Causal understanding is a defining characteristic of human cognition. Like many animals,
human children learn to control their bodily movements and act effectively in the …

Canonical cases of learning involve novel observations external to the mind, but learning
can also occur through mental processes such as explaining to oneself, mental simulation …

This article provides a synthesis and overview of a theory of cognitive development, rational
constructivism. The basic tenets of this view are as follows:(a) Initial state: Human infants …

Highlights•Explanation-seeking curiosity (ESC) motivates the pursuit of explanations.•ESC is
highly selective: it is not triggered merely by ignorance or uncertainty.•Children can acquire …

Why do some (and only some) observations prompt people to ask “why?” We propose a
functional approach to “Explanation-Seeking Curiosity”(ESC): the state that motivates …

Although storybooks are often used as pedagogical tools for conveying moral lessons to
children, the ability to spontaneously extract “the moral” of a story develops relatively late …

Asking students to generate explanations to fictitious others by means of different
technologies (eg, instant messenger, video) has gained popularity in schools. Although the …

All explanations are incomplete, but reasoners think some explanations are more complete
than others. To explain this behavior, we propose a novel theory of how people assess …

Creativity is an indispensable competency in today's innovation-driven society. Yet, the
influences of instructional strategy, a key determinant of educational outcomes, on the …

Recent work in cognitive science has uncovered a diversity of explanatory values, or
dimensions along which we judge explanations as better or worse. We propose a Bayesian …