Knowing Why I Now Know Better: Children's and Youth's Explanations of Their Worldview Changes

We report an exploratory study of children's and youth's awareness of the evolution and revolution of their own worldviews, and their growing ability to identify differing reasons for their changing worldviews. Using a critical incident technique, 20 well-educated, verbally fluent respondents from ages 9 to 22 years were interviewed about such reasons. Eight developmentally relevant categories emerged from an interview content analysis. At older ages, children and youth offer increasingly more sophisticated reasons for their changing worldviews. The growing ability to why I now know better correlates with the construction of sounder worldviews, rs(n = 15) =. 82, p <. 01. Part of the evidence highlights the role adolescents themselves play in shaping their own intellectual development. The results also indicate conceptual differences in the theories of mind with regard to young children and older adolescents: Development of a theory of mind does not simply involve cumulative refinements, but at leas...