Publications
In Press
Lapidow, E. & Walker, C.M. (in press). Learners’ Causal Intuitions Explain Behavior in Control of Variables Tasks. To appear in Developmental Psychology.
Rett, A., Amemiya, J., Hwang, B., Goldwater, M., & Walker, C.M. (in press). Children’s recognition of causal system categories across superficially distinct events. To be published in Developmental Psychology.
2024
Amemiya, J., Heyman, G., & Walker, C.M. (2024). Calculated Comparisons: Manufacturing Societal Causal Judgments by Implying Different Counterfactual Outcomes. Cognitive Science 48 (2024) e13408. [PDF]
Amemiya, J., Heyman, G., & Walker, C.M. (2024). How barriers become invisible: Children are less sensitive to constraints that are stable over time. To appear in Developmental Science. [PDF]
2023
Amemiya, J., Heyman, G., & Walker, C.M. (2023). Emphasizing others’ persistence can promote unwarranted social inferences in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(10): 2977-88.
Huey, H, Lu, C., Walker, C.M., Fan, J. (2023). Visual explanations prioritize functional properties at the expense of visual fidelity. Cognition, 236, 105414. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Lapidow, E., Stein, A., & Walker, C.M. (2023). Children use causality to guide question asking. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Carstensen, A., Kim, M., Kim, G., Jin, M., Kang, M., Choi, Y., & Walker C.M. (2023). Relational abstraction in early childhood: Three cultures and three trajectories. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Carstensen, A., Cao, A., Tan, A., Liu, D., Liu, Y., Bui, M., Wang-Zhao, J., Han, Q., Walker, C.M., Frank, M.C. (2023). Cognitive diversity in context: US-China developmental trajectories on 4 tasks in 3-12-year-olds. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2022
Brockbank, E., & Lombrozo, T., Gopnik, A., & Walker, C.M. (2022). Ask me why don’t tell me why: Asking children for explanations facilitates relational thinking. Developmental Science, e13274. doi: 10.1111/desc.13274 [PDF]
Brockbank, E., & Walker, C.M. (2022). Explanation impacts hypothesis generation, but not evaluation, during learning. Cognition, 225, 105100. [PDF]
Tillman, K., & Walker, C.M. (2022). You can’t change the past: Children’s recognition of the causal asymmetry between past and future events. Child Development, Early view: doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13763. [PDF]
Amemiya, J., Mortenson, E., Heyman, G., & Walker, C.M. (2022). Thinking Structurally: A Cognitive Framework for Understanding How People Infer Structural Causes of Inequality. Perspectives on Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177/17456916221093593. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Amemiya, J., Heyman, G., & Walker, C.M. (2022). The role of alternatives in children’s reasoning about constrained choices. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Lapidow, E., Goddu, M.K., & Walker, C.M. (2022). Reasoning from samples to populations: Children use variability information to predict novel outcomes. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Lapidow, E., & Walker, C.M. (2022). Clarifying the causal logic of a classic control of variables task. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Carstensen, A., Saponaro, C., Frank, M.C., & Walker, C.M. (2022). Bridging cultural and cognitive perspectives on similarity reasoning. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2021
Lapidow, E., Killeen, I. & Walker, C.M. (2021). Learning to recognize uncertainty and recognizing uncertainty to learn. Developmental Science, 25(2): e13178. [PDF]
Lapidow, E, & Walker, C.M. (2021). Rethinking the "gap": Self-directed learning in cognitive development and scientific reasoning. Wires: Cognitive Science, e1580. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1580 [PDF]
Lapidow, E., Tandon T., Goddu, M., & Walker, C.M. (2021). A tale of three platforms: Investigating preschoolers’ second-order inferences using in-person, Zoom, and Lookit methodologies. Frontiers in Psychology: Developmental Psychology, 12:731404. [PDF]
Goddu, M., Sullivan, N., & Walker, C.M. (2021). Toddlers learn and flexibly apply multiple possibilities. Child Development, 92(6):2244-2251. [PDF]
Amemiya, J., Mortenson, E., Ahn, S., Walker, C.M., & Heyman G. (2021). Children acknowledge physical constraints less when actors behave stereotypically: Gender stereotypes as a case study. Child Development, 93(1):72-83. [PDF]
Ruggeri, A., Walker, C.M., Lombrozo, T., & Gopnik, A. (2021). How to help young children ask better questions. Frontiers: Developmental Psychology. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.586819 [PDF]
Walker, C.M., & Gopnik, A. (2021). Can a perceptual task be used to infer conceptual representations?: A reply to Glorioso, Kuznar, Pavlic, & Povinelli. Cognition, 214, 104414. [PDF]
Shtulman, A., & Walker, C.M. (2021). Developing an understanding of science. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2. [PDF]
Engle, J. & Walker, C.M. (2o21). Thinking counterfactually supports children’s evidence evaluation in causal learning. Child Development, 92(4): 1636-1651. [PDF]
Amemiya, J., Walker, C.M., & Heyman, G. (2021). Children’s developing ability to resolve disagreement by integrating perspectives. To appear in Child Development. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Rett, A., Amemiya, J., Goldwater, M., & Walker, C.M. (2021). Children’s Use of Causal Structure When Making Similarity Judgments. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (Virtual Meeting) Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Kim, M., & Walker C.M. (2021). Preschoolers’ spontaneous gesture production predicts analogical transfer. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (Virtual Meeting) Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Amemiya, J., Heyman, G.D., & Walker, C.M. (2021). How people make causal judgments about unprecedented societal events. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (Virtual Meeting) Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Huey, H., Walker, C.M., & Fan, J.E. (2021). How do the semantic properties of visual explanations guide causal inference? Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (Virtual Meeting) Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2020
Lapidow, E., & Walker, C. M. (2020). Informative experimentation in intuitive science: Children select and learn from their own causal interventions. Cognition. [PDF]
Walker, C.M., & Nyhout, A. (2020). Asking “why?” and “what if?”: The influence of questions on children’s inferences. In Lucas Butler, Samuel Ronfard & Kathleen Coriveau (Eds.), The Questioning Child: Insights from Psychology & Education. Cambridge University Press. [PDF]
Walker, C. M., Rett, A., & Bonawitz, E. (2020). Design drives discovery in causal learning. Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177/0956797619898134 [PDF]
Lapidow, E., & Walker, C.M. (2020). The Search for Invariance: Repeated positive testing serves the goals of causal learning in exploration and experimentation. In Childers, J.B., Graham, S.A. & Namy, L. (Editors). Learning Language and Concepts from Multiple Examples in Infancy and Childhood. Springer International, Switzerland. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Goddu, M., & Walker, C.M. (2020). Certain to be surprised: A preference for novel causal outcomes develops in early childhood. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. (Virtual Meeting) Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Goddu, M., Katz, T., & Walker, C.M. (2020). What else could happen? Two-, three-, and four-year-olds use variability information to infer novel causal outcomes. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.[PDF]
Rett, A., & Walker, C. M. (2020). Knowing When to Quit: Children Consider Access to Solutions When Deciding Whether to Persist. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Brockbank, E., & Walker, C. M. (2020). Explanation Supports Hypothesis Generation in Learning. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Lapidow, E., Killeen, I., & Walker, C. M. (2020). Exploration Decisions Precede and Improve Explicit Uncertainty Judgments in Preschoolers. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2019
Carstensen, A.B., Zhang, J., Heyman, G.D., Fu, G., Lee, K., & Walker, C.M. (2019). Early diversity in abstract thought: Context shapes the developmental trajectory of relational reasoning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(28). [PDF]
Ngoon, T., Walker, C.M., Klemmer, S. (2019). The dark side of satisficing: Setting the temperature of creative thinking. ACM DL: Creativity and Cognition. San Diego, CA. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Lapidow, E. & Walker, C.M. (2019). Does the intuitive scientist conduct informative experiments?: Children’s early ability to select and learn from their own interventions. In A. Goel, C. Seifert, & C. Freska (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Rett, A., Bonawitz, E., & Walker, C.M. (2019). The design of the learning environment shapes preschoolers’ causal inference. In A. Goel, C. Seifert, & C. Freska (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Tillman, K. & Walker, C.M. (2019). Children’s causal inferences about past vs. future events. In A. Goel, C. Seifert, & C. Freska (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Fox, A., Hollan, J., & Walker, C.M. (2019). Graphical fixedness: When graph comprehension becomes an insight problem. In A. Goel, C. Seifert, & C. Freska (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Nyhout, A., Iannuzziello, A., Walker, C.M., & Ganea, P. (2019). Thinking counterfactually supports children’s ability to conduct a controlled test of a hypothesis. In A. Goel, C. Seifert, & C. Freska (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2018
Walker, C.M., Hubachek, S.Q., & Vendetti, M.S. (2018). Achieving abstraction: Generating far analogies promotes relational reasoning in children. Developmental Psychology, 10, 1833-1841. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Engle, J., & Walker, C.M. (2018). Considering alternatives facilitates anomaly detection in preschoolers. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Goddu, M., & Walker, C.M. (2018). Toddlers and Adults Simultaneously Track Multiple Hypotheses in a Causal Learning Task. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2017
Walker, C.M., Bonawitz, E., & Lombrozo, T. (2017). Effects of explaining on children's preference for simpler hypotheses. Invited paper for Special Issue: The process of explanation in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1144-0. [PDF]
Walker, C.M. & Gopnik, A. (2017). Discriminating relational and perceptual judgments: Evidence from human toddlers. Cognition, 166, 23-37. [PDF]
Wente, A.O., Kimura, K., Walker, C.M., Banerjee, N., Flecha F., MacDonald, B., Lucas, C., & Gopnik, A. (2017). Causal learning across culture and socioeconomic status. Child Development, DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12943 [PDF]
Walker, C.M. & Lombrozo, T. (2017). Explaining the moral story. Invited paper for Special Issue: Moral Learning in Cognition, 167, 266-281. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Walker, C.M. & Gopnik, A. (2017). More than meets the eye: Early relational reasoning cannot be reduced to perceptual heuristics. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1302-1306. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Carstensen, A. & Walker, C.M. (2017). The paradox of relational development is not universal: Abstract reasoning develops differently across cultures. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1721-1726. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2016
Walker, C.M., Bridgers, S., & Gopnik, A. (2016). The early emergence and puzzling decline of relational reasoning: Effects of knowledge and search on inferring abstract concepts. Cognition, 156, 30-40. [PDF]
Walker, C.M., Lombrozo, T., Williams, J. J., Rafferty, A., & Gopnik, A. (2016). Explaining constrains causal learning in childhood. Child Development, 88, 229-246. [PDF]
Hadani, H. & Walker, C.M. (2016). Research and museum partnerships: Key components of successful collaboration. In Jennifer Jipson & Dave Sobel (Eds.), Relating research and practice: Cognitive development in museum settings. Psychology Press, pp. 171-180. [PDF]
2015
Walker, C.M., Bridgers, S.B., & Gopnik, A. (2015). The early emergence and puzzling decline of relational reasoning: Effects of knowledge and search on inferring “same” and “different.” In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 2559-2564. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2014
Walker, C.M., Lombrozo, T., Legare, C., & Gopnik, A. (2014). Explanation prompts children to privilege inductively rich properties. Cognition, 133, 343-357. [PDF]
Walker, C.M., Gopnik, A., & Ganea, P. (2014). Learning to learn from stories: Children's developing sensitivity to the causal structure of fictional words. Child Development, 86, 310-318. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12287. [PDF]
Walker, C.M. & Gopnik, A. (2014). Toddlers infer higher-order relational principles in causal learning. Psychological Science, 25(1): 161-169. [PDF]
Williams, J.J., Kovacs, G., Walker, C.M., Maldonado, S.G., & Lombrozo, T. (2014). Learning online via prompts to explain. In ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery. [PDF]
2013
Gopnik, A.* & Walker, C.M.* (2013). Considering counterfactuals: The relationship between causal learning and pretend play. American Journal of Play (Special Issue), 6(1): 15-28. [PDF]
Walker, C.M. & Gopnik, A. (2013). Pretense and Possibility: A theoretical proposal about the effects of pretend play on development: Comment on Lillard, Lerner, Hopkins, Dore, Smith & Palmquist (2013). Psychological Bulletin, 139(1): 40-44. [PDF]
Walker, C.M. & Gopnik, A. (2013). Causality & Imagination. In Marjorie Taylor (Ed.), The development of imagination (pp. 342-358). Oxford University Press: New York. [PDF]
Walker, C.M., Wartenberg, T.E., & Winner, E. (2013). Engagement in philosophical dialogue facilitates children's reasoning about subjectivity. Developmental Psychology, 49(7): 1338-1347. [PDF]
Walker, C.M., Walker, L., & Ganea, P. (2013). The role of symbol-based experience in learning and transfer from pictures: Evidence from Tanzania. Developmental Psychology, 49(7): 1315-1324. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Walker, C.M., Lombrozo, T., Legare, C., & Gopnik, A. (2013). Explaining to others prompts children to favor inductively rich properties. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R.P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1558-1563. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Buchsbaum, D., Walker, C.M., & Gopnik, A. (2013). Complex causal reasoning in pretend play. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 69-70. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Walker, C.M. & Gopnik, A. (2013). 24-month-old infants engage in relational causal reasoning. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R.P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1564-1568. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Williams, J.J., Walker, C.M., Maldonado, S.G., Lombrozo, T. (2013). Effects of explaining anomalies on the generation and evaluation of hypotheses. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 3777-3782. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2012
Walker, C.M., Wartenberg, T., & Winner, E. (2012). Examining the effects of philosophy classes on the early development of argumentation skills. In S. Goering, N. Shudak, & T. Wartenberg (Eds.), Philosophy in schools: An introductory handbook for philosophers and teachers, (pp. 277-282). Routledge Press: New York. [PDF]
CogSci Proceedings
Walker, C.M., Ganea, P.A., & Gopnik, A. (2012). Children's causal learning from fiction: Assessing the proximity between real and fictional worlds. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1108-1113. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Williams, J.J., Walker, C.M., & Lombrozo, T. (2012). Explaining increases belief revision in the face of (many) anomalies. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1149-1154 Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
Walker, C.M., Williams, J.J., Lombrozo, T., & Gopnik, A. (2012). Explaining influences children's reliance on evidence and prior knowledge in causal induction. In N. Miyake, D. Peebles, & R. P. Cooper (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1114-1119. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [PDF]
2011
Walker, C.M., Winner, E., Hetland, L., Simmons, S., & Goldman, L. (2011). Visual thinking: Art students have an advantage in geometric reasoning. Creative Education, 2(1): 22-26. [PDF]
2010
Zaitchik, D., Walker, C.M., Miller, S., LaViolette, P., Feczko, E., & Dickerson B.C. (2010). Mental state attribution and the temporoparietal junction: An fMRI study comparing belief, emotion, and perception. Neuropsychologia, 48(9): 2528-2536. [PDF]
