Childrwen Teleology (Kelemen 1999) 2 Papers

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The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children.Kelemen D

.Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park16802, USA. dxk45@psu.eduThese studies explore the scope of young children's teleological tendency toview entities as 'designed for purposes'. One view ('Selective Teleology') arguesthat teleology is an innate, basic mode of thinking that, throughout development,is selectively applied by children and adults to artifacts and biological properties.An alternative proposal ('Promiscuous Teleology') argues that teleologicalreasoning derives from children's knowledge of intentionality and is notrestricted to any particular category of phenomena until later in development.Two studies explored the predictions of these two hypotheses regarding thescope of children's functional intuitions. Using different methods, both studiesfound that, unlike adults, pre-schoolers tend to attribute functions to all kinds of objects--clocks, tigers, clouds and their parts. A third study then explored thisfinding further by examining whether the developmental effect was due todifferences in children's and adults' concept of function. It found that bothchildren and adults predominantly view an object's function as the activity it wasdesigned to perform. Possible explanations for the developmental differencesfound in the first two studies, and implications for notions of a teleologicalstance are discussed.PMID: 10384737 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]Cognition.1999 Apr 1;70(3):241-72http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10384737

Function, goals and intention: children’s teleological reasoning aboutobjectsDeborah Kelemen

Department of Psychology, 441 Moore Building, The Pennsylvania StateUniversity, University Park, PA 16802, USAAvailable online 22 November 1999.

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