Megan Bulloch | Quest University Canada (original) (raw)

Papers by Megan Bulloch

Page 1. DEVELOPMENT OF GENERALIZATION: WHAT CHANGES? DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillmen... more Page 1. DEVELOPMENT OF GENERALIZATION: WHAT CHANGES? DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Megan J. Bulloch, MA ***** ...

New Scientist - NEW SCI, 2011

Cognition, 2007

A number of recent models and experiments have suggested that evidence of early category-based in... more A number of recent models and experiments have suggested that evidence of early category-based induction is an artifact of perceptual cues provided by experimenters. We tested these accounts against the prediction that different relations (causal versus non-causal) determine the types of perceptual similarity by which children generalize. Young children were asked to label, to infer novel properties, and to project future appearances of a novel animal that varied in two opposite respects: (1) how much it looked like another animal whose name and properties were known, and (2) how much its parents looked like parents of another animal whose name and properties were known. When exemplar origins were known, children generalized to exemplars with similar origins rather than with similar appearances; when origins were unknown, children generalized to exemplars with similar appearances. Results indicate even young children possess the cognitive control to choose the similarities that best predict accurate generalizations.

Animal Behaviour, 2008

Primates rely on visual attention to gather knowledge about their environment. The ability to rec... more Primates rely on visual attention to gather knowledge about their environment. The ability to recognize such knowledge-acquisition activity in another may demonstrate one aspect of Theory of Mind. Using a series of experiments in which chimpanzees were presented with a choice between an experimenter whose visual attention was available and another whose vision was occluded, we asked whether chimpanzees understood the relationship between visual attention and knowledge states. The animals showed sophisticated understanding of attention from the first presentation of each task. Under more complex experimental conditions, the subjects had more difficulty with species-typical processing of attentional cues and those likely to be learned during human contact. We discuss the results with respect to the comparative impact of enculturation on chimpanzees.

Whether finding a classroom, meeting a new teacher, learning to add, or reading a story, children... more Whether finding a classroom, meeting a new teacher, learning to add, or reading a story, children understand the world through their concepts. Concepts are crucial for understanding the world because they represent current experiences as belonging to a category of similar experiences. By having a concept chair, a student who sees a new chairat his desk need not re-discover whether it is alive, whether he should write with it or sit on it, or what the teacher means by “take your seat” when pointing at the new chair. In this ...

Developmental Science, 2009

Development of reasoning is often depicted as involving increasing use of relational similarities... more Development of reasoning is often depicted as involving increasing use of relational similarities and decreasing use of perceptual similarities ('the perceptual-to-relational shift'). We argue that this shift is a special case of a broader developmental trend: increasing sensitivity to the predictive accuracy of different similarity types. To test this hypothesis, we asked participants (3-, 4-, 5-year-olds and adults) to generalize novel information on two types of problems -offspring problems, where relational matches yield accurate generalizations, and prey problems, where perceptual matches yield accurate generalizations. On offspring problems, we replicated prior findings of increasing relational matches with age. However, we observed decreasing relational matches on prey problems. Provided feedback on their responses, 3-year-olds showed the same trend. Findings suggest that the relational shift commonly observed in categorization and analogical reasoning may reflect a general increase in children's sensitivity to cue validity rather than an overall preference to generalize over perceptual similarity.

Cognition, Oct 31, 2007

A number of recent models and experiments have suggested that evidence of early categorybased ind... more A number of recent models and experiments have suggested that evidence of early categorybased induction is an artifact of perceptual cues provided by experimenters. We tested these accounts against the prediction that diVerent relations (causal versus non-causal) determine the types of perceptual similarity by which children generalize. Young children were asked to label, to infer novel properties, and to project future appearances of a novel animal that varied in two opposite respects: (1) how much it looked like another animal whose name and properties were known, and (2) how much its parents looked like parents of another animal whose name and properties were known. When exemplar origins were known, children generalized to exemplars with similar origins rather than with similar appearances; when origins were unknown, children generalized to exemplars with similar appearances. Results indicate even young children possess the cognitive control to choose the similarities that best predict accurate generalizations.