Kara Weisman, Maliki E Ghossainy, Allison J Williams, Ayse Payir, Kirsten A Lesage, Bolivar Reyes-Jaquez, Tamer G Amin, Florencia K Anggoro, Emily R R Burdett, Eva E Chen, Lezanie Coetzee, John D Coley, Audun Dahl, Jocelyn B Dautel, Helen Elizabeth Davis, Elizabeth L Davis, Gil Diesendruck, Denise Evans, Aidan Feeney, Michael Gurven, Benjamin D Jee, Hannah J Kramer, Tamar Kushnir, Natassa Kyriakopoulou, Katherine McAuliffe, Abby McLaughlin, Shaun Nichols, Ageliki Nicolopoulou, Peter C Rockers, Laura Shneidman, Irini Skopeliti, Mahesh Srinivasan, Amanda R Tarullo, Laura K Taylor, Yue Yu, Meltem Yucel, Xin Zhao, Kathleen H Corriveau, Rebekah A Richert
The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers...
2024: PloS One