Dr. Charles Kalish

Charles Kalish, Ph.D.
Professor
Human Development; Learning Sciences
PhD, 1993, University of Michigan

Visit Dr. Kalish's Home Page at http://corundum.education.wisc.edu

Dr. Kalish joined the faculty in 1993. His research focuses on the development of intuitive theories and inductive inference. Dr. Kalish's research has been supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Spencer Foundation. He directs the Study of Children's Thinking project at the Waisman Center on Mental Retardation and Human Development. Dr. Kalish is also Co-organizer of the Cognitive Development Research Group along with Dr. Martha Alibali (Psychology). Dr. Kalish is an affiliate of the Department of Psychology.

RESEARCH STATEMENT

My research focuses on inductive inference and causal reasoning: How do we predict the future and learn from experience? One line of research explores how children acquire the set of commonsense beliefs that characterize adult thinking. I am particularly interested in children's developing appreciation of physical and intentional causality. Current research explores the role of norms in social cognition. How does children's understanding of rules and obligations develop, and what role does such understanding play in their predictions and explanations of people's behavior? A second line of research addresses more general processes of categorization and inference. We explore how people use evidence to draw conclusions, and how information about sampling affects these conclusions. Ongoing studies focus on conditional probability judgments. These judgments are central to categorization and inference, and are especially interesting in stereotypes and social judgments. For example, that most basketball players are tall does not imply that most tall people are basketball players.

The ability to generalize past experience to new situations, to make inductive inferences, is central to what we think of as learning. We want children not just to be able to solve familiar problems, but also to know how to apply their knowledge in new circumstances. I hope that studying the process of generalization will tell us more about how children learn.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Kalish, C. W., & Sabbagh, M. A. (Eds.). (2007). Conventionality in cognitive development: How children acquire shared representations in language, thought, and action. New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development No. 115. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kalish, C. W., & Lawson, C. A. (in press). Development of social category representations: Early appreciation of roles and deontic relations Child Development.

Kalish, C. W., & Lawson, C. A. (2007). Negative evidence and inductive generalization. Thinking & Reasoning, 13, 394-425.

Kalish, C. W., & Cornelius, R. (2007). What is to be done? Children’s ascriptions of conventional obligations. Child Development, 78, 859-878.

Lawson, C. A., & Kalish, C. W. (2006). Inductive Inferences Across Time and Identity: Are Category Members More Alike Than Single Individuals? Journal of Cognition and Development. 7, 233-252.

Kalish, C. W. (2005). Becoming status conscious: Children’s appreciation of social reality. Philosophical Explorations. 8, 245-263

CONTACT DR. KALISH:

Address: Room 1067 Educational Sciences Building

Phone: (608) 262-0840

Email: cwkalish@wisc.edu