{"pk":25787,"title":"Constraints on Hypothesis Selection in Causal Learning","subtitle":null,"abstract":"How do children identify promising hypotheses worth testing?\nMany studies have shown that preschoolers can use patterns of\ncovariation together with prior knowledge to learn causal relationships.\nHowever, covariation data are not always available\nand myriad hypotheses may be commensurate with substantive\nknowledge about content domains. We propose that children\ncan identify high-level abstract features common to effects and\ntheir candidate causes and use these to guide their search. We\ninvestigate children’s sensitivity to two such high-level features\n— proportion and dynamics, and show that preschoolers\ncan use these to link effects and candidate causes, even in the\nabsence of other disambiguating information.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Causal learning; intuitive theories; information\nsearch; analogy."}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hj590td","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Pedro","middle_name":"","last_name":"Tsividis","name_suffix":"","institution":"MIT","department":""},{"first_name":"Joshua","middle_name":"B","last_name":"Tenenbaum","name_suffix":"","institution":"MIT","department":""},{"first_name":"Laura","middle_name":"","last_name":"Schulz","name_suffix":"","institution":"MIT","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25787/galley/15411/download/"}]}