.
6. Brandone A.C., Wellman H.M. You can't always get what you want: infants understand failed goal-directed actions. Psychological Science 2009, 20(1):85-91.
7. Buttelmann D., Carpenter M., Tomasello M. 18-Month-old infants show false-belief understanding in an active helping paradigm. Cognition 2009, 112:337-342.
8. Blakemore S., Frith C. Self-awareness and action. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 2003, 13:219-224.
9. Baumeister R.F., Mele A.R., Vohs K.D. Free will and consciousness: How might they work? 2010, Oxford University Press, New York.
10. Carpenter M., Akhtar N., Tomasello M. Fourteen- to 18-month-old infants differentially imitate intentional and accidental actions. Infant Behavior and Development 1998, 21:315-330.
11. Carruthers P. Mindreading underlies metacognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 2009, 32:164-182.
12. Chernyak N., Kushnir T., Sullivan K.M., Wang Q. A comparison of American and Nepalese children's concepts of free will. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 2011.
13. Chernyak N., Kushnir T., Wellman H.M. Developing notions of free will: Preschoolers understanding of how intangible constraints bind their freedom of choice. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 2010.
14. Csibra G., Gergely G., Bíró S., Koós O., Brockbank M. Goal attribution without agency cues: The perception of 'pure reason' in infancy. Cognition 1999, 72:237-267.
15. Denison S., Konopczynski K., Garcia V., Xu F. Probabilistic reasoning in preschoolers: Random sampling and base rate. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 2006, 1216-1221. Psychology Press, Florence, KY. R. Sun, N. Miyake (Eds.).
16. Dennett D.C. Freedom evolves 2003, Penguin Books, New York.
17. Dunfield K.A., Kuhlmeier V.A. Intention-mediated selective helping in infancy. Psychological Science 2010, 21:523-527.
18. Foley M.A., Ratner H.H. Children's recoding in memory for collaboration: A way of learning from others. Cognitive Development 1998, 13:91-108.
19. Gelman S.A. The essential child 2003, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
20. Gelman S.A., Wellman H.M. Insides and essences: Early understandings of the non-obvious. Cognition 1991, 38:213-244.
21. Gergely G., Bekkering H., Király I. Rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature 2002, 415(6873).
22. Gergely G., Csibra G. Teleological reasoning in infancy: The naive theory of rational action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2003, 7:287-292.
23. Gilbert D.T., Malone P.S. The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin 1995, 117:21-38.
24. Gopnik A., Glymour C., Sobel D.M., Schulz L.E., Kushnir T., Danks D. A theory of causal learning in children: Causal maps and Bayes nets. Psychological Review 2004, 111:1-30.
25. Gopnik A., Melzoff A.N. Words, thoughts, and theories 1997, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
26. Gopnik A., Wellman H.M. Why the child's theory of mind really is a theory. Mind and Language 1992, 7(1-2):145-171.
27. Guglielmo S., Monroe A.E., Malle B.F. At the heart of morality lies folk psychology. Inquiry 2009, 52:449-466.
28. Gweon H., Tenenbaum J.B., Schulz L.E. Infants consider both the sample and the sampling process in inductive generalization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2010, 107(20):9066-9071.
29. Haggard P., Tsakiris M. The experience of agency: Feeling, judgment and responsibility. Current Directions in Psychological Science 2009, 18:242-246.
30. Hamlin J.K., Wynn K., Bloom P. Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature 2008, 450:557-559.
31. Harris P.L. Thinking about what is not the case. International Journal Of Psychology 1993, 28(5):693-707.
32. Harris P.L., Koenig M.A. Trust in testimony: How children learn about science and religion. Child Development 2006, 77:505-524.
33. Harris P.L., German T.P., Mills P.E. Children's use of counterfactual thinking in causal reasoning. Cognition 1996, 61:233-259.
34. Helwig C.C. The development of personal autonomy throughout cultures. Cognitive Development 2006, 21(4):458-473.
35. Heyman G., Gelman S. Beliefs about the origins of human psychological traits. Developmental Psychology 2000, 36:663-678.
36. Holton R. Disentangling the will. Free will and consciousness: How might they work? 2010, 82-100. Oxford University Press, New York. R.F. Baumeister, A.R. Mele, K.D. Vohs (Eds.).
37. Inagaki K., Hatano G. Young children's understanding of the mind-body distinction. Child Development 1993, 64:1534-1549.
38. Inagaki K., Hatano G. Children's understanding of mind-body relationships. Children's understanding of biology and health 1999, Cambridge University Press, New York. M. Siegal, C.C. Peterson (Eds.).
39. Iyengar, S. (2010, July). Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html.
40. Kalish C.W. Reasons and causes: Children's understanding of conformity to social rules and physical laws. Child Development 1998, 69:706-720.
41. Kalish C. Children's predictions of consistency in people's actions. Cognition 2002, 84:237-265.
42. Kalish C.W., Shiverick S.M. Children's reasoning about norms and traits as motives for behavior. Cognitive Development 2004, 19(3):401-416.
43. Killen M., Smetana J. Social interactions in preschool classrooms and the development of young children's conceptions of the personal. Child Development 1999, 70:486-501.
44. Kitayama S., Snibbe A., Markus H., Suzuki T. Is there any 'free' choice? Self and dissonance in two cultures. Psychological Science 2004, 15(8):527-533.
45. Kirkham N., Slemmer J., Johnson S. Visual statistical learning in infancy: Evidence for a domain general learning mechanism. Cognition 2002, 83:B35-B42.
46. Koenig M.A., Harris P.L. Preschoolers mistrust ignorant and inaccurate speakers. Child Development 2005, 76:1261-1277.
47. Kohlberg L. The development of children's orientation toward a moral order. Vita Humana 1963, 6:11-33.
48. Kovács A.M., Téglás E., Endress A.D. The social sense: Susceptibility to others' beliefs in human infants and adults. Science 2010, 330:1830-1834.
49. Kushnir T., Gopnik A. Children infer causal strength from probabilities and interventions. Psychological Science 2005, 16:678-683.
50. Kushnir T., Chernyak N., Wellman H.M. Preschoolers' understanding of freedom of choice. Proceedings of the 31st annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 2009, 87-92.
51. Kushnir T., Wellman H.M., Gelman S.A. A self-agency bias in children's causal inferences. Developmental Psychology 2009, 45:597-603.
52. Kushnir T., Xu F., Wellman H.M. Young children use statistical sampling to infer the preferences of others. Psychological Science 2010, 21:1134-1140.
53. Leotti L.A., Iyengar S.S., Ochsner K.N. Born to choose: Biological bases for the need for control. Trends in Cognitive Science 2010, 14(10):457-463.
54. Lillard A.S. Pretend play skills and the child's theory of mind. Child Development 1993, 64(2):348-371.
55. Lucas C., Griffiths T.L., Xu F., Fawcett C. A rational model of preference learning and choice prediction by children. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 2009, 21.
56. Ma L., Xu F. Young children's use of statistical sampling evidence to infer the subjectivity of preferences. Cognition 2011, 120:403-411.
57. Markus H.R., Kitayama S. Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review 1991, 98:224-253.
58. Meltzoff A.N., Brooks R. Self-experience as a mechanism for learning about others: A training study in social cognition. Developmental Psychology 2008, 44:1257-1265.
59. Metcalfe J., Eich T.S., Castel A.D. Metacognition of agency across the lifespan. Cognition 2010, 116(2):267-282.
60. Miller J.G. Culture and the development of everyday social explanation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1984, 46:961-978.
61. Miller J.G., Das R., Chakravarthy S. Culture and the role of choice in agency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2011, 101:46-61.
62. Montgomery D.E., Lightner M. Children's developing understanding of the differences between their own action and passive movement. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 2004, 22:417-438.
63. Morris M.W., Peng K. Culture and cause: American and Chinese attributions for social and physical events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1994, 67:949-971.
64. Nichols S. The folk psychology of free will: Fits and starts. Mind & Language 2004, 19:473-502.
65. Nichols S., Knobe J. Moral responsibility and determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions. Noûs 2007, 41:663-685.
66. Norenzayan A., Nisbett R.E. Culture and causal cognition. Current Directions In Psychological Science 2000, 9(4):132-135.
67. Nucci L. Conceptions of personal issues: A domain distinct from moral or societal concepts. Child Development 1981, 52:114-121.
68. Nucci L.P., Weber E.K. Social interactions in the home and the development of young children's conceptions of the personal. Child Development 1995, 66:1438-1452.
69. Oakes L., Madole K. The future of infant categorization research: A process-oriented approach. Child Development 2000, 71:119-126.
70. Onishi K., Baillargeon R. Do 15-month-old infants understand false beliefs?. Science 2005, 308:255-258.
71. Papafragou A. Mindreading and verbal communication. Mind and Language 2001, 17:55-67.
72. Papafragou A. Modality and theory of mind: Perspectives from language development and autism. Modality and its Interaction With the Verbal System 2002, 185-204. Benjamins, Amsterdam. S. Barbiers, F. Beukema, W. van der Wurff (Eds.).
73. Papafragou A., Cassidy K., Gleitman L. When we think about thinking: The acquisition of belief verbs. Cognition 2007, 105:125-165.
74. Paulhus D.L., Carey J.M. The FAD-Plus: Measuring lay beliefs regarding free will and related constructs. Journal Of Personality Assessment 2011, 93(1):96-104.
75. Paulus M., Hunnius S., Vissers M., Bekkering H. Bridging the gap between the other and me: The functional role of motor resonance and action effects in infants' imitation. Developmental Science 2011, 14(4).
76. Phillips A., Wellman H. Infants' understanding of object-directed action. Cognition 2005, 98:137-155.
77. Piaget J. The moral judgment of the child 1932, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, UK.
78. Piaget J. The psychology of the child 1969, Basic Books, New York, [Originally published in 1966].
79. Pizarro D.A., Helzer E. Freedom of the will and stubborn moralism. Free will and consciousness: how might they work? 2010, Oxford University Press, New York. R.F. Baumeister, A.R. Mele, K.D. Vohs (Eds.).
80. Pöhlmann C., Carranza E., Hannover B., Iyengar S.S. Repercussions of self-construal for self-relevant and other-relevant choice. Social Cognition 2007, 25(2):284-305.
81. Pronin E., Kugler M.B. People believe they have more free will than others. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2010, 107(52):22469-22474.
82. Pronin E., Wegner D.M., McCarthy K., Rodriguez S. Everyday magical powers: The role of apparent mental causation in the overestimation of personal influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2006, 91:218-231.
83. Rakoczy H., Warneken F., Tomasello M. The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games. Developmental Psychology 2008, 44:875-881.
84. Repacholi B., Gopnik A. Early reasoning about desires: Evidence from 14- and 18-month-olds. Developmental Psychology 1997, 33:12-21.
85. Robinson E.J., Whitcombe E.L. Children's suggestibility in relation to their understanding about sources of knowledge. Child Development 2003, 74:48-62.
86. Ross L., Nisbett R.E. The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. 1991, McGraw-Hill, New York.
87. Ryan R.L., Deci E.L. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist 2000, 55:68-78.
88. Ryan R.M., Lynch J.H. Emotional autonomy versus detachment: Revisiting the vicissitudes of adolescence and young adulthood. Child Development 1989, 60(2):340-356.
89. Saffran J., Aslin R., Newport E. Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science 1996, 274:1926-1928.
90. Sarkissian H., Chatterjee A., De Brigard F., Knobe J., Nichols S., Sirker S. Is belief in free will a cultural universal?. Mind & Language 2010, 25(3):346-358.
91. Savani K., Morris M.W., Naidu N.V.R., Kumar S., Berlia N. Cultural conditioning: Understanding interpersonal accommodation in India and the U.S. in terms of the modal characteristics of interpersonal influence situations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2011, 100:84-102.
92. Schulz L., Bonawitz E., Griffiths T. Can being scared cause tummy aches? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence, and preschoolers' causal inferences. Developmental Psychology 2007, 43:1124-1139.
93. Schult C.A., Wellman H.M. Explaining human movements and actions: Children's understanding of the limits of psychological explanation. Cognition 1997, 62:291-324.
94. Shultz T.R., Wells D. Judging the intentionality of action-outcomes. Developmental Psychology 1985, 21:83-89.
95. Schwartz B. The paradox of choice: Why more is less 2004, Ecco, New York.
96. Schweder R.A., Mahapatra M., Miller J.G. Culture and moral development. The emergence of morality in young children 1987, 1-79. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. J. Kagan, S. Lamb (Eds.).
97. Senju A., Southgate V., Snape C., Leonard M., Csibra G. Do 18-month-olds really attribute mental states to others? A critical test. Psychological Science 2011, 22(7):878-880.
98. Smetana J.G. Preschoolers' understanding of moral and social rules. Child Development 1981, 52:1333-1336.
99. Sobel D.M. Exploring the coherence of young children's explanatory abilities: Evidence from generating counterfactuals. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 2004, 22:37-58.
100. Sommerville J.A., Crane C.C. Ten-month-old infants use prior information to identify an actor's goal. Developmental Science 2009, 12:314-325.
101. Sommerville J.A., Hammond A.J. Treating another's actions as one's own: Children's memory of and learning from joint activity. Developmental Psychology 2007, 43:1003-1018.
102. Sommerville J.A., Woodward A.L., Needham A. Action experience alters 3-month-old infants' perception of others' actions. Cognition 2005, 96:B1-B11.
103. Southgate V., Senju A., Csibra G. Action anticipation through attribution of false belief. Psychological Science 2007, 18:587-592.
104. Spelke E.S., Breinlinger K., Macomber J., Jacobson K. Origins of knowledge. Psychological Review 1992, 99:605-632.
105. Swartz B. The paradox of choice: Why more is less. NY: Harper Collins 2004.
106. Téglás E., Girotto V., Gonzalez M., Bonatti L.L. Intuitions of probabilities shape expectations about the future at 12 months and beyond. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 2007, 104:19156-19159.
107. Tomasello M., Haberl K. Understanding attention: 12- and 18-month-olds know what's new for other persons. Developmental Psychology 2003, 39:906-912.
108. Turiel E. The development of social knowledge. 1983, Cambridge University Press, New York.
109. Vohs K.D., Schooler J.W. The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science 2008, 19:49-54.
110. Wang Q. The emergence of cultural self-construct: Autobiographical memory and self-description in American and Chinese children. Developmental Psychology 2004, 4(1):3-15.
111. Watson J.S., Ramey C.T. Reactions to response-contingent stimulation in early infancy. Merill-Palmer Quarterly 1972, 18:219-227.
112. Wegner D. The illusion of conscious will. 2002, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
113. Wellman H.M. The child's theory of mind. 1990, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
114. Wellman H.M., Cross D., Watson J. Meta-analysis of theory of mind development: The truth about false belief. Child Development 2001, 72:655-684.
115. Wellman H., Phillips A., Dunphy-Lelii S., LaLonde N. Infant social attention predicts preschool social cognition. Developmental Science 2004, 7:283-288.
116. Wellman H.M., Fang F., Liu D., Zhu L., Liu G. Scaling of theory of mind understanding in Chinese children. Psychological Science 2006, 17:1075-1081.
117. Wellman, Kushnir, & Xu, in preparation. Infants Use Statistical Sampling to Understand the Psychological World.
118. Wellman H.M., Liu D. Scaling of theory of mind tasks. Child Development 2004, 75:523-541.
119. Wellman H.M., Miller J.G. Developing conceptions of responsive intentional agents. Journal of Cognition and Culture 2006, 6:27-55.
120. Wells G. Learning and using the auxiliary verb in English. Language development 1979, Croom Helm, Beckenham. V. Lee (Ed.).
121. Woodward A. Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor's reach. Cognition 1998, 69:1-34.
122. Woodward A. Infants' grasp of others' intentions. Current Directions in Psychological Science 2009, 18:53-57.
123. Woodward A.L., Sommerville J.A., Guajardo J.J. How infants make sense of intentional action. Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of Social Cognition 2001, 149-169. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. B. Malle, L. Moses, D. Baldwin (Eds.).
124. Woolley J.D. Thinking about fantasy: Are children fundamentally different thinkers and believers from adults?. Child Development 1997, 68(6):991-1011.
125. Xu F., Denison S. Statistical inference and sensitivity to sampling in 11-month-old infants. Cognition 2009, 112:97-104.
126. Xu F., Garcia V. Intuitive statistics by 8-month-old infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2008, 105:5012-5015.
127. Xu F., Tenenbaum J.B. Word learning as Bayesian inference. Psychological Review 2007, 114(2):245-272.