The origins of inquiry: inductive inference and exploration in early childhood

Abstract

Analogies between scientific theories and children's folk theories have been central to the study of cognitive development for decades. In support of the comparison, numerous studies have shown that children have abstract, ontologically committed causal beliefs across a range of content domains. However, recent research suggests that the comparison with science is informative not only about how children represent knowledge but also how they acquire it: many of the epistemic practices essential to and characteristic of scientific inquiry emerge in infancy and early childhood.