THE INFLUENCE OF OBJECT CONCEPTIONS ON THE MECHANICAL INTUITIONS OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS

This research examines how initial conceptualizations of objects and s pace exert an influence on predictions about the physical world but si multaneously lead the naive to misconstrue a dynamic event. In four in vestigations, children (kindergartners, third graders, and sixth grade rs) and adults predicted where an oscillating screen would contact an object occluded by the screen's motion, a task adapted from the infant literature which is used to assess early knowledge of the solidity co nstraint on object motion. Participants demonstrated remarkable profic iency in anticipating the point of contact despite the formal geometri c complexity of the event. However, although predictions were close ap proximations of the parameters objectively determinable for the event, responses were universally biased; participants systematically undere stimated the distance the screen would travel to contact the object. P articipants' responses were never in violation of the principle. One o bject cannot pass into the space occupied by another. Children and adu lts used different strategies to achieve their their predictions, so t he pattern of misconstruals across task parameters were developmentall y related; however, the direction of the misconstrual was developmenta lly invariant. The findings are evaluated in terms of how initial know ledge of objects constrains intuition about physical events.