From the literate to the teleological glasses: Toward a general framework of the biases of cognitive scientists

Commentaries
By Grégoire Borst, Olivier Houdé
English

In our commentary on to Kolinsky and Morais’ opinion paper, we argue that the prism of literacy is one of the many prisms through which we interpret the world. As an example, we provide evidence that developmental psychologists tend to interpret cognitive development through a teleological prism, which leads them to consider the developing system in terms of the adult cognitive system. Based on this example, we then present a theoretical framework of cognitive development that avoids the pitfalls of this prism and in which learning to resist heuristics is a key factor of development. Finally, we argue that researchers have many heuristics or prisms that they need to resist in order to not be biased in their study of mental processes.

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