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Heidi Kloos Assistant Professor, Psychology Ph.D, Arizona State University, 2001 Curriculum Vitae Address: 409-A Dyer Hall PO Box 210376 Cincinnati, OH 45221-0376 phone: 513-556-5525 fax: 513-556-1904 heidi.kloos@uc.edu http://www.uc.edu/ccrl/
Areas of Expertise: Cognitive Development; Educational Psychology; Complex Systems and Nonlinear Dynamics. PDF files of publications can be found under "http://www.uc.edu/ccrl/Publications.html"
Research Areas: 1. UNDERSTANDING PHYSICAL REGULARITIES: Young children often hold mistaken beliefs about physical regularities, such as about how the volume of an object affects how the object sinks in water. What are the sources of such mistakes? What role do general mechanisms play in such mistakes and how can children overcome them? 2. CONCEPTS AND CATEGORIES: Understanding category formation is crucial in finding a method for teaching early science and mathematics skills. But how do children and adults learn about categories? For example, how do they come to understand that cats belong to a different category than dogs, or that “two” is different from “three”? Do categories differ in terms of how they are learned and organized. For example, do differences in a category’s redundancy give rise to distinct types of categories? 3. CAUSAL REASONING: Developmental research commonly claims that children and even infants have a causal understanding, in that they understand the difference between cause and effect. However, the extent to which such understanding is present in adults is debated. This research is a step towards a more conservative look at young children's understanding of causality. What type of information is needed for children to distinguish between cause and effects? And how crucial – if at all – is knowledge about causal mechanisms? < back >