Navigating the boundary between the actual and the possible through reasoning, imitation and language at age four

Scott, Katherine 2015. Navigating the boundary between the actual and the possible through reasoning, imitation and language at age four. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

For children to become competent intentional agents they must constantly navigate between understanding how the world is, and how the world could be: they navigate between the actual and the possible. From their earliest experiences of the world and their interactions with those who inhabit it infants can extract information from and make inferences about the causal structure of both the physical and social worlds in which they reside. Seeing how an event in the world can change that world provides children with an opportunity to consider what else could have, and could be done to produce a similar change in the future. Imitating others allows children to replicate goal successes through the replication of some or all of another agent’s behaviors. Imitation provides a short-cut to a possible world through standing on the shoulders of giants. In this thesis we investigate imitation and language through the lens of how well children aged four-years navigate these actual vs. possible worlds.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	26 April 2016
Date of Acceptance:	26 April 2016
Last Modified:	08 Nov 2016 06:23
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/89968

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