Deterministic or Probabilistic: U.S. Children's Beliefs about Genetic Inheritance
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| Title: | Deterministic or Probabilistic: U.S. Children's Beliefs about Genetic Inheritance |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | David Menendez (ORCID |
| Source: | Child Development. e186-e205 2024 95(3):e186-e205. |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 20 |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Sponsoring Agency: | Institute of Education Sciences (ED) National Science Foundation (NSF) |
| Contract Number: | R305B150003 1760940 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Childrens Attitudes, Beliefs, Genetics, Probability, Color, Bias |
| DOI: | 10.1111/cdev.14053 |
| ISSN: | 0009-3920 1467-8624 |
| Abstract: | Do children think of genetic inheritance as deterministic or probabilistic? In two novel tasks, children viewed the eye colors of animal parents and judged and selected possible phenotypes of offspring. Across three studies (N = 353, 162 girls, 172 boys, 2 non-binary; 17 did not report gender) with predominantly White U.S. participants collected in 2019-2021, 4- to 12-year-old children showed a probabilistic understanding of genetic inheritance, and they accepted and expected variability in the genetic inheritance of eye color. Children did not show a mother bias but they did show two novel biases: perceptual similarity and sex-matching. These results held for unfamiliar animals and several physical traits (e.g., eye color, ear size, and fin type), and persisted after a lesson. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| IES Funded: | Yes |
| Entry Date: | 2024 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1424448 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwHCgBJhiHoJQU3IzoRv7dIxAAAA4jCB3wYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHRMIHOAgEAMIHIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDOtXfwygk8tg6sJ3BAIBEICBmshE4wtgfdRBTAydZT7GJIVvM3nqy5BVAnOSi78vHoGBlJNwfWZ-Vry2wsqpSwHLNVXJ6FaLtJCoXjaqT5iQ6lX5DLCYTho3g0ifqKHNicFuqw6IMulpA7jCDWsQhdEuYPXR381oFRnk7hR-9ovQ3d-cYnx6cG2WBhXQVEioSjaRpSOpKpTRLzaqxeSn68VdCs6O8rFNGdWQCjI= Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0176649856;cdv01may.24;2024Apr19.05:21;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0176649856-1">Deterministic or probabilistic: U.S. children's beliefs about genetic inheritance </title> <p>Do children think of genetic inheritance as deterministic or probabilistic? In two novel tasks, children viewed the eye colors of animal parents and judged and selected possible phenotypes of offspring. Across three studies (N = 353, 162 girls, 172 boys, 2 non‐binary; 17 did not report gender) with predominantly White U.S. participants collected in 2019–2021, 4‐ to 12‐year‐old children showed a probabilistic understanding of genetic inheritance, and they accepted and expected variability in the genetic inheritance of eye color. Children did not show a mother bias but they did show two novel biases: perceptual similarity and sex‐matching. These results held for unfamiliar animals and several physical traits (e.g., eye color, ear size, and fin type), and persisted after a lesson.</p> <p>From early elementary school, children are expected to understand that offspring will resemble, but not look exactly like, their biological parents (NGSS, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref1">32</reflink>]). In other words, children must understand that genetic inheritance is a probabilistic process that influences how organisms look and that can lead to variability among offspring as well as differences between parents and offspring. This understanding is critical for science learning as it provides the foundation for comprehending more complex phenomena, such as within‐species variation and natural selection. However, even before formal science instruction, children have naive intuitions about inheritance (Gelman &amp; Markman, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref2">14</reflink>]; Wellman &amp; Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref3">57</reflink>]). Prior work has examined children's judgments of which characteristics are inherited (Johnson &amp; Solomon, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref4">17</reflink>]; Springer, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref5">47</reflink>]; Springer &amp; Keil, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref6">48</reflink>]) and their beliefs about how offspring will look (Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref7">51</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref8">59</reflink>]; Williams &amp; Smith, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref9">60</reflink>]). However, prior work has not assessed whether children's intuitive theories are probabilistic or deterministic, or whether they allow variability between parents and offspring, two aspects of such theories that might influence later genetics learning. In this paper, we examine children's thinking about inheritance and about variation between parents and offspring.</p> <p>Prior literature has identified traits that children believe are inherited versus acquired. These beliefs have been measured with the <emph>switched‐at‐birth</emph> task (Springer &amp; Keil, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref10">48</reflink>]), in which participants are asked whether an offspring raised by adoptive parents would resemble the biological or the adoptive parents. The traits in question are either genetically based traits (e.g., height, eye color, or genetic disorders) or acquired traits (e.g., language spoken, beliefs, or preferences). Preschool children believe that offspring will resemble biological parents in genetically based traits and adopted parents in acquired traits, and they differentiate between these types of traits more strongly with age (Solomon et al., [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref11">46</reflink>]; Springer, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref12">47</reflink>]). Thus, children think of different types of traits as being obtained through different causal processes (e.g., <emph>learning</emph> for acquired traits vs. <emph>inheritance</emph> for genetic traits). However, these studies tell us little about how children think about genetic inheritance or about variation between biological parents and offspring.</p> <p>One task that has been used to assess children's understanding of biological inheritance is the <emph>phenotypic difference</emph> task (see Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref13">51</reflink>]). In this task, children are shown two parents with different phenotypes (e.g., different eye colors), followed by multiple potential offspring with different phenotypes. Children are then asked to choose the offspring they expect the parents will have. Children choose among offspring who resemble the mother, the father, both (combined phenotype), or neither (unrelated phenotype). Before age 7, children display a <emph>mother bias</emph>, tending to choose offspring with the mother's phenotype, while older children tend to choose offspring who combine the parents' phenotypes (Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref14">51</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref15">59</reflink>]).</p> <p>Although the phenotypic difference task reveals biases in reasoning about biological inheritance, it is limited in how much it can reveal about children's acceptance of variability. In this task, children can choose only one offspring, even if they think that many offspring are possible. Thus, there are multiple possible interpretations of children's responses.</p> <p>The interpretation offered in prior literature is that children's choices represent <emph>the only offspring</emph> they think is possible, which implies that children do not expect variability between parents and offspring. Based on this interpretation, some researchers have suggested that children have a deterministic model of inheritance, such that all offspring of a given set of parents must look a specific way (e.g., Johnson &amp; Solomon, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref16">17</reflink>]). A deterministic model of inheritance is prescriptive and holds that there is only one possible phenotype for the offspring of a given set of parents. Other researchers have suggested that a deterministic concept of inheritance might be related to cognitive biases such as psychological essentialism (Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref17">13</reflink>]; Medin &amp; Ortony, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref18">25</reflink>]). Note that holding a deterministic model is not the same as understanding that genotypes in part determine an organism's phenotype. Scientific models of inheritance incorporate the idea that an organism's genotype is shaped by a probabilistic process involving random dividing and recombination of parental DNA, an idea that is likely missing from children's intuitive theories, as they do not often reference genes (Solomon et al., [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref19">46</reflink>]).</p> <p>Alternatively, children's responses in the phenotypic difference task might represent <emph>the most likely offspring</emph>, as children may believe there could be variability between parents and offspring, but because they can choose only one offspring, they select the one they think is most likely. This interpretation suggests that children may have an intuitive understanding of the <emph>probabilistic</emph> nature of inheritance. A probabilistic model of inheritance maintains that genes determine the phenotype of an animal but incorporates probabilistic elements by saying that there are many possible outcomes, depending on the genetic information the offspring inherited.</p> <p>One way to distinguish between these alternative interpretations would be to allow children to endorse or reject a number of different offspring choices. If children endorse only one type of offspring, it would suggest that they hold a deterministic view of inheritance and expect homogeneity. If children endorse multiple offspring, it would suggest that they have a probabilistic view and accept (or even expect) variability between parents and offspring.</p> <p>Prior work suggests that children may hold a deterministic view and accept only one offspring phenotype as possible. Many children believe that offspring look like smaller replicas of their parents (French et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref20">12</reflink>]). Furthermore, the existence of the mother bias implies that many children think offspring can only look like their mothers (Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref21">51</reflink>]). The mother bias is especially prevalent in younger children (French et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref22">12</reflink>]; Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref23">51</reflink>]), suggesting that younger children may be especially likely to hold a deterministic view. Furthermore, children have a strong essentialist bias, which can lead them to assume that all members of a species have the same phenotype (Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref24">13</reflink>]). This essentialist bias varies by trait and decreases with age (Taylor et al., [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref25">50</reflink>]), and it is reinforced in the language used by parents (Rhodes et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref26">35</reflink>]), teachers (Betz et al., [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref27">2</reflink>]), children's books (Gelman et al., [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref28">15</reflink>]), and even curricular materials, such as science textbooks (Donovan, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref29">7</reflink>]; Jamieson &amp; Radick, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref30">16</reflink>]). These factors might lead children to expect homogeneity among organisms of the same species, and thus expect little or no variation between parents and offspring.</p> <p>It is also possible that children think that variability is possible and thus might have a probabilistic view of inheritance. Previous work shows that children accept that members of the same species can look different from one another, especially when considering superfluous traits (Emmons &amp; Kelemen, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref31">11</reflink>]). Additionally, people rely on cognitive biases, such as essentialism, less when reasoning about familiar animals (French et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref32">12</reflink>]) or familiar traits (Eidson &amp; Coley, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref33">10</reflink>]). Finally, 10‐ to 12‐year‐olds are less likely to engage in essentialist reasoning or to have a mother bias than younger children (French et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref34">12</reflink>]; Taylor et al., [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref35">50</reflink>]; Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref36">51</reflink>]), suggesting that older children might be more likely to hold a probabilistic model. Older children are also more likely to have received formal instruction on genetics, which could influence their naive theories of inheritance (Donovan et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref37">8</reflink>]; Solomon &amp; Johnson, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref38">45</reflink>]; Venville &amp; Donovan, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref39">53</reflink>]). Based on these findings, one might expect that, at least when reasoning about familiar animals and familiar traits, children—especially older children—might accept that offspring can look different from each other.</p> <p>The classic phenotypic difference task shows that variation is possible, as it displays parents who have different phenotypes. When parents have different phenotypes, children might be willing to accept more possible offspring because the offspring could look like either parent or have a combination of the parents' phenotypes. However, when both parents have the same phenotype, it may be more challenging for children to believe that variation is possible. Trials on which the parents have the same phenotype thus provide evidence of the robustness of children's acceptance of variability—that is, whether children believe that offspring can look different from their parents, even when the parents show no variation.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-2">Genetics knowledge</hd> <p>The goal of this research was to characterize children's intuitive theories about genetic inheritance. We consider the possibility that children may combine intuitive theories with aspects of the scientific theory of genetics, as they do for some other scientific concepts (Legare et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref40">20</reflink>]).</p> <p>In the United States, genetics is typically taught no earlier than the fifth grade; therefore, most research on genetics understanding has focused on adolescents (e.g., Donovan et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref41">8</reflink>]). Thus, little research has addressed possible relations between children's intuitive and scientific theories of inheritance. Although instruction on different aspects of genetics can lead to changes in children's theories (Solomon &amp; Johnson, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref42">45</reflink>]; Venville &amp; Donovan, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref43">53</reflink>]), there has been little consideration of how children's intuitive theories might support (or inhibit) their learning of scientific theory. For example, understanding that parents and offspring can be different might help children make sense of the concept of genetic mutations.</p> <p>Children are also exposed to information about genetics outside of formal schooling. Cultural messages around genes are pervasive (Nelkin &amp; Lindee, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref44">31</reflink>]) and parents sometimes discuss genetic concepts with their children (Shtulman et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref45">40</reflink>]). Therefore, children might know and use words related to genetics before they learn their scientific meanings, and they might sometimes use them incorrectly (Smith &amp; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref46">43</reflink>]; Venville et al., [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref47">54</reflink>]). Therefore, we also examined whether children incorporate genetic terms into their reasoning.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-3">The role of instruction in genetics learning</hd> <p>Genetics instruction typically occurs in middle and high school. Although most students receive genetics instruction, many children struggle to understand the material (Lewis et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref48">21</reflink>]; Venville &amp; Donovan, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref49">53</reflink>]). Many students have misconceptions about the relations among genes, proteins, and phenotypes (Stern &amp; Kampourakis, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref50">49</reflink>]), and these misconceptions often persist after instruction (Thomas, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref51">52</reflink>]). Traditional genetics instruction may also promote essentialist views (Stern &amp; Kampourakis, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref52">49</reflink>]; Thomas, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref53">52</reflink>]). Given these challenges, new learning progressions have been proposed (Duncan et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref54">9</reflink>]) that emphasize that all organisms have genetic information in their cells that contain instructions for the structure of proteins, proteins connect genes to traits, and organisms transfer their genetic information to the next generation. This learning progression also emphasizes that genes and traits are correlated, and certain patterns are more likely than others to occur, but the environment may affect how genetic information is expressed. Recent educational interventions, such as the Humane Genomics Intervention, have shown that children in middle and high school and adults do revise their beliefs and misconceptions about genetics in response to instruction (Donovan et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref55">8</reflink>]). Interventions for younger children are often much more simple, focusing on the causal role of genes (Solomon &amp; Johnson, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref56">45</reflink>]; Venville &amp; Donovan, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref57">53</reflink>]).</p> <p>Many genetics lessons use visual representations, such as media (Solomon &amp; Johnson, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref58">45</reflink>]), manipulatives (Venville &amp; Donovan, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref59">53</reflink>]), or diagrams, such as pedigree diagrams (Mathiaparanam et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref60">23</reflink>]). Visual representations have been found to promote learning of science concepts (Mayer, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref61">24</reflink>]); however, their effectiveness depends on many factors, including their perceptual features (Rey, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref62">33</reflink>]). Perceptually rich visualizations (e.g., realistic images) often help students learn the information presented in the lesson, but might not help them generalize to other material (Rey, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref63">33</reflink>]; Skulmowski, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref64">42</reflink>]). In contrast, perceptually bland representations (e.g., images that are more schematic) often promote generalization by conveying that the information in the lesson extends beyond the specific exemplar used in the lesson (Menendez, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref65">26</reflink>]; Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref66">28</reflink>]). Therefore, it is possible that teaching children about genetics using bland visual representations might promote generalization beyond the exemplars used in the lesson.</p> <p>In the present paper, we are interested in how receiving additional knowledge about genetic inheritance influences children's models of inheritance, and whether it might lead them to revise their beliefs for the specific trait mentioned in the lesson, and also more broadly for other traits that were not mentioned. To address this goal, we gave a brief lesson to children about genetic inheritance in eye color, and then examined how they thought about genetic inheritance, not only for eye color but also for ear size and fin type. This tested whether learning about one trait would generalize to other traits, and it also probes whether children can revise their models of genetic inheritance.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-4">Current studies</hd> <p>In the current studies, we used two novel tasks to characterize children's intuitive theories about inheritance, the <emph>phenotypic judgment task</emph> and the <emph>offspring prediction task</emph>. Preliminary studies with these tasks with adults have shown that adults expect variability between parents and offspring (Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref67">27</reflink>]). These tasks are modeled after the phenotypic difference task, but they allow participants to endorse or select more than one offspring.</p> <p>In the <emph>phenotypic judgment task</emph>, children see drawings of two animal parents who have either the same or different phenotypes. They are then shown many offspring choices, one at a time, and asked if they think each is a <emph>possible</emph> offspring of that parent pair. This task allows us to examine whether children think that only one option is possible (a deterministic model) or many options are possible (a probabilistic model). This task also allows us to examine which options children think are possible and how these judgments change depending on characteristics of the parents. We used this task in Studies 1 and 2.</p> <p>In the <emph>offspring prediction task</emph>, children are shown a parent pair, and they are asked to predict phenotypes for six offspring. Children can select multiple offspring of a given type; thus, this task can reveal which offspring children think are most likely. Children were also asked to explain their answers, and their explanations allowed us to assess whether they integrated aspects of genetic theory into their intuitive theories. We used this task in Studies 1B and 2.</p> <p>In both tasks, we varied the eye colors of the parents. Eye color is not caused by variation in a single gene, but rather is a polygenic trait (White &amp; Rabago‐Smith, [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref68">58</reflink>]). Eye color has been used in prior studies assessing children's understanding of inheritance (e.g., Springer &amp; Keil, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref69">48</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref70">59</reflink>]) and is familiar to children. Parent pairs had either the same eye color (i.e., both light‐colored or both dark‐colored eyes) or different eye colors (i.e., one parent with light‐colored eyes and one with dark‐colored eyes). The offspring choices had light‐colored eyes, dark‐colored eyes, an eye color in between the light and dark eye colors, one dark‐colored eye and one light‐colored eye, or purple eyes (a color unrelated to both parents). We included both familiar and unfamiliar animals, as prior research suggests familiarity might influence children's beliefs (French et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref71">12</reflink>]).</p> <p>In Study 2, we also examined how children reason about other physical traits (i.e., ear size and fin type), and whether these beliefs change after a lesson. We presented students with a short lesson about genetics using wolf families as examples. The lesson stated that: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref72">1</reflink>) all organisms have genetic information, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref73">2</reflink>) this genetic information is in their cells, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref74">3</reflink>) this genetic information determines how an organism will look, (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref75">4</reflink>) parents pass genetic information to their offspring, (<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref76">5</reflink>) an offspring gets half of their genetic material from each parent, and (<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref77">6</reflink>) the offspring may resemble either parent or could look different from either parent. These topics have been proposed as key topics in learning progressions for genetics (Duncan et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref78">9</reflink>]). We then presented children with several examples of wolves with various eye colors. We presented these examples using pedigree diagrams, which are common in educational materials for genetics (Mathiaparanam et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref79">23</reflink>]). Students received the lesson with either a perceptually rich or a perceptually bland diagram so that we could determine whether children generalized more if they saw the bland diagram.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-5">STUDY 1</hd> <p>We hypothesized that children would judge more offspring as possible when parents had different eye colors than when parents had the same eye color. We also hypothesized that children would endorse the offspring who had the same eye color as the parents more frequently and would endorse the offspring with purple eyes less frequently. Finally, we hypothesized that children would endorse offspring with blended eye colors (i.e., offspring with the eye color in‐between the light and dark eye colors, and offspring with one dark‐colored eye and one light‐colored eye) more frequently when parents had different eye colors. We did not have a specific hypothesis about animal familiarity because eye color is a familiar trait.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-6">Method</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-7">Participants</hd> <p>The target sample size was determined with a power analysis based on prior work by Williams ([<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref80">59</reflink>]), which reported an effect of offspring type of <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<emph>N</emph> = 182) = 21.1 (converted into <emph>R</emph><sups>2</sups> using an online calculator), indicating that participants selected different offspring options at different rates and exhibited a mother bias. We used modelPower in R which indicated a minimum sample size of 63 participants to detect an effect of offspring type of comparable size with 80% power. Given differences in our design, we decided to oversample and aimed to collect 90 participants.</p> <p>In the Fall of 2019 and early 2020, we recruited 91 children from a children's museum in a mid‐size Midwestern city (<emph>M</emph><subs>age</subs> = 6.71, SD = 2.12). There were thirty 4‐ to 5‐year‐olds, thirty 6‐ to 7‐year‐olds, nineteen 8‐ to 9‐year‐olds, and twelve 10‐ to 12‐year‐olds. Parental reports indicated that 52 were girls, 38 were boys, and 1 participant was non‐binary. In addition, parental reports indicated that 57.1% were White (<emph>n</emph> = 52), 1.1% were Asian or Asian American (<emph>n</emph> = 1), 3.3% were Black or African American (<emph>n</emph> = 3), 9.9% were Hispanic or Latinx (<emph>n</emph> = 9), 1.1% were Native American (<emph>n</emph> = 1), and 5.5% were bi‐ or multiracial (<emph>n</emph> = 5); 22.0% declined to report race or ethnicity (<emph>n</emph> = 20). Children received a small toy for participating.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-8">Stimuli</hd> <p>The stimuli were highly detailed drawings of animals' faces (see Figure 1). Three animals (fox, beaver, and bear) were expected to be familiar, and three animals (cuscus, kinkajou, and quoll) were expected to be unfamiliar. The unfamiliar animals were species native to Australia or South America that were not present at nearby zoos. Each participant saw four of the possible six animals, two from the familiar set and two from the unfamiliar set. Based on natural variation in eye color, we selected two eye colors for each species (one dark and one light) that were easily distinguishable. These colors were used for the animal parents. This yielded four possible mother–father eye color combinations (dark–dark, dark–light, light–dark, and light–light) for each animal.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 Offspring stimuli for the cuscus in the left panel. Example of the phenotypic judgment task (Studies 1 and 1B; top right panel) and the offspring selection task (Studies 1B and 2; bottom right panel) for the cuscus. The directions were spoken rather than written." /> </p> <p></p> <p>For each animal, we created one face shape for the parents and one face shape for the offspring. These shapes differed slightly based approximately on typical developmental changes in proportions (Lorenz, [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref81">22</reflink>]). We then created five offspring who varied only in eye color (see Figure 1). One offspring had a dark color from the parents, one had a light color from the parents, one had a mix of light and dark eye colors (labeled <emph>mix</emph> in Figure 1), one had one dark eye and one light eye (labeled <emph>one and one</emph> in Figure 1), and one had purple eyes—an eye color that was unrelated to either parent and that is not found in any mammalian species. The mix and one‐and‐one options represent different ways of combining the parents' phenotypes. These options were meant to mimic forms of co‐dominance and incomplete dominance that, although rare, are possible in the natural world (although not necessarily possible for eye color inheritance in every animal in the study). We included the purple phenotype to examine children's judgments of an eye color that was not related to either of the parents.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-10">Procedure</hd> <p>Participants completed the study in a private room at the museum. Parents provided consent and participants assented to participation. We used a 2 (familiarity condition: familiar or unfamiliar) × 2 (parent condition: same or different eye colors) within‐subjects design.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-11">Identification task</hd> <p>First, we presented two parents of an animal family that had either the same or different eye colors. Participants were asked if they knew what the animal was. Most participants knew the familiar animals but not the unfamiliar animals (see Supporting Information).</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-12">Phenotypic judgment task</hd> <p>First, the experimenter pointed to the mother and father and asked the participant whether the parents had the same or different eye colors. Next, the experimenter showed the possible offspring to the participant one at a time. Offspring were presented in the following fixed order: dark or light offspring, light or dark offspring, mixed offspring, purple offspring, and one‐and‐one offspring. Whether the light or dark offspring was presented first depended on the eye color of the parents, such that the first offspring presented always matched the eye color of at least one of the parents. When parents had different eye colors, the order of the light and dark offspring was determined at random. For each offspring, the experimenter stated the relation between the offspring's eye color and the parents' eye color (e.g., when the offspring had the same eye color as the mother, the experimenter said "this [animal name] has the same eye color as the mom," and when the offspring was a mix of the parents' eye colors, the experimenter said "this [animal name] has eyes that are a mix of the mom's and the dad's eye color"). After the experimenter explained the relation, they asked, "Do you think this (points to the offspring) could be the baby of this mom and dad [animal name]?" Participants answered "yes" or "no" for six potential offspring. Participants completed all judgments for one animal before they were shown the next animal. We consider judging each offspring alternative for one animal as a trial; therefore, each participant completed 4 trials, with a total of 24 judgments. The experiment took approximately 10 min.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-13">Results</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-14">Pre‐registered analyses</hd> <p>We first examined which specific offspring participants endorsed. We did not observe any differences in endorsements of the two types of eye color blends. The offspring with an eye color that was a mix of the parents' eye colors was endorsed on 64.4% of trials and the offspring with one eye of each color was endorsed on 62.4% of trials, which aligns with college students' judgments (Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref82">27</reflink>]); therefore, we combined these categories in our analyses. We fit a generalized linear mixed‐effects model with a binomial link function predicting participants' endorsements for each trial. We included offspring type (dummy coded, with dark eyes as the reference group), parent condition (coded −0.5 for same eye color and 0.5 for different eye colors), familiarity (coded −0.5 for unfamiliar and 0.5 for familiar), age (mean centered), and all possible interactions. We also included by‐subject random intercepts and by‐subject random slopes for the three‐way interaction of offspring type, parent condition, and familiarity, and all the respective lower‐order effects. We followed the recommendations of Brauer and Curtin ([<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref83">4</reflink>]) to achieve convergence. The first model to converge did not allow the random effects to correlate. Here, we report statistics only for key hypothesized effects; please see Supporting Information for tables with full model statistics.</p> <p>As hypothesized, there was a significant effect of offspring type, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref84">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 91) = 73.55, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001. Participants were equally likely to endorse offspring with light eyes (<emph>M</emph> = 0.76, SD = 0.43) and dark eyes (<emph>M</emph> = 0.77, SD = 0.42). They were more likely to endorse offspring with dark eyes than offspring with blends (<emph>M</emph> = 0.63, SD = 0.48), and more likely to endorse offspring with blends than offspring with purple eyes (<emph>M</emph> = 0.25, SD = 0.43). Also, as hypothesized, participants were significantly more likely to judge an offspring as possible when parents had different eye colors (<emph>M</emph> = 0.68, SD = 0.47) than when they had the same eye color (<emph>M</emph> = 0.54, SD = 0.50), OR = 2.37, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref85">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 91) = 8.56, <emph>p</emph> = .003. As hypothesized, there was also an interaction of offspring type and parent condition, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref86">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 91) = 9.58, <emph>p</emph> = .022. Participants were more likely to judge offspring with blends as possible when parents had different eye colors than when parents had the same eye color, as shown by a significant simple interaction of parent condition and the dark eyes versus blends contrast, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref87">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 91) = 4.41, <emph>p</emph> = .036. No other effects or interactions were significant.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-15">Post‐hoc analyses</hd> <p>In addition to the pre‐registered analyses, we analyzed offspring choices when parents had the same and different eye colors separately to more fully examine the interaction of offspring type and parent condition. These analyses revealed how participants' beliefs about offspring depended on the parents' characteristics. We also tested the number of offspring participants endorsed and whether this number was significantly above the deterministic value of 1.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-16">Different parents</hd> <p>As can be seen in Figure 2, when parents had different eye colors, participants were equally likely to endorse offspring with light and dark eyes, regardless of the mother's eye color. We tested this by examining participants' endorsements in trials in which parents had different eye colors. We fit a generalized linear mixed‐effects model predicting endorsement from offspring type (dark or light), mother eye color (light or dark), age, and their interactions. We also included by‐subject random intercepts and by‐subject random slopes for the interaction of offspring type and mother eye color, and all lower‐order effects. We did not include familiarity as the previous analyses had not revealed any effects. None of the effects were significant. Critically, there was no indication of an offspring type by mother eye color interaction, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref88">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 91) = 0.05, <emph>p</emph> = .829. Thus, there was no evidence that participants were more likely to endorse offspring who matched the mother than the father.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0002.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0002.jpg" title="2 Probability of endorsement by offspring type (x‐axis). The left panel shows trials in which the parents had different eye colors, and the right panel shows trials in which the parents had the same eye color. Within each panel, the left graph shows trials in which the mother had dark eyes, and the right graph shows trials in which the mother had light eyes. The error bars show the within‐subject standard errors of the means." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-18">Same parents</hd> <p>As can be seen in Figure 2, when parents had the same eye color, participants were more likely to endorse the eye color that matched the parents. We fit a generalized linear mixed‐effects model with a binomial link function predicting participants' endorsements for trials in which parents had the same eye color. We included offspring type (dummy coded, with dark eyes as the reference group), parent eye color (coded −0.5 for light and 0.5 for dark), age (mean centered), and all possible interactions. We also included by‐subject random intercepts and by‐subject random slopes for the interaction of offspring type and mother eye color and all lower‐order effects, but we did not allow them to correlate. We did not include familiarity as the previous analyses had not revealed any effects. There was a significant offspring type by parent eye color interaction, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref89">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 90) = 13.84, <emph>p</emph> = .003. Participants most frequently endorsed offspring with the eye color that matched the parents' eye color (e.g., dark when both parents had dark eyes), followed by offspring with blends, then offspring with the alternative eye color (e.g., light when both parents had dark eyes), and finally offspring with purple eyes. This pattern reflects more frequent endorsement of the offspring when there is greater perceptual similarity between the offspring's eye color and parents' eye color, as the blends are perceptually more similar to the parents' eyes than the alternative eye color, and the alternative eye color is perceptually more similar to the parents' eyes than purple. We also found an offspring type by age interaction, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref90">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 90) = 11.90, <emph>p</emph> = .008, such that younger participants were more likely to endorse offspring with purple eyes, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref91">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 91) = 9.95, <emph>p</emph> = .002.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-19">Number of offspring endorsed</hd> <p>To examine whether participants accepted any variability in the possible offspring (i.e., if they thought that more than one offspring type was possible), we examined whether the total number of offspring who participants endorsed for each trial was significantly different from 1 (range 0–5). In both the same (<emph>M</emph> = 2.66, SD = 1.43) and different parent conditions (<emph>M</emph> = 3.38, SD = 1.18), participants endorsed significantly more than one response, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref92">1</reflink>, 89.66) = 137.03, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001, and <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref93">1</reflink>, 89.97) = 450.87, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001, respectively. Of the 91 participants, only 2 participants (2.2%, one 6‐year‐old and one 10‐year‐old) did not accept any variability (defined as endorsing more than one option) in any of the trials. Three participants (3.3%) accepted variability on only one trial (two 6‐year‐olds and one 7‐year‐old, all on different‐parent trials). Eleven participants (12.1%) accepted variability on only two trials (with nine of them doing so only on different‐parent trials). Finally, 20 participants (22%) accepted variability on three trials and 55 participants (60.4%) accepted variability on all four trials. Thus, over 80% of participants accepted variability on most trials.</p> <p>We next examined the number of offspring participants endorsed. We fit a linear mixed‐effects model predicting the number endorsed from parent condition (coded −0.5 for same eye color and 0.5 for different eye colors), familiarity (coded −0.5 for unfamiliar and 0.5 for familiar), age (mean centered), and all the respective interactions. We included by‐subject random intercepts as well as by‐subject random slopes for the effects of parent condition, familiarity, and their interaction, and we allowed the random effects to correlate. As can be seen in Figure 3, participants endorsed more offspring when parents had different eye colors (<emph>M</emph> = 3.38, SD = 1.18) than when they had the same eye color (<emph>M</emph> = 2.66, SD = 1.43), <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref94">1</reflink>, 87.98) = 45.48, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001. No other effects were significant.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0003.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0003.jpg" title="3 Model predictions for the number of offspring endorsed in the judgment task (y‐axis), for parents who had the same or different eye colors (x‐axis), and for familiar animals (circles) and unfamiliar animals (diamonds). The error bars show the within‐subject standard errors of the point estimates." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-21">Discussion</hd> <p>Study 1 introduced a new task for examining intuitive theories about inheritance that includes a more comprehensive assessment of endorsement of biological variability than tasks used in prior research. This study showed that, for eye color, participants had a probabilistic model of genetic inheritance, as they accepted several different offspring phenotypes as possible. Participants showed this pattern, regardless of whether parents had the same or different eye colors, but they accepted more offspring phenotypes as possible when parents had different eye colors. When parents had different eye colors, participants endorsed the mother's and father's eye colors at similar rates, showing no indication of the <emph>mother bias</emph> that has been previously reported in the literature. When parents had different eye colors, participants were more likely to endorse offspring who combined the two eye colors. Finally, when parents had the same eye color, participants appeared to base their judgments on perceptual similarity, as the likelihood of an offspring being endorsed was higher for offspring with eye colors that were perceptually more similar to the parents.</p> <p>Study 1 shows that children believe that many different offspring phenotypes are possible and they attend to the parents' phenotypes when determining which offspring are possible. Thus, children constrain the variability they accept based on their knowledge of the phenotypes of the parents. However, a critical question is whether children also recognize that certain phenotypes are <emph>more likely</emph>. Children may broadly accept variation by endorsing many different phenotypes, but they may also constrain this variation by believing that some phenotypes are more likely than others. In Study 1, we cannot ascertain which possible offspring phenotypes children thought were <emph>more</emph> likely. To address this question, in Study 1B, as reported in Supporting Information, we introduced the <emph>offspring prediction task</emph>, in which children predicted how six offspring of an animal family would look. We had planned to obtain a sample size similar to that in Study 1, but due to the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic, data collection for this study had to be halted after only 30 participants. In Study 1B, children completed the phenotypic judgment task used in Study 1, followed by the <emph>offspring prediction task</emph>. Briefly, Study 1B showed largely similar results in children's responses to the phenotypic judgment task. It also demonstrated that children could successfully complete the <emph>offspring prediction</emph> task. Moreover, the results suggested that children select offspring who have different traits and that children tend to select offspring who resemble the parent of the same sex. We coded children's explanations and saw that children were intentionally selecting offspring who looked different from the parents, and they were intentionally matching the offspring to the same‐sex parents. We also coded for the use of genetic language and found that some children used genetic terms in their explanations (e.g., "genes" and "dominant"). The results from this study are presented in full in Supporting Information.</p> <p>Given the limited sample size in Study 1B, in Study 2 we collected a larger sample of children using both the phenotypic judgment task and the offspring prediction task. We also wished to test whether the biases we identified would shift after a brief lesson that included a genetic diagram, and we were interested in whether the perceptual features of the diagrams used in the lesson would influence generalization from the lesson. Prior work has shown that undergraduate students generalize more broadly when they learn with bland diagrams (Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref95">28</reflink>]), suggesting that children might be more likely to generalize from a lesson on eye color to other traits when they learn with a bland diagram. We randomly assigned children to receive a lesson with either a rich (i.e., drawing containing realistic details) or bland (i.e., line drawing without details) diagram (see Figure 4). Based on prior work, we hypothesized that those who received the bland diagram would endorse more offspring after the lesson than those who saw the rich diagram. Finally, in this study, we also examined whether the perceptual similarity pattern and the sex‐matching bias would extend to features other than eye color, such as ear size or fin shape.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0004.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0004.jpg" title="4 Rich (top panel) and bland (bottom panel) pedigree diagrams used in the lesson about genetic inheritance of eye color. For expanded versions, see OSF." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-23">STUDY 2</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-24">Method</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-25">Participants</hd> <p>We pre‐registered that we would collect data from 224 participants, with 32 participants in each grade from 1 through 7 (roughly 5 to 13 years of age), based on a power analysis using the diagram effect from Menendez et al. ([<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref96">28</reflink>]), which had an odds ratio of 0.61 (<emph>d</emph> = −.2725). Using Cohen's <emph>d</emph>, we determined that we needed 213 participants to have 80% power to detect the effect. However, due to an error on the experimenters' part, 232 children participated in this study (including 28 in Grade 1, 42 in Grade 2, 33 in Grade 3, 34 in Grade 4, 27 in Grade 5, 37 in Grade 6, and 31 in Grade 7) from July 2020 to June 2021. Many parents did not report their children's ages, but all parents reported their children's grade levels (to confirm eligibility); therefore, in the remainder of the paper, we use child grade rather than age in our statistical models. Among participants whose parents reported age, the average age was 9.54 years (SD = 2.03, range = 5.57, 13.04). Per parental reports, 95 participants were girls, 119 were boys, and 1 was non‐binary; 17 parents did not report their child's gender. Parental reports indicated that 72.8% of participants were White (<emph>n</emph> = 169), 3.0% were Asian or Asian American (<emph>n</emph> = 7), 2.2% were Black or African American (<emph>n</emph> = 5), 4.7% were Hispanic or Latinx (<emph>n</emph> = 11), 0.4% were Native American (<emph>n</emph> = 1), and 6.5% were bi‐ or multiracial (<emph>n</emph> = 15); 10.3% did not report race or ethnicity information (<emph>n</emph> = 24). Participants received $15 for completing the study.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-26">Offspring prediction task</hd> <p>As in Study 1, participants first completed the phenotypic judgment task and then the offspring prediction task. During the offspring prediction task, the experimenter presented a PowerPoint slide with the mother and father of the animal family on top. Below the parents were six empty spaces and at the bottom of the slide there were five stacks of images, one stack for each of the five offspring types. Each stack contained six identical images. The experimenter first explained that the animal parents had six babies throughout their lives, and that three were male and three were female. The experimenter then said that the babies were "all grown up" now, and then asked the participant to use the images to show how they thought the six offspring would look. The experimenter explained that each stack had offspring with the same eye color and that there were six images in each stack, so the participants could make any combinations they chose. After the participants selected the images, the experimenter asked them to explain their choices. We coded participants' explanations for a variety of themes (see Supporting Information), including whether they used genetic terms, such as "genes," "dominant," or "mutation."</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-27">Design and procedure</hd> <p>The study took place in one 45‐min Zoom session, and it had a pretest–lesson–posttest design. At pretest, participants completed the phenotypic judgment and offspring prediction tasks for two animal families: wolf parents with the same eye color (light eyes), and beaver parents with different eye colors (mother with dark eyes and father with light eyes). For the offspring prediction task, participants were randomly assigned to place male offspring under the mother and female offspring under the father or vice versa. Participants were then randomly assigned to receive a brief lesson about inheritance of eye color with either a perceptually rich or perceptually bland diagram (see Figure 4). The lesson conveyed that animals have a "code inside them" that determines how they look and that they get half of this code from each parent. The lesson then walked participants through the three families shown in the pedigree. The diagram depicted one set of parents with the same eye color and one with different eye colors. Participants were told that both families had offspring who looked like one of the parents (or both parents, in the same eye color family). Participants were told that these two offspring (that had different eye colors) got together and had four offspring, one having the father's eye color, one having the mother's eye color, and two having different eye colors. The lessons were identical except for the diagram that participants saw.</p> <p>At posttest, participants completed the phenotypic judgment and offspring prediction task for two animals: wolf parents with the same eye color (light eyes) and fox parents with different eye colors (mother with dark eyes and father with light eyes). They then completed the phenotypic judgment task for two additional animals with other traits: fennec fox parents with different ear sizes (mother with large ears and father with small ears) and bass (fish) parents with the same fin type (spikey fins). For the fennec fox, the offspring had either two large ears, two small ears, two medium ears, one small and one large ear, or two bat ears. For the bass, the offspring had either two spikey fins, two smooth fins, two fins that were in‐between spikey and smooth, one spikey and one smooth fin, or two goldfish fins. These options were analogs of the options for eye color. Participants completed all the tasks for one animal before moving on to the next animal. In the posttest, the first animal was the same as the animal in the lesson (the wolf), and each subsequent animal was progressively more dissimilar: fox (mammal with same trait as in the lesson), fennec fox (mammal with different trait), and bass (non‐mammal with different trait). This allowed us to assess participants' generalization.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-28">Results</hd> <p>We first present the results for the phenotypic judgment task and then the offspring prediction task. Analyses of participants' explanations can be found in Supporting Information. Means and standard deviations reported throughout this section are unadjusted. Additional pre‐registered analyses of the pretest can be found in Supporting Information. In addition, tables with full model statistics can be found in Supporting Information.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-29">Pre‐registered analyses</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-30">Phenotypic judgment task: Number of offspring</hd> <p>As in Study 1, participants endorsed more than one offspring for all animals, both at pretest and posttest, and participants selected more offspring when parents had different phenotypes than when parents had the same phenotype (see Figure 5). We fit two linear mixed‐effects models, one for the wolf and one for the other animal with eye color as the trait (beaver or fox). We included test time, diagram type, grade, and their interactions as predictors, and we included by‐subject random intercepts and by‐subject random slopes for the effect of test time. Participants endorsed more offspring at posttest than pretest, both when parents had the same, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref97">1</reflink>, 228) = 46.93, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001, and different eye colors, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref98">1</reflink>, 228) = 27.69, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001, suggesting that the lessons led participants to accept more offspring as possible. When parents had different eye colors, older participants endorsed more offspring phenotypes, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref99">1</reflink>, 228) = 11.99, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001. There was also an interaction of test time and diagram richness. Contrary to our hypothesis, participants in the rich condition increased the number of offspring they endorsed from pretest to posttest more than participants in the bland condition, <emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref100">1</reflink>, 228) = 4.62, <emph>p</emph> =.033. No other effects were significant.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0005.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0005.jpg" title="5 Number of offspring endorsed in the phenotypic judgment task for the wolf (first panel), beaver/fox (second panel), fennec fox (third panel), and bass (fourth panel), broken down by diagram condition, with the bland condition in gray and the rich condition in red. For the wolf and beaver/fox, results are also broken down by test time. Error bars represent the within‐subject standard errors of the means." /> </p> <p></p> <p>We also examined how many offspring participants endorsed for the ear size and fin type trials. For each trait, we fit a linear regression with grade, diagram type, and their interaction as predictors. Again, participants endorsed more than one offspring for both traits, suggesting that their reasoning about these traits was similar to their reasoning about eye color. Of note, participants' responses for these traits were very similar to their responses for eye color at pretest (with bass, which had parents with the same phenotype, similar to the same‐parents pretest trials, and fennec fox, which had parents with different phenotypes, similar to the different‐parents pretest trials), suggesting that participants did not generalize from the eye color lesson to other traits. See Figure 5. No effects were significant.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-32">Phenotypic judgment task: Offspring endorsed</hd> <p>We then examined the specific offspring participants endorsed for each animal. As pre‐registered, we fit one mixed‐effects logistic regression per animal comparison. We included offspring type, diagram condition, grade, and the respective interactions for all models. For the wolf and the beaver/fox models, we also included test time and allowed it to interact with the other predictors. We kept the random‐effect structure maximal and followed the recommendations of Brauer and Curtin ([<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref101">4</reflink>]) in cases of non‐convergence. For each animal, full model statistics are included in the Supporting Information.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-33">Wolf (same parents)</hd> <p>The first model to converge did not include by‐subject random intercepts and did not allow the random effects to correlate. We found an effect of offspring type that was qualified by an interaction with test time. As can be seen in Figure 6, at pretest, participants showed a perceptual similarity bias, with participants being more likely to endorse offspring with light eyes (which matched the parents) than offspring with blends, more likely to endorse offspring with blends than offspring with dark eyes, and more likely to endorse offspring with dark eyes than offspring with purple eyes. After the lesson, participants were more likely to endorse all offspring types, but the increase was greatest for the offspring with dark eyes. Participants in higher grades were also more likely to endorse each offspring type. No other effects were significant.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0006.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0006.jpg" title="6 Probability of endorsement by offspring type (x‐axis) for the wolf (first panel), beaver/fox (second panel), fennec fox (third panel), and bass (fourth panel), broken down by test time (different shapes). The error bars show the within‐subject standard errors of the means." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-35">Beaver/fox (different parents)</hd> <p>The first model to converge included only by‐subject random slopes for the effect of test time and the test time by offspring type interaction. We found an effect of offspring type and an effect of test time, but no interaction, suggesting that the lesson led participants to endorse all of the offspring types more frequently. As can be seen in Figure 6, participants were equally likely to endorse offspring whose eyes matched those of the two parent phenotypes, less likely to endorse offspring with blends than offspring with dark eyes, and less likely to endorse offspring with purple eyes than offspring with blends. As grade level increased, participants were more likely to endorse all offspring types, but they reached ceiling (i.e., consistent endorsement) at an earlier grade for the two parent phenotypes, which was reflected in the offspring type by grade interaction. No other effects were significant.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-36">Fennec fox (different parents)</hd> <p>The first model to converge did not include by‐subject random intercepts and did not allow the random slopes to correlate. There was an effect of offspring type, as can be seen in Figure 6. As for eye color, participants were equally likely to endorse offspring who matched the two parent phenotypes (i.e., long and short ears), less likely to endorse offspring with medium ears (the blend) than offspring with long ears, and more likely to endorse offspring with medium ears than offspring with bat ears. No other effects were significant.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-37">Bass (same parents)</hd> <p>The first model to converge did not allow the random slopes to correlate. There was an effect of offspring type; see Figure 6. As for eye color, participants showed a perceptual similarity bias, being more likely to endorse offspring with spikey fins (which matched the parents) than offspring with blended fins, more likely to endorse offspring with blended fins than offspring with smooth fins, and more likely to endorse offspring with smooth fins than offspring with goldfish fins. No other effects were significant.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-38">Offspring prediction task: Number of offspring</hd> <p>We first examined how many different types of offspring participants selected for each trial, and then examined which offspring they selected. As a reminder, participants completed the offspring prediction task for the wolf and beaver at pretest and the wolf and fox at posttest. Consistent with Study 1, participants selected more than one offspring for all animals, both at pretest and posttest, with participants selecting more offspring when the parents had different phenotypes than when parents had the same phenotype (see Figure 7). We fit two linear mixed‐effects models, one for the wolf and one for the other animal with eye color as the trait (beaver/fox). We included test time, offspring sex, diagram type, grade, and their interactions as predictors, and we included by‐subject random intercepts and by‐subject random slopes for the effects of test time and offspring sex. We found that for the wolf (for which parents had the same eye color), participants in higher grades selected <emph>fewer</emph> different types of offspring. No other effects were significant; see Supporting Information.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0007.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0007.jpg" title="7 Number of different types of offspring participants selected in the prediction task, broken down by offspring sex (males in orange and females in green) and test time. The error bars show the within‐subject standard errors of the point estimates." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-40">Offspring prediction task: Offspring selected</hd> <p>Next, we examined the specific offspring who participants chose. We fit two mixed‐effects logistic regressions, one for each animal, predicting participants' selections from offspring type, test time, diagram condition, grade, and their interactions. We included by‐subject random intercepts and by‐subject random slopes for the effects of offspring type and test time.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-41">Wolf (same parents)</hd> <p>There was an effect of offspring type that interacted with test time. As can be seen in Figure 8, participants relied on perceptual similarity at both pretest and posttest, but after the lesson, participants were more likely to select the offspring who matched the parents (light eyes). There was also an effect of grade that interacted with offspring type. As grade level increased, participants were more likely to select the offspring who matched the parents (light eyes), and less likely to select the purple‐eyed offspring.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0008.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0008.jpg" title="8 Probability of selection by offspring type (x‐axis), broken down by test time (circle for pretest and diamond for posttest). The left panel shows the results for the wolf and the right panel for the beaver/fox. The error bars show the within‐subject standard errors of the means." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-43">Beaver/fox (different parents)</hd> <p>Again, there was an effect of offspring type that interacted with test time. Participants were less likely to select the offspring with the blended eye color at posttest. There was also a grade by offspring type interaction. Similar to the wolf, older participants were more likely to select the offspring types that matched the parents (i.e., dark eyed and light eyed), and less likely to select the purple‐eyed offspring.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-44">Post‐hoc analyses</hd> <p>Given that the lesson conveyed that offspring receive the same amount (half) of their DNA "code" from each parent, we wanted to examine whether participants would be less likely to engage in sex matching after the lesson. To address this question, we added offspring sex to the model for the beaver/fox (as those parents had different eye colors, with the mother having dark eyes and the father having light eyes). As can be seen in Figure 9, participants engaged in sex matching both at pretest and posttest. Critically, the three‐way interaction of offspring type by offspring sex by test time was not significant, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref102">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 232) = 3.64, <emph>p</emph> = .303; thus, there was no evidence that sex matching was influenced by the lesson. We also did not find that sex matching varied across grade levels, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref103">3</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 232) = 1.41, <emph>p</emph> = .702. Participants mentioned sex matching in 16.7% of explanations and genetic terms in 6.3% of explanations. Older participants were less likely to mention sex matching, OR = 0.75, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref104">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 216) = 11.23, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001, and more likely to use genetic terms, OR = 2.09, <emph>χ</emph><sups>2</sups>(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref105">1</reflink>, _I_N_i_ = 230) = 23.64, <emph>p</emph> &lt; .001. For further information, see Supporting Information.</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/CDV/01may24/cdev14053-fig-0009.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNHX8kSepq84v%2bvlOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="cdev14053-fig-0009.jpg" title="9 Probability of selecting an offspring, broken down by offspring type (x‐axis), offspring sex (left panels for females, right panels for males), and test type (top panels for posttest, and bottom panels for pretest). The error bars show the within‐subject standard errors of the point estimates." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0176649856-46">Discussion</hd> <p>Like Study 1, Study 2 showed that children think that more than one offspring is possible, and they use perceptual similarity and sex matching to decide which offspring are possible. Study 2 additionally showed that these biases extend to other traits, like ear size and fin type. However, given that ear size and fin type were only assessed after the lesson, it is unclear whether responses for these traits were influenced by the lesson. Although the lesson led participants to revise their beliefs on perceptual similarity (at least for the trait in the lesson), it did not lead to changes in children's sex‐matching responses, suggesting that the sex‐matching bias might be more resistant to change than the perceptual similarity bias. To be clear, we are not stating that all educational interventions would be ineffective at changing children's beliefs about genetics, but only that our brief intervention did not lead to changes in participants' sex matching. Indeed, prior work has shown that adults and teenagers modify their beliefs and misconceptions about genetics when those are clearly addressed during instruction (Donovan et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref106">8</reflink>]; Jamieson &amp; Radick, [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref107">16</reflink>]). Based on our findings, we suggest that some misconceptions, such as the assumption that all traits are sex‐linked, might be more entrenched than others and thus more difficult to modify.</p> <p>This study also revealed interesting developmental differences between the tasks. In the phenotypic judgment task, children in higher grades endorsed <emph>more</emph> offspring phenotypes, while in the offspring prediction task, children in higher grades selected <emph>fewer</emph> offspring phenotypes. This suggests that with age, children realize that more phenotypes are biologically possible, but they also recognize that some phenotypes are <emph>more likely</emph> than others. Thus, older children endorse a higher number of different phenotypes, but they correctly judge that those that match the parents are most likely. This developmental trend is in line with work on children's judgments of "possibility" in biology and other domains (Shtulman &amp; Carey, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref108">38</reflink>]).</p> <p>Contrary to our pre‐registered hypothesis, we did not find that the bland diagram was better than the rich diagram for promoting learning or generalization. The only effect of diagram richness that we observed pointed in the opposite direction—children who received the lesson with the <emph>rich</emph> diagram showed a greater increase in the number of offspring types they endorsed for the wolf and the beaver/fox. This result suggests that the rich diagram helped children learn about eye color inheritance more than the bland diagram. Although contrary to our hypothesis, this result aligns with other recent work by Menendez et al. ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref109">29</reflink>]), who found that children in first and second grades learned better from a lesson on metamorphosis with a rich diagram than from a lesson with a bland diagram. Other work has suggested that elementary school children generalize facts about animals more broadly when they see them with a rich image (Menendez, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref110">26</reflink>]). Children in this age range are exposed more frequently to rich visualizations in their science materials, and this may make rich visualizations easier to process (Menendez, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref111">26</reflink>]). Additionally, although we found that the lesson influenced children's judgments of the animal in the lesson (the wolf) and to a smaller extent, the trait (eye color) that was the focus of the lesson, we did not see evidence that children generalized to other traits, as their endorsements for novel traits were comparable to their pretest endorsements for eye color.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-47">GENERAL DISCUSSION</hd> <p>These studies show that children have a probabilistic model of inheritance and that they accept that there can be variability between parent and offspring phenotypes. Children generally believed that more than one offspring phenotype was possible, and this was reflected in their responses to both the <emph>phenotypic judgment</emph> and <emph>offspring prediction</emph> tasks. Furthermore, children most often selected offspring looked like their parents, suggesting that they recognized that offspring tend to look like their parents. This suggests that children as young as 4 think that offspring can look different from their parents, yet they believe that certain offspring types are more likely than others. Thus, even 4‐year‐olds may recognize the probabilistic nature of genetic inheritance.</p> <p>Although children showed evidence of a probabilistic model and endorsed variability, some response patterns indicate biases not attested in prior work. Prior studies have reported that children have a mother bias, which is the tendency to think offspring will look like the mother (Terwogt et al., [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref112">51</reflink>]). Although this bias has been found in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children, it is worth noting that Study 1 included 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds, and they did not show this bias. We suggest that the mother bias might have been an artifact of the methodology used in prior work, or it might be present only for very young children. Instead of a mother bias, we found that when given information about the sex of the offspring, children selected offspring so that female offspring resembled the mother and male offspring resembled the father. This sex matching was also evident in children's explanations. For example, an 11‐year‐old boy said, "The boys will probably relate to the dad and girls will relate to the mom." Although many traits are sexually dimorphic (e.g., feather coloration in many bird species) or sex‐linked (e.g., male pattern baldness), eye color is neither sexually dimorphic nor sex‐linked in any of the animals in these studies or humans. Therefore, we suggest that children exhibit a bias to match the phenotype of the offspring to that of the same‐sex parent. This bias has also been found in adults' selections and explanations (Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref113">27</reflink>]), suggesting that it might be present early in development and persist through formal instruction in biology. It is possible that this bias is related to children's essentialist beliefs about gender. It is also possible that children believe that offspring receive more genetic information from the parent of the same sex.</p> <p>Children's responses suggest that they used perceptual similarity to constrain their acceptance of variability. When parents had the same phenotype, children appeared to judge the possibility of offspring phenotypes based on perceptual similarity to the parents' phenotype. This pattern does not align with eye color inheritance in humans (e.g., although rare, parents with brown eyes can have a child with blue or green eyes). This constraint has also been observed in research on lifespan changes, for which children are more likely to accept small changes in only one feature (e.g., size) than more drastic changes in multiple features (e.g., size and proportions; French et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref114">12</reflink>]). Children may be willing to accept slight variations in many areas of biology, but they may require instruction to accept more drastic variations.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-48">Children's intuitive theory of inheritance</hd> <p>These studies suggest that children have a much more complex intuitive theory of inheritance than previously believed. The general claim that children expect offspring will resemble their parents still holds true. In their explanations, some children appealed to genetics by stating that parents pass on their genes. This correct understanding could be supported by children's essentialist reasoning, the belief that a parent's essence is transmitted to the offspring (Gelman, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref115">13</reflink>]; Solomon, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref116">44</reflink>]). Although children could ascribe this essence to many internal properties (e.g., the heart, Meyer et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref117">30</reflink>]; or blood, Waxman et al., [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref118">56</reflink>]), by ascribing the essence to genes (known as genetic essentialism, Cheung et al., [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref119">5</reflink>]; Dar‐Nimrod &amp; Heine, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref120">6</reflink>]) essentialist reasoning might support children's scientifically appropriate understanding that genetic material is passed down from parents to offspring. Children also believed that there could be slight variations between parents and offspring. This acceptance of variability is a novel finding. We show that children accept that there can be variability between parents and offspring, but that their acceptance depends on the degree of perceptual similarity.</p> <p>When parents have different phenotypes, children believe that offspring can resemble either parent, but they are more likely to resemble their same‐sex parent. This pattern might be rooted in children's gender essentialism or the belief that girls resemble one another more than they resemble boys (Taylor et al., [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref121">50</reflink>]). Another belief that could be supported by essentialism is the belief that parents' phenotypes would be combined. Some children explained that parents' genes "mixed" and noted that this could result in the offspring expressing both phenotypes (e.g., offspring with one eye that matched the mother's eye color and one eye that matched the father's eye color) or a combination of the two (e.g., offspring with an eye color between the mother's and father's eye color). Organisms <emph>can</emph> express phenotypes that are a mix of the phenotypes of the parents, like the blended and one‐and‐one phenotypes, particularly in cases of incomplete dominance or co‐dominance. However, children in this age range are not typically taught the concepts of incomplete dominance or codominance, and these patterns are relatively infrequent in the natural world, suggesting children might not have a lot of experience seeing them. These issues suggest that the idea of mixing genes might stem from children's intuitive theories leading them to believe that the essences of the parents are combined (Williams, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref122">59</reflink>]). Children's frequent endorsement of the one‐and‐one phenotype, which is very infrequent in the natural world, could also be a manifestation of theory‐based reasoning, as it may be based on the idea that each parent contributes exactly one‐half of the offspring's genes. More research is needed to understand which aspects of children's intuitive theories might support their learning of scientific models of genetics, and which aspects might hinder this learning.</p> <p>Based on our findings, we characterize children's intuitive theory of inheritance as a probabilistic model that uses essentialism and perceptual similarity to constrain what they believe is likely. The probabilistic nature of children's theories (i.e., the idea that many variations of offspring are possible) and the idea of parents' phenotypes mixing can serve as a starting point for instruction that explains that genetic information from both parents is passed on to offspring, but the process by which a particular allele is passed from parent to child is a probabilistic one.</p> <p>With age, this theory becomes more fully developed. Older children endorsed more offspring but rejected extreme options (e.g., purple eyes). We also found that some children incorporated genetic terminology in their explanations, though not always correctly. This suggests that a short genetics lesson might not be enough to change children's beliefs. Indirect support for this idea comes from studies with college students (who have received genetics instruction) who also still showed perceptual similarity and sex‐matching biases (Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref123">27</reflink>]). Direct support for this lack of change is found in Study 2, in which children (at all ages) still showed a sex‐matching bias, even after a lesson that highlighted offspring get half of their DNA from each parent.</p> <p>It is worth pointing out that these studies focused on physical traits, in particular eye color. In Study 2, we found similar results for eye color, ear size, and fin type, suggesting that our findings might generalize to other physical traits. Our findings may also generalize to psychological traits, as prior work suggests that children think about physical and psychological traits similarly (e.g., Johnson &amp; Solomon, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref124">17</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref125">59</reflink>]). The familiarity of the animals did not influence children's performance, suggesting that children use a probabilistic model of genetic inheritance for all animals. However, the characteristics of the trait itself could influence children's reasoning. For example, it is possible that if children received information about the functional utility of a trait, their judgments might be more deterministic, favoring the more functionally advantageous phenotype (Emmons &amp; Kelemen, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref126">11</reflink>]). Additionally, past research has shown that children make more deterministic judgments for internal traits or ones tied more closely to the essence of the animal category (Brandone et al., [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref127">3</reflink>]). Future work that systematically varies traits and the information children receive about traits may enhance our understanding of how far these beliefs extend.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-49">Implications for psychology and education</hd> <p>Some theorists have argued that children's understanding of the biological world is constrained by early cognitive biases, including psychological essentialism (Medin &amp; Ortony, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref128">25</reflink>]; Shtulman &amp; Schulz, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref129">39</reflink>]), teleology (Kelemen, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref130">18</reflink>]), and anthropocentrism (Arenson &amp; Coley, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref131">1</reflink>]). These biases lead people to infer that animals of the same species will be highly similar to one another (essentialism), to infer that animals acquire their traits for a specific purpose (teleology), and to reason about animals depending on their similarity to humans (anthropocentrism). It has been argued that these biases are pervasive because people use them across development and in a variety of biological domains (Eidson &amp; Coley, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref132">10</reflink>]; Kelemen et al., [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref133">19</reflink>]; Shtulman &amp; Valcarcel, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref134">41</reflink>]).</p> <p>However, some studies have shown that even though these biases are present, they are not applied in all situations (Arenson &amp; Coley, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref135">1</reflink>]), and children and adults can inhibit them to display more scientific knowledge (Ronfard et al., [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref136">36</reflink>]; Young &amp; Shtulman, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref137">61</reflink>]). In line with this work, our studies show that children do not always rely on essentialist reasoning when thinking about inheritance, at least for physical traits. Children accept that parents and offspring can look different, and they expect some variability.</p> <p>It is possible that these biases arise primarily when reasoning about species or other categories, rather than about individuals. Children may accept more variation when thinking about individual parents and offspring than when thinking about species. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated lower acceptance of variation at the species level (Emmons &amp; Kelemen, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref138">11</reflink>]; Rhodes &amp; Brickman, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref139">34</reflink>]). Explanations of how parent–offspring variation relates to variation at the species level might make children more accepting of variation at the species level. This could have implications for science education, as within‐species variation is a key concept (Walck‐Shannon et al., [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref140">55</reflink>]) and is foundational for understanding evolution through natural selection (Shtulman, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref141">37</reflink>]; Shtulman &amp; Schulz, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref142">39</reflink>]).</p> <p>Our studies provide some guidance on potential topics to address in genetic lessons, as without instruction, some biases might persist into adulthood (Menendez et al., [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref143">27</reflink>]). Our results suggest that genetics lessons should directly address when sex does or does not influence the phenotype of the offspring, as this might decrease students' tendency to sex match for all traits. Lessons should also stress that phenotypes that are perceptually similar to the parents are not <emph>necessarily</emph> more likely than phenotypes that are perceptually dissimilar. Instead, the likelihood of a particular phenotype depends on the inheritance patterns of the trait in question. Additionally, these studies show that children have some understanding of genetic inheritance at an earlier age than this topic is typically taught. This suggests that genetics instruction could occur in earlier grades, provided the materials convey the information in an age‐appropriate manner, as has been done with other complex biological topics (e.g., evolution, Ronfard et al., [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref144">36</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-50">Limitations</hd> <p>Our findings must be considered in light of the studies' limitations. Study 1 included mostly children from a highly educated community. These children may have parents with a stronger science background than the general population in the United States, and this might influence children's probabilistic views of inheritance. For Study 2, we recruited children from many areas of the United States, but we do not know if the sample differs in certain demographic characteristics (such as parent education) from the sample in Study 1. Therefore, it is possible that the results may not generalize to other communities within the United States or worldwide. We also examined only physical traits, and because ear size and fin type were queried only after the lesson, it is unclear if children's responses to these items were affected by the lesson. Future work should consider additional traits, including unfamiliar, functional, and internal traits. Additionally, we examined only how children reasoned about relatively simple traits in non‐human animals. Therefore, we do not know whether these results generalize to more complex traits or human traits, which are often the focus of genetics instruction in high school and college. Finally, it is possible that by including the labels "mom" and "dad" in our questions, children might have assumed that the animals were the parents of the animals shown. We included these labels because, to examine the mother bias, we needed to specify which parent was the mother, and these labels had been used in previous studies (Solomon &amp; Johnson, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref145">45</reflink>]; Springer, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref146">47</reflink>]; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref147">59</reflink>]; Williams &amp; Smith, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref148">60</reflink>]). Future studies might examine whether eliminating these labels influences children's responses.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-51">CONCLUSION</hd> <p>We examined beliefs about inheritance among predominantly White U.S. children with two novel tasks, the phenotypic judgment task (Studies 1–2) and the offspring prediction task (Studies 1B–2). These tasks allowed children to provide multiple responses about how offspring might look, allowing us to obtain a comprehensive view of how children think about genetic inheritance. Across three studies, children displayed a probabilistic view of genetic inheritance. They viewed multiple phenotypes as possible, and they viewed some as more likely than others. Children also displayed some misconceptions, such as sex matching and perceptual similarity biases. Characterizing children's understanding of inheritance as probabilistic and accepting of variability presents a different picture of the development of biological reasoning than was evidenced in past research. This understanding generalized to different types of animals and to different physical traits, and the biases were resistant to change after a brief lesson. Children's probabilistic understanding of inheritance can provide a foundation for understanding a range of biological processes, and this understanding could be leveraged in early science education.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-52">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Award #R305B150003 to the University of Wisconsin‐Madison. This research was also supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#1760940). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education or the National Science Foundation.</p> <hd id="AN0176649856-53">DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT</hd> <p>The analyses presented here were pre‐registered; The pre‐registration for Study 1 can be found here: https://osf.io/2kc3w/?view%5fonly=00156e7728aa42a2979f6e0aa43dc0b5 and for Study 2 here: https://osf.io/ncszr/?view%5fonly=12bd45bf7f31451ebaeac457c8c9049f. The data, analyses, and materials necessary to reproduce the analyses presented here are publicly accessible in OSF: https://osf.io/g74pa/?view%5fonly=5270d8b6d6234580b3d9767b79a4b88a for Study 1 and https://osf.io/h74de/?view%5fonly=3d252390c86f4a15a7ccfe1602299e37 for Study 2.</p> <p>GRAPH: Data S1.</p> <ref id="AN0176649856-54"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref72" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Arenson, M., &amp; Coley, J. D. (2018). Anthropocentric by default? Attribution of familiar and novel properties to living things. Cognitive Science, 42 (1), 253 – 285. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12501</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref27" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Betz, N., Leffers, J. S., Thor, E. E. D., Fux, M., de Nesnera, K., Tanner, K. D., &amp; Coley, J. D. (2019). Cognitive construal‐consistent instructor language in the undergraduate biology classroom. 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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Deterministic or Probabilistic: U.S. Children's Beliefs about Genetic Inheritance – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22David+Menendez%22">David Menendez</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0248-5940">0000-0002-0248-5940</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Andrea+Marquardt+Donovan%22">Andrea Marquardt Donovan</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Olympia+N%2E+Mathiaparanam%22">Olympia N. Mathiaparanam</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Vienne+Seitz%22">Vienne Seitz</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Nour+F%2E+Sabbagh%22">Nour F. Sabbagh</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Rebecca+E%2E+Klapper%22">Rebecca E. Klapper</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Charles+W%2E+Kalish%22">Charles W. Kalish</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Karl+S%2E+Rosengren%22">Karl S. Rosengren</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Martha+W%2E+Alibali%22">Martha W. Alibali</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Child+Development%22"><i>Child Development</i></searchLink>. e186-e205 2024 95(3):e186-e205. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 20 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2024 – Name: SourceSuprt Label: Sponsoring Agency Group: SrcSuprt Data: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)<br />National Science Foundation (NSF) – Name: NumberContract Label: Contract Number Group: NumCntrct Data: R305B150003<br />1760940 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Childrens+Attitudes%22">Childrens Attitudes</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Beliefs%22">Beliefs</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Genetics%22">Genetics</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Probability%22">Probability</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Color%22">Color</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Bias%22">Bias</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1111/cdev.14053 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0009-3920<br />1467-8624 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: Do children think of genetic inheritance as deterministic or probabilistic? In two novel tasks, children viewed the eye colors of animal parents and judged and selected possible phenotypes of offspring. Across three studies (N = 353, 162 girls, 172 boys, 2 non-binary; 17 did not report gender) with predominantly White U.S. participants collected in 2019-2021, 4- to 12-year-old children showed a probabilistic understanding of genetic inheritance, and they accepted and expected variability in the genetic inheritance of eye color. Children did not show a mother bias but they did show two novel biases: perceptual similarity and sex-matching. These results held for unfamiliar animals and several physical traits (e.g., eye color, ear size, and fin type), and persisted after a lesson. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: CodeSource Label: IES Funded Group: SrcInfo Data: Yes – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2024 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1424448 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1111/cdev.14053 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 20 StartPage: e186 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Childrens Attitudes Type: general – SubjectFull: Beliefs Type: general – SubjectFull: Genetics Type: general – SubjectFull: Probability Type: general – SubjectFull: Color Type: general – SubjectFull: Bias Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Deterministic or Probabilistic: U.S. Children's Beliefs about Genetic Inheritance Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: David Menendez – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Andrea Marquardt Donovan – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Olympia N. Mathiaparanam – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Vienne Seitz – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Nour F. Sabbagh – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Rebecca E. Klapper – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Charles W. Kalish – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Karl S. Rosengren – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Martha W. Alibali IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2024 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0009-3920 – Type: issn-electronic Value: 1467-8624 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 95 – Type: issue Value: 3 Titles: – TitleFull: Child Development Type: main |
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