#21 – Elizabeth Bonawitz: How children learn about the world

Elizabeth Bonawitz is the David J. Vitale Associate Professor of Learning Sciences at Harvard University, studying the psychological and computational mechanisms underlying the learning of causal beliefs. In particular, her research combines cognitive development experiments with computational modeling to study the structure of children’s early causal beliefs, how evidence and prior beliefs interact to affect children’s learning and memory, and how this is affected by social factors, with the broader goal of informing educational practice.

TIMESTAMPS

(00:42) – Causal reasoning

(05:16) – How children learn about causality

(28:08) – How is knowledge structured

(33:23) – Levels of explanation

(36:55) – Studying causal beliefs experimentally

(42:13) – Using computational models

(47:57) – Problems in the education system

(56:39) – Advice for young scientists