How do children’s conceptualizations of natural and supernatural entities develop in religious and cultural contexts? We explored this question in Indonesia—a Muslim-majority country in which religious affiliation is mandatory—as part of a larger multi-site collaborative project (The Developing Belief Network; Weisman et al., under review). Indonesian children (N=100, Ages 5-10) from Muslim or Christian families were asked about the properties and behaviors of different kinds of agents: (1) religious (e.g., God), (2) non-religious supernatural (e.g., ghosts), (3) fictional (e.g., fairies), and (4) natural/scientific (e.g., germs). We also measured each child’s religious identification and involvement. We will compare how children of different religions conceptualize these agents, and how these beliefs vary with the child’s age and religious identity. Our findings will shed new light on the interplay between religion, culture, and children’s theories about the world.

We explored Asian- and Caucasian-American adults beliefs about illness, investigating whether conceptions of mentaland physical illness reflect the Western biomedical framework and an energy-healing practice grounded in traditionalChinese medicine. For physical illnesses (i.e., cold/flu and cancer), White young adults primarily cited biomedical causes,while Asian young adults and older energy believers often cited alternative causes, X2(4, N=27)=19.06, p¡.01. Whenasked about treatment and prevention, the energy believers continued to endorse alternative approaches, but both whiteand Asian young adults focused on biomedical approaches, X2(4, N=27)¿22.99, ps¡.0001. For mental illnesses (i.e.,depression and anxiety), the energy believers continued to endorse the alternative framework, while White and Asianyoung adults responses were more distributed between biomedical and alternative methods. These results suggest thatmental models of illness are shaped by cultural beliefs, and conflicting beliefs may coexist within young adults who arebeing enculturated in a new framework.

Many children struggle to comprehend basic space science, including the scientific explanations of the day/night cycle andseasonal change (e.g., Plummer, 2014; Vosniadou & Brewer, 1994). With notable exceptions (e.g., Samarapungavan, Vos-niadou, & Brewer, 1994), prior research has focused on Westerners’ ideas and experiences. Using structured interviews,we explored U.S. and Indonesian 3rd graders’ conceptions of the day/night cycle and seasonal change. Children fromboth communities had similar explanations of the day/night cycle, often confusing the Sun’s apparent movement as actualmotion. Cross-cultural differences emerged in children’s explanations of seasons: U.S. children were more likely to usechanges in Sun-Earth proximity, whereas Indonesian children tended to provide Earth-centric, geographical explanations(e.g., ”America gets snow because it is near the North Pole”). These findings reveal an interesting interplay betweenchildren’s geographically limited observations of the sky, the seasons, and their ideas about invisible causal forces in thesolar system.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its profound global effects may be changing the way we think about illness. We surveyed 120 American adults to explore the effects of the pandemic on their mental models of illness. Participants read three vignettes: one relating to COVID-19, one to cancer, and another to the common cold, and were asked questions relating to the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, time-course, and transmission of each disease. Results showed that participants were more likely to correctly diagnose COVID-19 (93% accuracy) compared to a cold (60% accuracy) or cancer (51% accuracy). Of the 40 participants that incorrectly diagnosed the cold vignette, 7 misdiagnosed a cold as COVID-19. These and other preliminary findings suggest a distinct mental model for COVID-19 compared to other illnesses. The prevalence of COVID-19 in everyday discourse may lead to biased responding, similar to errors in medical diagnosis that result from physicians’ expertise (Hashem et al., 2003).

In Indonesia, religious education is compulsory in schools. How do scientific values and reasoning—being willing and able to change one’s beliefs in the face of new evidence—emerge in this context? We recruited Indonesian children (N=240, Ages 6-14) from majority Muslim (Jakarta) or Hindu (Bali) schools. As part of a larger battery of tasks, we asked participants a set of scientific values questions (e.g., “How important is it to think carefully about people, ideas, and events instead of relying on gut feelings or emotions?”), scientific reasoning questions (e.g., “How can Sarah best convince Michael that plants are alive?”), and questions about their religiosity. We will report age- and site-related patterns for each variable, and explore the relationships between religiosity, scientific values, and scientific reasoning performance. The findings will be discussed in terms of the development of scientific and religious thinking in cultural contexts.