How do humans develop concepts?

Chaitanya Ahuja (11212)

Pranjal Gupta (11514)

Proposal

Introduction

Piaget Theory (1987)[1] has been a highly influential work on the development of children's minds. As the child matures psychologically, he/she becomes competent to undertake certain tasks, which would have been difficult to understand before. The original research implies that the development of children's thinking is not smooth. There are certain regions in the timeline of a child, during which a transition to newly found capabilities occur. Although, this has been taken to imply that before those transition periods the child will be incapable of understanding things in a given way, some researchers argue that there is more to child's development than a mapping of timescales to capabilities.

Previous Work

One of the modifications proposed to the conventional Piaget Theory involves handling 'Development of concepts' in a Fuzzy Logic domain [2]. This work implies that the Piaget named 'schema' are actually fuzzy concepts. Here the Piaget's processes of accommodation are fuzzy relations and the stages, instead of having sharp boundaries, are fuzzy in nature. A modified structure would include fuzzy sets and relations instead of usual sets and relations. This would be a more accurate way to represent the fuzzy models children used to represent objects.

Another aspect of Piaget Theory lies in the learning capabilities of children. Specifically, mentalisitic descriptions have been discussed in the context of learning in [3]. Experiments related to Visual-Perspective Tasks, Theory of Mind and Mentalistic Behavioural(MB) tasks have been performed over time to observe the learning of children (3-4 years) over time. This work has concluded with a useful construct of MB tasks that will measure the child's ability to use their mental states with no social pressure.

Motivation and Methodology

Taking into account, the conventional Piaget Theory and recent results on development of concepts we wish to understand development of children's concepts under constraints of quick learning. We would take help of 2 sets of children, one of age 3-7 years and the second of 7 and above.

Quick learning will involve 2 aspects:

1. Recalling understanding of abstract transitive concepts within a time-frame of 5 minutes

2. Applying the newly found knowledge to a similar scenario.

Conventional Experiments

EXP1: Transitivity test (sticks with length as the measure)

Take a set of 3 sticks (A, B and C) where l(A) denotes the length of stick A. We have l(A)<l(B)<l(C). Check the understanding of ‘which is bigger?' via a question and sticks A and B in plain sight. A similar test is conducted for sticks B and C. For the final question we ask whether A or C is greater.

EXP2: Conservation Test (Liquid)

Take a set of 2 identical transparent glasses and fill them with the same amount of water. Confirm the equality of the amount of water from the volunteer. Pour the water into a bowl wider than the glass. Check the understanding of conservation of water by a question on which of the utensils has more water.

These are conventional experiments, which would be performed in a certain order, which will include the learning aspect as well. The proposed methodology is illustrated in the flowchart below

References

[1] Piaget, Jean. Piaget's theory. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 1976.

[2] Seising, Rudolf. "Fuzziness and Fuzzy Concepts and Jean Piaget's Genetic Epistemology." Information Processing and Management of Uncertainty in Knowledge-Based Systems. Springer International Publishing, 2014.

[3] Dore, Rebecca A., and Angeline S. Lillard. "Do children prefer mentalistic descriptions?." The Journal of genetic psychology 175.1 (2014): 1-15.

[4] Belohlavek, R., Klir, G.J. (eds.): Concepts and Fuzzy Logic. The MIT Press, Cambridge

[5] Ellington, J.W.: The Unity of Kant's thought in his Philosophy of Corporeal Nature. Philosophy of Material Nature. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis