Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research suggests that preschoolers have logical or cognitive deficits that limit their understanding of gravity as an explanatory concept. Four experiments were designed to test whether, in contrast to the results from previous research, preschoolers have a coherent, consistent and theoretical understanding of gravity. In each study, preschoolers made judgments regarding objects' behavior in at least one gravity-related event (e.g., speed of falling objects, trajectory of thrown objects, the behavior of balance scales). Predictions were made about children's performance based on the hypothesis that preschoolers understand gravity to be a property of objects. Predicted age-related changes in causal judgments were found on each task, as were positive correlations in performances across the tasks. The results support the claim that preschoolers understand gravity as a property of objects, an understanding that undergoes conceptual change.