CONCEPT
The Theory Theory
Gopnik and Meltzoff's framework proposing that children learn by constructing, testing, and revising causal theories in a process structurally analogous to scientific inquiry.
The theory theory is the framework at the heart of Alison Gopnik's developmental program: the claim that children learn about the world through processes that are not merely analogous to scientific theory-building but genuinely are scientific theory-building — the construction of coherent, predictive causal models that are actively tested against evidence and revised when predictions fail. The term 'theory' is not metaphorical. Children's cognitive structures have the essential features of scientific theories: they are coherent, they generate predictions about unobserved phenomena, and they change when the evidence demands it. The theory theory transforms the traditional picture of the child from a passive recipient of information into an active investigator whose developmental trajectory mirrors the progress of a working research program.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The theory theory emerged in the 1990s as the cumulative interpretation of decades of looking-time studies, causal-reasoning experiments, and observations of children's spontaneous questioning and exploratory behavior. Babies, it turned out, were not blank slates. By a few months of age they had constructed sophisticated models
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