Rational constructivism is one of the leading theories in developmental psychology. But it is not a purely psychological theory: rational constructivism also makes a number of substantial epistemological claims about both the nature of human rationality and several normative principles that fall squarely into the ambit of episte- mology. The aim of this paper is to clarify and defend both theses and several other epistemological claims, as they represent the essential epistemological dimensions of rational constructivism.

In this article, we integrate two constructionist approaches – the theory of constructed emotion and rational constructivism – to introduce several novel hypotheses for understanding emotional development. We first discuss the hypothesis that emotion categories are abstract and conceptual, whose instances share a goal-based function in a particular context but are highly variable in their affective, physical, and perceptual features. Next, we discuss the possibility that emotional development is the process of developing emotion concepts, and that emotion words may be a critical part of this process. We hypothesize that infants and children learn emotion categories the way they learn other abstract conceptual categories – by observing others use the same emotion word to label highly variable events. Finally, we hypothesize that emotional development can be understood as a concept construction problem: a child becomes capable of experiencing and perceiving emotion only when her brain develops the capacity to assemble ad hoc, situated emotion concepts for the purposes of guiding behavior and giving meaning to sensory inputs. Specifically, we offer a predictive processing account of emotional development.

Key words: prediction, construction, variation, social learning, culture

I make two points in this commentary on Carey (2009). First, it may be too soon to conclude that core cognition is innate. Recent advances in computational cognitive science and developmental psychology suggest possible mechanisms for developing inductive biases. Second, there is another possible answer to Fodor’s challenge – if concepts are merely mental tokens, then cognitive scientists should spend their time on developing a theory of belief fixation instead.

Excerpt: This chapter considers a newly emerging view of cognitive development: rational constructivism. I will attempt to sketch the view as I see it, in broad strokes. I will draw on arguments and evidence to see if an overall picture will emerge. Two key developmental issues are discussed: how to characterize the initial state, and how to characterize mechanisms of learning and developmental change. I will argue for the following theses: (1) Infants are much smarter and much more sophisticated learners than what William James, Piaget, or Quine had thought; infants’ world is not “a blooming, buzzing confusion.” However, it remains unclear how best to characterize the initial state. Instead of sensorimotor primitives or core knowledge, the initial state may perhaps be best characterized as a set of proto-conceptual primitives. (2) Over the last several decades of research on cognitive development three types of learning mechanisms have been uncovered: language and symbol learning as a vehicle for conceptual development; Bayesian learning as a tool for belief revision; and explanation, analogy, and related processes as ways to organize factual knowledge and generate new hypotheses that drive genuine conceptual change. These mechanisms may be considered both rational and constructive.

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 begin life with a set of proto-conceptual primitives. These early representations are not in the format of a language of thought. (b) Mature state: Human adults represent the world in terms of a set of domain-specific intuitive theories. (c) Three types of mechanisms account for learning, development, and conceptual change: language and symbol learning, Bayesian inductive learning, and constructive thinking. (d) The child is an active learner, and cognitive agency is part and parcel of development. I will discuss each of these tenets, and provide an overview of the kind of empirical evidence that supports this view. This is a non-Piagetian view though it is in the spirit of constructivist theories of development; this view emphasizes the utility of formal computational models in understanding learning and developmental change. Lastly, this view also has implications for the study of philosophy of mind and epistemology.

Key words: rational constructivism, cognitive development, learning mechanisms

Excerpt: The papers that appear in this special issue bring together researchers working on probabilistic models of cognition with developmental psychologists, to consider how “rational constructivism” could shed light on some of the challenges of understanding cognitive development. Our goal in collecting these papers together is to illustrate that this new approach to the study of cognitive and language development has already shown a lot of promise – both computational modeling and empirical work have opened up new directions for research, and have contributed to theoretical and empirical advances in understanding learning and inference from infancy to adulthood. The rational constructivist view embodies two key ideas: one is the commitment that the learning mechanisms that best characterize learning and development from infants to adults are a set of rational, inferential, and statistical mechanisms that underlies probabilistic models of cognition. The application of these domain-general mechanisms may give rise to domain-specific knowledge. The second is to call into question both the nativist characterization of innate conceptual primitives (e.g., is object or agent an innate concept?), and the empiricist’s characterization of a newborn infant with nothing but perceptual primitives and associative learning mechanisms. It is an open question how best to think about the initial state of a human learner. Perhaps in addition to a set of perceptual (proto-conceptual?) primitives, the infant also has the capacity to represent variables, to track individuals, to form categories and higher-order units through statistical analyses, and maybe even the representational capacity for logical operators such as and/or/all/some – these capacities enable the infant to acquire more complex concepts and new learning biases. As such, this view departs from the traditional Piagetian view of development in at least two ways – development does not progress through stages, driven by qualitative changes in the child’s logical capacities, and development does not start with sensory-motor primitives and a lack of differentiation between the child and the world. Instead, the construction of new concepts and new learning biases is driven by rational inferential learning processes. At the moment, there is by no means any consensus on these issues. With further empirical and computational work, a more detailed explication will emerge.

What is the nature of human learning, and what insights can be gained from understanding early learning in infants and young children? This is an important question for understanding the human mind, the origins of knowledge, scientific reasoning, and how to best structure our educational environment. In this article, we argue for a new approach to cognitive development: rational constructivism. This view characterizes the child as a rational constructive learner, and it sees early learning as rational, statistical, and inferential. Empirical evidence for this approach has been accumulating rapidly, and a set of domain-general statistical and inferential mechanisms have been uncovered to explain why infants and young children learn so fast and so well.

Key words: rational constructivism, learning mechanisms, cognitive development

The authors in this chapter focus on a case study of how object representations in infants interact with early word learning, particularly the nature of the so-called ‘shape bias’. A short review of the controversies in this subfield is used to illustrate the two dominant views of cognitive development, which can be roughly classified as nativist or empiricist. Also presented are theoretical arguments and new empirical evidence for a rational constructivist view of cognitive development. The authors’ goal in this chapter is to argue for a new approach to the study of cognitive development, one that is strongly committed to both innate concepts and representations, as well as powerful inductive learning mechanisms. In addition to discussing the ‘shape bias’ and how it relates to object representations, generality of the approach is briefly discussed.

Key words: object representations, early word learning, shape bias, cognitive development, nativist, empiricist, rational constructivist, innate concepts, inductive learning mechanisms, infants