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SUMMARY:What can Cognitive Science tell us about Chemistry? - Michelle Ell
 efson
DTSTART:20131029T210000Z
DTEND:20131029T213000Z
UID:TALK46946@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Ed Brambley
DESCRIPTION:In the everyday world\, we rarely see substances reacting with
  each other. Most reactions occur through hidden mechanisms explainable on
 ly with specialized knowledge (e.g.\, processing of petrol by cars)\, or i
 n protracted timelines (e.g.\, metal rusting\, fossilization). Naive chemi
 stry knowledge seems neither available nor necessary to function well in e
 veryday life. People engage in activities relying on chemical knowledge 
 – baking\, cleaning\, lighting fires\, but explain them using non- chemi
 cal mechanisms. When children (and adults) encounter chemical phenomena\, 
 they often evoke hidden chemical mechanisms without deep understanding\, u
 sing prior knowledge from mostly everyday domains.\nIn this talk\, I’ll 
 discuss some recent experiments designed to investigate how humans reason 
 about chemical phenomena. These experiments use a variety of cognitive psy
 chology paradigms to better understand whether the way chemistry informati
 on is presented might influence understanding and what types of informatio
 n humans use to make predictions about how different materials might inter
 act (or event react) with each other. For example\, one study looks at how
  using anthropomorphism (i.e.\, talking about atoms as having desires) con
 strains our chemistry reasoning abilities. Another study looks at how the 
 various cues like physical appearance or naming used for different materia
 ls influences predictions young children and adults make about how that ma
 terial might mix with other materials.
LOCATION:Lord Colyton Hall\, Gonville &amp\; Caius College
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