Elizabeth BonawitzComputational Cognitive Development

Publications

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Lombrozo, T., Bonawitz*, E.B., & Brooke, N.R. (in revision) Asymmetries in younge children’s learning of teleological and mechanistic explanations.

Rhodes, M., Bonawitz, E.B., Shafto, P., & Chen, A. (in revision) Controlling the message: Preschoolers’ use of evidence to teach and deceive others.

Bonawitz, E.B., Denison, S., Gopnik., A., & Griffiths, T. (in review) Analyzing causal inferences with simple sampling algorithm: Win-stay, lose-shift.

Bonawitz*, E.B., & Griffiths, T. (in review) Considering psychological mechanisms can change the interpretation of Bayesian models.

Denison*, S., Bonawitz*, E.B., Gopnik, A., & Griffiths, T. (2013) Rational Variability in Children’s Causal Inferences: The Sampling Hypothesis. Cognition, 126(2), 285-300. (*joint first authors)

Muentener, P., Bonawitz, E.B., Horowitz, A., & Schulz, L. (2012) Mind the gap: When toddlers do and do not expect contact causality. PLoS ONE 7(4):e34061.

Bonawitz, E.B., van Schijndel, T., Friel, D., & Schulz, L. (2012) Balancing theories and evidence in children's exploration, explanations, and learning. Cognitive Psychology, 64(4), 215-234.

Bonawitz, E.B, & Lombrozo, T. (2012) Occam's Rattle: Children’s use of simplicity and probability to constrain inference. Developmental Psychology, 48, 1156-1164.

Bonawitz, E.B., Fischer, A., & Schulz, L. (in press)Teaching 3.5-year-olds to revise their beliefs given ambiguous evidence. Journal of Cognition and Development, 13(2), 266-280.

Bonawitz*, E.B., Shafto*, P., Gweon, H., Goodman, N., Spelke, E., & Schulz, L.E. (2011) The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Teaching limits children's spontaneous exploratoration and discovery. Cognition, 120(3), 322-330. (*joint first author)

Bonawitz, E.B., Ferranti, D., Saxe, R., Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A., Woodward, J., & Schulz, L. (2010) Just do it? Toddlers ability to integrate prediction and action. Cognition, 115, 104-117.

Schulz, L., Standing, H., & Bonawitz, E.B. (2008) Word, thought, and deed: The role of object labels in children's inductive inferences and exploratory play. Developmental Psychology, 44(5), 1266-1276.

Shafto, P., Kemp, C., Bonawitz, E.B., Coley, J.D., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2008) Reasoning About Causal Transmission. Cognition, 109(2), 175-192.

Schulz, L., Bonawitz, E.B., & Griffiths, T.L. (2007) Can being scared give you a tummy ache? Naive theories, ambiguous evidence and preschoolers' causal inferences. Developmental Psychology, Sep Vol 43(5) 1124-1139.

Schulz, L., & Bonawitz, E.B. (2007) Serious fun: Preschoolers play more when evidence is confounded. Developmental Psychology, Jul Vol 43(4) 1045-1050.



REFEREED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

Bonawitz, E., Ullman, T., Gopnik, A., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2012) Sticking to the evidence? A computational and behavioral case study of micro-theory change in the domain of magnetism. 2012 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL) [Best Paper: Experiment Combined with Computational Model]

Pham, K.*, Bonawitz, E., & Gopnik, A. (2012) Seeing who sees: Contrastive access helps children rason about other minds.. Proceedings of the Thirty-fourth Cognitive Science Society. *mentored undergraduate.

Gonzalez, A.*, Shafto, P., Bonawitz, E., & Gopnik, A. (2012) Is that your final answer? the effects of neutral queries on children's choices.. Proceedings of the Thirty-fourth Cognitive Science Society. *mentored undergraduate.

Bonawitz, E., Denison, S., Chen, A., Gopnik, G., & Griffiths, T.L. (2011) A simple sequential algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference. Proceedings of the Thirty-third Cognitive Science Society.

Muentener, P., Bonawitz, E.B., Horowitz, A., & Schulz, L.E. (2011) Mind the Gap: Dispositional Agency Facilitates Toddler’s Causal Representations. Proceedings of the Thirty-third Cognitive Science Society.

Bonawitz, E.B., & Griffiths, T. (2010) Deconfounding Hypothesis Generation and Evaluation in Bayesian Models. Proceedings of the Thirty-second Cognitive Science Society.

Denison, S., Bonawitz, E.B., Gopnik, A., & Griffiths, T. (2010) Preschoolers sample from probability distributions. Proceedings of the Thirty-second Cognitive Science Society.

Bonawitz, E.B., Horowitz, A., Ferranti, D., & Schulz, L. (2009) The Block Makes It Go: Causal Language Helps Toddlers Integrate Prediction, Action, and Expectations about Contact Relations. Proceedings of the Thirty-first Cognitive Science Society.

Bonawitz, E.B*., Shafto, P*., Gweon, H., Chang, I. , Katz, S., & Schulz, L. (2009) The Double-Edged Sword of Pedagogy: Modeling the Effect of Pedagogical Contexts on Preschoolers Exploratory Play. Proceedings of the Thirty-first Cognitive Science Society. *Equal author contribution.

Bonawitz, E.B. & Schulz, L.E. (2008) Why Learning is Hard. Symposium on Naturally-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, Proceedings of AAAI.

Bonawitz, E.B., Chang, I., Clark, C., & Lombrozo, T. (2008) Ockham's razor as inductive bias in preschoolers causal explanations. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference of Development and Learning. Monterey, CA.

Bonawitz, E.B., Fischer, A., Schulz, L.E. (2008)Training a Bayesian: Three-and-a-half-year-olds' reasoning about Ambiguous Evidence. Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Washington, DC.

Bonawitz, E.B., Lim, S., & Schulz, L.E. (2007) Weighing the Evidence: Children's theories of Balance affect play. Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Nashville, Tennessee.

Bonawitz, E.B., & Schulz, L. (2007) Children's Rational Exploration. AAAI Fall Symposium on Computational Approaches to Representation Change During Learning and Development. Washington DC.

Bonawitz, E.B., Griffiths, T.L., & Schulz, L. (2006) Modeling Cross-Domain Causal Learning in Preschoolers as Bayesian Inference. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Vancouver, Canada. 2006 [Received Marr Prize for Best Student Paper]

Goodman, N.D., Baker, C.L, Bonawitz, E.B., Mansinghka, V.K., Gopnik, A., Wellman, H., Schulz, L.E., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2006) Intuitive Theories of Mind: A Rational Approach to False Belief. Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Vancouver, Canada.

Shafto, P., Kemp, C., Baraff, E.R., Tenenbaum, J.B., & Coley, J. (2005) Inductive Generalizations of Novel Disease: Causal Generalizations over Foodweb Relations. Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Stresa, Italy.

Griffiths, T.L., Baraff, E., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2004) Using Physical Theories to Infer Hidden Causal StructureProceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. [Marr Prize for Best Student Paper, Honorable Mention, Cognitive Science. Chicago, IL] 

 

CHAPTERS & THESES
Bonawitz, E., Gopnik, A., Denison, S., & Griffiths, T. (2012) Rational Randomness: The role of sampling in an algorithmic account of preschooler's causal learning. In Xu, F., & Kushnir, T. (Eds.) Rational Constructivism in Cognitive Development. Oxford, United Kingdom: Elsevier Limited.

Bonawitz, E.B. (2009) The Rational Child: Theories and Evidence in Prediction, Exploration, and Explanation. MIT PhD Thesis in Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

Coley, J.D., Shafto, P., Stepanova, O., & Baraff, E. (2005) Knowledge and Category-Based Induction. In Ahn, W., Goldstone, R. L., Love, B. C., Markman, A. B., & Wolff, P. (Eds.) Categorization inside and outside the laboratory: Essays in honor of Douglas L. Medin. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Baraff, E. (2002). The Effects of Time Constraints on Expert and Novice Reasoning about Music. Northeastern University Honors Thesis.



IN PREPARATION
Bonawitz E.B., Brenman, S., & Schulz, L. (in prep) Believing is Seeing: Children's Causal Beliefs Affect Visual Exploration and Prediction.

Bonawitz, E., Ullman, T., Gopnik, A., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (in prep) Sticking to the evidence? A computational and behavioral case study of micro-theory change in the domain of magnetism.

Shafto, P., Bonawitz, E.B., Gonzalez, A., Bridgers, S., & Gopnik, A. (in prep) Is that your final answer? Effects of social learning on children’s responses to follow-up questions

Bonawitz, E.B., & Gopnik, A. (in prep) Bayesian models of child development

Bonawitz, E.B., Goodman, N.D., Pham, K., Baker, C.L, Gopnik, A., Wellman, H., Schulz, L.E., Saxe, R., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (in prep) Ideal Observers in Theory of Mind

Bonawitz, E., Hanson, M., Ramarajan, D., Shafto, P., Wellman, H., & Gopnik, A. (in prep) Pedagogy and Theory of Mind: The relationship between children’s teaching and their reasoning about others.