Intuitive Scientists Research Articles

Learners' causal intuitions explain behavior in control of variables tasks.

Self-directed learners are described as "intuitive scientists," yet they often struggle in assessments of their scientific reasoning skills. We investigate a novel explanation for this apparent gap between formal and informal scientific inquiry behavior. Specifically, we consider whether learners' documented failure to correctly apply the control of variables strategy might stem from a mismatch between task presentation and their intuitions as causal learners. In Experiment 1, children (7- and 9-year-olds) and adults were tested on a version of a traditional multivariate reasoning task (Tschirgi, 1980) that was modified to clarify ambiguous elements of the causal logic in the original design. In all age groups, a significant majority of participants selected informative experiments on this modified task, avoiding confounded actions with positive tangible outcomes. In Experiment 2, we replicate these results with real-world stimuli, and in Experiments 3 and 4, we provide direct evidence that self-directed learners apply specific causal intuitions to experimentation tasks. Together, these findings support a novel alternative interpretation of the apparently paradoxical gap between learners' success in informal exploration and their error-prone experimentation-both behaviors are consistent with an intuitively causal approach to scientific inquiry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Is Conviction Narrative Theory a theory of everything or nothing?

We connect Conviction Narrative Theory to an account that views people as intuitive scientists who can flexibly create, evaluate, and modify representations of decision problems. We argue that without understanding how the relevant complex narratives (or indeed any representation, simple to complex) are themselves constructed, we also cannot know when and why people would rely on them to make choices.

Rethinking the "gap": Self-directed learning in cognitive development and scientific reasoning.

To improve upon their current knowledge, learners must be able to generate informative data and accurately evaluate this evidence. However, there is substantial disagreement regarding self-directed learners' competence in these behaviors. Researchers in cognitive development have suggested that learners are "intuitive scientists," generating informative actions and rationally coordinating their current observations and prior beliefs from an early age. Conversely, researchers in scientific reasoning report that learners struggle with experimentation and often fail to reach appropriate conclusions from evidence, even as adults. According to the prevailing narrative, these inconsistent findings must be "bridged" to explain the gap between learners' successes and failures. Here, we advocate for an alternative approach. First, we review the research on scientific reasoning and find that there may be less evidence for learners' failures than is typically assumed. Second, we offer a novel interpretation that aims to account for both literatures: we suggest that self-directed learners may be best understood as competent causal reasoners. That is, many seemingly uninformative or irrational behaviors are consistent with the goals of causal learning. This account not only resolves the apparent contradictions in the existing research, but also offers a way forward towards a more accurate and integrated understanding of self-directed learning. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Development and Aging Psychology > Learning Psychology > Reasoning and Decision Making.

People as Intuitive Scientists: Reconsidering Statistical Explanations of Decision Making.

A persistent metaphor in decision-making research casts people as intuitive statisticians. Popular explanations based on this metaphor assume that the way in which people represent the environment is specified and fixed a priori. A major flaw in this account is that it is not clear how people know what aspects of an environment are important, how to interpret those aspects, and how to make decisions based on them. We suggest a theoretical reorientation away from assuming people's representations towards a focus on explaining how people themselves specify what is important to represent. This perspective casts decision makers as intuitive scientists able to flexibly construct, modify, and replace the representations of the decision problems they face.

Science in action in spontaneous preschool play – an essential foundation for future understanding

ABSTRACTChildren are born to play and are born as intuitive scientists and use numeracy and literacy in their play. Playing is an essential apprenticeship for developing scientific (STEM) literacy. Observing children spontaneously playing reveals that they are experiencing STEM in action. They are observing phenomena, asking questions, solving problems, design investigations and adapting what is available to use in their active investigations Nonspeaking children, until they acquire verbal language for themselves and communicating by gestures and actions about findings. Children have various modes of play, free choice, structured and structured. In imaginative play they replicate activities of adults, dressing up as an adult, cooking in a make-believe kitchen, composing and acting out a narrative. In all these activities children do compose their own narrative but listen to narratives particularly in Pictorial fiction books gradually being able to sort myth from reality as well as predicting outcomes and problem solving.

XVI Meeting of Physics

PrefaceIt is a great pleasure for the editorial committee to introduce the Proceedings of the XVI Meeting of Physics. This event is an initiative of a team of Peruvian scientists –local and living abroad– in conjunction with various renowned international guests that, since 1999, year after year gather to present and share the results of their latest investigations in physics and related areas. A major objective of these meetings is to provide students with the superb opportunity to closely interact with experts. Moreover, students are also invited and encouraged by their supervisors to present their work in poster sessions and then, within a reasonable time, write an improved version of their results in the form of a scientific article, in such a way that those papers can pass a peer review and become published in proceedings such as this, along with the works of keynote speakers and senior researchers. For some students this is the first time to publish. For this reason, the editorial committee and their supervisors had especial patience and interacted several times with them until their articles reached a publishable level.This XVI edition of the Meeting of Physics is an especial one as we honor the memory of our mentor, teacher and friend, Prof. Holger Valqui, who passed away in Nov 2016. Prof. Valqui was not only a rigorous mathematical physicist but also a highly intuitive scientist, who contributed to popularize classical and new scientific ideas among students and general public. He also thought us the value of skepticism as key part of scientific validation and discovery. Another quality of Prof. Valqui was his sense of humor, which was one more motivation for us to deal with science.Prof. Valqui got two first degrees, one in Electrical Engineering and another in Mathematics from UNI (1954) and UNMSM (1956) respectively. He continued his studies in the Heidelberg University, Germany, graduating as “Diplom-Physiker” in 1962, having as supervisor Prof. J. Hans D. Jensen who in 1963 shared the Nobel Prize with Maria G. Mayer “For their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure”. Since 1962 when he joined the Faculty of Science of the “Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería” (UNI) and for 54 years until he passed away Prof. Valqui was an extraordinary teacher and researcher, participating in every possible activity related to science. Conferences, seminars, science fairs (e.g. EXPOCIENCIA), students thesis supervision, lectures, etc. In fact, he was the initiator of these Meetings of Physics, which started as a set of seminars in theoretical physics then it was expanded to become a local/international event.At the moment, several former students of Prof. Valqui occupy relevant positions in various research organizations in Peru and around the world. Some of us would like to dedicate our time and efforts to invite our international colleagues and friends to this event and in that way continue his legacy.We would like to thank the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences of UNI, Prof. Orlando Pereyra, for the procedures that lead to the organization of this event, to our colleagues in Peru and abroad that contributed with its realization, to the IOP Publishing members for their patience while waiting for the final versions of the papers and to every author who has contributed with an article in these proceedings.Rosendo OchoaEner SalinasHarold Blas

Philosophers as Intuitive Lawyers

Philosophers have traditionally described themselves as “intuitive scientists”: people seeking the most justified theories about distinctive aspects of the world. Relying on insights from philosophers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Williams James, I argue that philosophers should be described instead as “intuitive lawyers” who defend a point of view largely by appealing to non-cognitive reasons.

Debunking the Myth of Value-Neutral Virginity: Toward Truth in Scientific Advertising.

The scientific community often portrays science as a value-neutral enterprise that crisply demarcates facts from personal value judgments. We argue that this depiction is unrealistic and important to correct because science serves an important knowledge generation function in all modern societies. Policymakers often turn to scientists for sound advice, and it is important for the wellbeing of societies that science delivers. Nevertheless, scientists are human beings and human beings find it difficult to separate the epistemic functions of their judgments (accuracy) from the social-economic functions (from career advancement to promoting moral-political causes that “feel self-evidently right”). Drawing on a pluralistic social functionalist framework that identifies five functionalist mindsets—people as intuitive scientists, economists, politicians, prosecutors, and theologians—we consider how these mindsets are likely to be expressed in the conduct of scientists. We also explore how the context of policymaker advising is likely to activate or de-activate scientists’ social functionalist mindsets. For instance, opportunities to advise policymakers can tempt scientists to promote their ideological beliefs and values, even if advising also brings with it additional accountability pressures. We end prescriptively with an appeal to scientists to be more circumspect in characterizing their objectivity and honesty and to reject idealized representations of scientific behavior that inaccurately portray scientists as value-neutral virgins.

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Understanding the causes of human behavior is essential for advancing one’s interests and for coordinating social relations. The scientific study of how people arrive at such understandings or explanations has unfolded in four distinguishable epochs in psychology, each characterized by a different metaphor that researchers have used to represent how people think as they attribute causality and blame to other individuals. The first epoch was guided by an “intuitive scientist” metaphor, which emphasized whether observers perceived behavior to be caused by the unique tendencies of the actor or by common reactions to the requirements of the situation. This metaphor was displaced in the second epoch by an “intuitive lawyer” depiction that focused on the need to hold people responsible for their misdeeds. The third epoch was dominated by theories of counterfactual thinking, which conveyed a “person as reconstructor” approach that emphasized the antecedents and consequences of imagining alternatives to events, especially harmful ones. With the current upsurge in moral psychology, the fourth epoch emphasizes the moral-evaluative aspect of causal judgment, reflected in a “person as moralist” metaphor. By tracing the progression from the person–environment distinction in early attribution theories to present concerns with moral judgment, our goal is to clarify how causal constructs have been used, how they relate to one another, and what unique attributional problems each addresses.

Of Nanochips and Persons: Toward an Ethics of Diagnostic Technology in Personalized Medicine

This paper proposes an ethical reflection on personalized medicine and more precisely on the diagnostic technology underlying it, including nanochips. Our approach is inspired by a combination of two philosophical frames of reference: first, John Dewey’s distinction between intuitive valuation and reflexive evaluation, second, John Rawls’ reflective equilibrium. We aim at what we call a ‘reflexive equilibrium’, a mutual adjustment between on the one hand, the intuitive beliefs scientists have about the ethics of the technologies they work on (‘valuations’ in Dewey’s vocabulary) and, on the other hand, the reflexive ethical assessment of these technologies (‘evaluations’). Our goal, in this paper, is to provide the first step of this process through a philosophical analysis of some valuations on individualized medicine. In order to apprehend the ethical values shaping the development of biochips, we present and analyze qualitative interviews with scientists involved in the conception and the development of biochips involving nanotechnologies. We then propose a critical assessment of the role of ethics in these scientific practices. Last, we suggest two distinct and complementary ways to solve some of the issues brought to light by the interviews, without aiming at any dogmatic or “ready-made” answer. The first of these perspectives gives a central role to the capability individuals could achieve through personalized medicine; the second approach analyses the ethical disruptions entailed by personalized medicine with a special focus on care.

Using a Social Functionalist Framework to Understand Responses to Projected Sea Level Rise and Managed Retreat Policies in Australia

Managed retreat is one of the few policy options available to the Australian government to mitigate the risk of sea level rise for coastal communities. A structured withdrawal from areas inundated by rising sea levels may be the only viable option for some jurisdictions and in many cases may be the most cost effective defensive approach. At present, little is known about community opinions on managed retreat options. The authors present a social functionalist framework to analyse the range of personal concerns and understand more about how people may respond to predicted changes to coastal shorelines. The meta-theoretical social functionalist framework suggests people can intuitively act as scientists, economists, prosecutors, theologians and at times as politicians, when subject to situations that require judgment and choice. Qualitative responses to an online survey were used to categorise participants according to their social functionalist decision-making styles. The study compared the decision-making style of three groups of participants: those concerned, unsure and unconcerned (sceptical/rejectionist) about sea level rise risks. The research demonstrated that the majority of participants used more than one social functionalist framework to intuitively assess managed retreat policies. While all risk profile groups tended to express intuitive scientist concerns, the emotive expressions of intuitive theologians and prosecutors were evident and could undermine policy processes and adaptation initiatives. These findings reinforce the need for further public debate on how to respond to sea level rise. They emphasise that different individuals frame the purpose of those debates in distinct ways; to reach the most effective, equitable and socially legitimate or morally appropriate response, which depends upon what is inherently important to each individual. A major advantage of employing a social functionalist framework analysis is the flexibility to identify the range of positions (more than one worldview) that can be held by members in a community and to be cognisant of the importance of firmly entrenched beliefs, and hence the barriers to constructive dialogue.

Reacting to headline news: Circumstances leading to causal explanations versus implicational concerns

How do people react to the headline news they receive? According to the model of people as intuitive scientists (Kelley, 1972; Ross, 1977), people-like scientists-make causal explanations (i.e., why did an event take place?) and assign responsibility to the person, the situation, or both. However, a more recently proposed social-functionalist model (Tetlock, 2002) views people less as intuitive scientists trying to understand the world and more as intuitive prosecutors trying to protect a fragile social order. Thus, implicational concerns (i.e., how would it affect people's lives, properties, and liberties?) with the news can also be likely reactions. Given the prescriptions of these models, the present authors tested the hypotheses that news reports evoke both causal explanations and implicational concerns among viewers, and that the degree of the two reactions depends on the valence (positive vs. negative) and theme (whether it is unusual or social order-linked) of the news. Singaporeans (N = 80) read one piece of headline news that represented a crossed level of valence (negative vs. positive) and theme (unusual vs. social order), and indicated the likelihood of causal explanations and implicational concerns as their first response to it. As hypothesized, positive news led to a greater likelihood of showing implicational concerns than of making causal explanations, the difference being reversed in the case of negative news; unusual news led to a greater likelihood of making causal explanations than of showing implication concerns; the likelihood of having implicational concerns with news related to social order was higher than making that of causal explanations; and the two responses were equally likely in the case of negative news. Overall, these results support a view of people as intuitive prosecutors interested in both causal explanations of and implicational concerns with a news report.

Maintaining the Role of Humans in the Forecast Process: Analyzing the Psyche of Expert Forecasters

The Second Forum on the Future Role of the Human in the Forecast Process occurred on 2–3 August 2005 at the American Meteorological Society's Weather Analysis and Forecasting Conference in Washington, D.C. The forum consisted of three sessions. This paper discusses the second session, featuring three presentations on the cognitive and psychological aspects of expert weather forecasters. The first presentation discussed the learning gap between students (goal seekers) and teachers (knowledge seekers)—a similar gap exists between forecasters and researchers. In order to most effectively train students or forecasters, teachers must be able to teach across this gap using some methods described within. The second presentation discussed the heuristics involved in weather forecasting and decision making under time constraints and uncertainty. The final presentation classified the spectrum of forecasters from intuitive scientists to the disengaged. How information technology can best be adapted so as not to inhibit intuitive scientists from their mental modeling of weather scenarios is described. Forecasters must continuously refine their skills through education and training, and be aware of the heuristic contributions to the forecast process, to maintain expertise and have the best chance of ensuring a dynamic role in the future forecast process.

Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors.

Research on judgment and choice has been dominated by functionalist assumptions that depict people as either intuitive scientists animated by epistemic goals or intuitive economists animated by utilitarian ones. This article identifies 3 alternative social functionalist starting points for inquiry: people as pragmatic politicians trying to cope with accountability demands from key constituencies in their lives, principled theologians trying to protect sacred values from secular encroachments, and prudent prosecutors trying to enforce social norms. Each functionalist framework stimulates middle-range theories that specify (a) cognitive-affective-behavioral strategies of coping with adaptive challenges and (b) the implications of these coping strategies for identifying empirical and normative boundary conditions on judgmental tendencies classified as errors or biases within the dominant research programs.

The university as a source of expert testimony: A clash of cultures

When scientists and engineers testify as expert witnesses they enter into an alien culture. They are concerned with establishing the truth by scientific or engineering analysis; lawyers are intent on winning cases or settling them on terms favourable to their clients. In this paper the MyersBriggs personality types of scientists, engineers and lawyers are analysed using published statistical data. For scientists the dominant process is either intuition or thinking, with about 75% having one or the other. About two-thirds of both engineers and lawyers are also either intuitives or thinkers. Thus, there is a potential for miscommunication when an intuitive scientist or engineer works with a thinking lawyer, or vice versa. The playing out of differences of objectives and personality types on a satanic murder case is presented and discussed.

Acting as Intuitive Scientists: Contingency Judgments Are Made While Controlling for Alternative Potential Causes

In judging the efficacy of multiple causes of an effect, human performance has been found to deviate from the “normative”Δ P contingency rule However, in cases of multiple causes, that rule might not be normative, scientists and philosophers, for example, know that when judging a potential cause, one must control for all other potential causes. In an experiment in which they were shown trial-by-trial effects of two potential causes (which sometimes covaried), subjects used conditional rather than unconditional contingencies to rate the efficacy of the causes. A conditional contingency analysis may explain various “nonnormative” cue-integration effects (e.g., discounting) found in the literature and is relevant to how people unravel Simpson's paradox.

The diversity principle in the testing of arguments.

According to the diversity principle of scientific reasoning, hypotheses receive greater confirmation when they are supported by diverse rather than similar sets of data. This article examines whether people reason like intuitive scientists by conforming to the diversity principle in the testing of arguments. The results of two experiments demonstrate that people do indeed conform to the diversity principle by choosing a set of diverse rather than similar premises to test the conclusion of an argument. These findings are discussed in terms of the different reasoning processes involved in argument evaluation, argument testing, and rule discovery.

Self-Regulation of Cognitive Inference and Decision Processes

Mechanisms for controlling inference processes are analyzed according to the models of intuitive scientist (who desires optimal, accurate conclusions) and intuitive lawyer (who desires predetermined, particular conclusions), using a step model of the inference process. The first step, gathering evidence, can be regulated by moving the termination point and by looking in particular places for evidence. The second step, drawing immediate implications from bits of evidence, is presumably automatic and hence relatively immune to regulation. The third step, assessing implications, can override or discredit implications of specific pieces of evidence, and it can be used to regulate inference through combating bias or through attacking and discrediting unwanted implications. The final step, involving integration of assorted evidence and implications, can be regulated by manipulating decision rules and criteria.

Becoming a better decision maker

Four views of human decision making are described, following Abelson & Levi (1985): the decision maker as corrigible rationalist (Edwards, 1954), as bounded rationalist (Simon, 1955), as error-prone intuitive scientist (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) and as slave to motivational forces (Janis & Mann, 1977). It is argued that both cognitive and motivational perspectives are important for an understanding of how people make major life choices. Cognitive and motivational factors are analysed in tracing age-related changes during adolescence on nine indicators of competent decision making, namely choice, comprehension, creativity, compromise, consequentiality, correctness, credibility, consistency, and commitment. Cognitive and motivational factors are identified also in describing and evaluating the effectiveness of courses of instruction in decision making, such as the Gofer course for high school students.

Children and adults as intuitive scientists.

The metaphor of children and lay adults as intuitive scientists has gained wide acceptance. Although useful in one sense, pertaining to scientific understanding, in another, pertaining to the process of scientific thinking, the metaphor may be fundamentally misleading. Research is reviewed indicating that processes of scientific thinking differ significantly in children, lay adults, and scientists. Hence, it is the instruments of scientific thinking, not just the products, that undergo "strong restructuring" (Carey, 1986). A framework for conceptualizing development of scientific thinking processes is proposed, centering on progressive differentiation and coordination of theory and evidence. This development is metacognitive, as well as strategic. It requires thinking about theories, rather than merely with them, and thinking about evidence, rather than merely being influenced by it, and, hence, reflects the attainment of control over the interaction of theories and evidence in one's own thinking.