Writing Response #4:   Development of Intuitive Theories

The following papers are required reading for the week of October 12th:
Schulz, L. (2012) The Origins of Inquiry: Inductive Inference and Exploration in Early Childhood, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(7), 382-389.
Ullman, T. D., Goodman, N. D., Tenenbaum, J. B. (2012) Theory Learning as Stochastic Search in the Language of Thought, Cognitive Development, 27(4), 455-480.

In advance of Wednesday's presentation and discussion of this reading, you should submit a response to the following question:

The Schulz paper considers 7 epistemic practices that scientists employ to build theories about the natural world and presents evidence for the emergence of some of these practices in infancy and early childhood. Ullman et al. propose a modelling framework that captures how theories may be learned through a process of stochastic search. Select one practice from the Schulz paper that the Ullman et al. framework appears to capture well and one practice that you believe is not captured well by this framework. In the first case, elaborate on how the practice is embodied in the model. In the second case, explain why you believe the framework does not yet incorporate this practice.

You should write at most one page (500 words) in response to this question. In addition, you should also submit a question of your own, related to the reading. This writing assignment is due on Tuesday, October 13 at midnight and should be submitted to the 9.523 course site on stellar using your private account: https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/9/fa15/9.523/. If you have a problem with submitting to stellar, please send your response to Ellen Hildreth at ehildreth@wellesley.edu.