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Probabilistic models as theories of children's minds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2011

Alison Gopnik
Alison Gopnik
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720. Gopnik@berkeley.edu Alisongopnik.com
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Abstract

My research program proposes that children have representations and learning mechanisms that can be characterized as causal models of the world – coherent, structured hypotheses with consistent relationships to probabilistic patterns of evidence. We also propose that Bayesian inference is one mechanism by which children learn these models from data. These proposals are straightforward psychological hypotheses and far from “Bayesian Fundamentalism.”

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , August 2011 , pp. 200 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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