Publications | Cognition and Development Lab

Books, Monographs, and Special Journal Issues

Keil, F. C. (2022). Wonder: Childhood and the Lifelong Love of Science. MIT Press. (315 pages)
Lockhart, K.L. & Keil, F.C. (2018). What Heals and Why? Children’s Emerging Understandings of Medical Treatments, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. (200 pages)
Keil, F. C. (2014). Developmental Psychology: The Growth of Mind and Behavior. W.W. Norton (886 pages).
NRC (2007). Taking Science to School. National Academies Press (authored a major portion of this book).
Wilson, R.A. & Keil, F.C. (Eds.) (2001). The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MIT Press (paperback version)
Keil, F.C. & Wilson, R.A. (Eds.) (2000). Explanation and Cognition, Cambridge, MIT Press (396 pages)
Wilson, R.A. & Keil, F.C. (Eds.) (1999). The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, MIT Press
Keil, F.C. & Wilson, R.A. (1998). Special Issue on Cognition and Explanation, Minds and Machines, 8 (1)
Ram A., Nersessian N.J., & Keil F.C. (Eds.) (1997). Special Issue on Conceptual Change Journal of the Learning Sciences 6 (1)
Keil, F. C. (1989). Concepts, kinds, and cognitive development. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.(343 pages)
Keil, F. C. (1979). Semantic and conceptual development: An ontological perspective. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.(229 pages)

Articles and Chapters

Lab publications are also available on Dr. Keil’s Google Scholar page, here.

Ahl, R.E., DeAngelis, E., & Keil, F.C. (in press). I know it’s complicated: Children detect relevant information about object complexity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Keil, F.C. & Lockhart, K.L. (in press). Knowing What Is Known: Emerging Insights into the Limits of Individual and Distributed Knowledge In. N. Ballantyne and D. Dunning Ed. Reason, Bias, and Inquiry: New Perspectives from the Crossroads of Epistemology and Psychology. Oxford Univ. Press
Aboody, R., Yousif, S. R., Sheskin, M., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Says who? Children consider informants’ sources when deciding whom to believe. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Understanding “Why:” How Implicit Questions Shape Explanation Preferences. Cognitive Science, 46(2), e13091.
Richardson, E., & Keil, F. C. (2022). The potential for effective reasoning guides children’s preference for small group discussion over crowdsourcing. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-11.
Yousif, S. R., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Quantity perception: The forest and the trees. Cognition, 105074.
Yousif, S. R. (In press) Numerosity, Area-osity, Object-osity? Oh my. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. [Commentary on Clarke and Beck’s The Number Sense Represents (Rational) Numbers].
Richardson, E., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Thinking takes time: Children use agents’ response times to infer the source, quality, and complexity of their knowledge. Cognition, 224, 105073.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., & Keil, F.C. (In press). Teleology beyond explanation. Mind & Language. View
Liefgreen, A., Yousif, S. R., Keil, F. C., and Lagnado, D. (In press). The motive for motive: Explanatory preferences at multiple stages of the legal-investigative process. Cognition.
Keil, F.C., Lockhart, K.L. (2021) Beyond cause: The development of clockwork cognition. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 30, 167-173. View
Kominsky, J.F., Baker, L., Keil, F.C., Strickland, B. (2021). Causality and continuity close the gaps in event representations. Memory & Cognition, 49, 3.
Richardson, E., Sheskin, M., Keil, F.C. (2021). An illiusion of Self-Sufficiency for Learning About Artifacts in Scaffolded Learners, But Not Observers. Child Development.
Kominsky, J. F., Gerstenberg, T., Pelz, M., Sheskin, M., Singmann, H., Schulz, L., & Keil, F. C. (2021). The trajectory of counterfactual simulation in development. Developmental Psychology, 57(2), 253.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R, & Keil, F.C. (2021). What is a ‘mechanism’? A distinction between two sub-types of mechanistic explanations. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Vienna, Austria: Cognitive Science Society.
Richardson, E., Keil, F.C. (2021). You can’t trust an angry group: asymmetric evaluations of angry and surprised rhetoric affect confidence in trending opinions. In Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Vienna, Austria: Cognitive Science Society.
Yousif, S.R., Rosenberg, M.D., & Keil, F.C. (2021). Using space to remember: Short-term spatial structure spontaneously improves working memory. Cognition, 214 , 104748. View
Yousif, S. R. and Keil, F. C. (2021). How we see area and why it matters. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. View
Bennette, E.*, Keil, F. C., and Yousif, S. R. (2021). A ubiquitous illusion of volume: Are impressions of 3D volume captured by an ‘Additive Heuristic’? Perception. View
Yousif, S. R. and Keil, F. C. (2021). The shape of space: Evidence for spontaneous but flexible use of polar coordinates in visuospatial representations. Psychological Science, 32. 573-586. View
Falck, A., Labouret, G., Izard, V., Wertz, A. E., Keil, F. C., & Strickland, B. (2020). Core cognition in adult vision: A surprising discrepancy between the principles of object continuity and solidity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(12), 2250.
Ahl, R.E., Amir, D., Keil, F.C. (2020) The world within: Children are sensitive to internal complexity cues. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 200, 104932.
Richardson E. & Keil F.C., (2020). Children use agents’ response time to distinguish between memory and novel inference. In Proceedings of the 42nd Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp 852-858). Toronto, CA: Cognitive Science Society. View
Richardson E. & Keil F.C., (2020). Does informational independence always matter? Children believe small group discussion is more accurate than ten times as many independent informants. In Proceedings of the 42nd Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp 266-272). Toronto, CA: Cognitive Science Society. View
Noyes, A. & Keil, F. C. (2020). Collective recognition and function in concepts of institutional social groups. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Sheskin, M., Scott, K., Mills, C. M., Bergelson, E., Bonawitz, E., Spelke, E. S., Fei-Fei, L., Keil, F. C., Gweon,H., Tenenbaum, J. B., Jara-Ettinger, J., Adolph, K. E., Rhodes, M., Frank, M. C., Mehr, S. A., & Schulz, L. (2020). Online developmental science to foster innovation, access, and impact. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Johnson, S. G., Merchant, T., & Keil, F. C. (2020). Belief digitization Do we treat uncertainty as probabilities or as bits? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Noyes A., Keil, F.C., & Dunham, Y. (2020). Institutional actors: Children’s emerging beliefs about the causal structure of social roles. Developmental Psychology, 56, 70–80.
Noyes A., Dunham, Y. & Keil, F.C. (2020). Dangerous and distinctive properties bias category judgments late in development, Developmental Psychology, 56, 81-9
Yousif, S. R., Aslin, R. N., and Keil, F. C. (2020). Judgments of spatial extent are fundamentally illusory: ‘Additive-area’ provides the best explanation. Cognition, 205, 104439. View
Yousif, S. R. and Keil, F. C. (2020). Area, not number, dominates estimates of visual quantities. Scientific Reports, 10, 1-13. View
Yousif, S. R. and Keil, F. C. (2020). Illusory causal connections and their effect on subjective probability. In S. Denison., M. Mack, Y. Xu, & B.C. Armstrong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 404-410). Cognitive Science Society.
Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., and Keil, F. C. (2020). Implicit questions shape information preferences. In S. Denison., M. Mack, Y. Xu, & B.C. Armstrong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1265-1271). Cognitive Science Society.
Johnson, S. G., Valenti, J. J., & Keil, F. C. (2019). Simplicity and complexity preferences in causal explanation: An opponent heuristic account, Cognitive Psychology… https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.05.004
Noyes, A. & Keil, F.C. (2019). Generics designate kinds but not always essences: Implications for social categories and kinds, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,116, 20354-20359.
Johnston, A.M., Sheskin, M., & Keil, F.C. (2019). Learning the relevance of relevance and the trouble with truth: Evaluating explanatory relevance across childhood. Journal of Cognition and Development, 20, 555-572
Yousif, S. R. , Aboody, R. & Keil, F.C. (2019). The illusion of consensus: A failure to distinguish between ‘true’ and ‘false’ consensus, Psychological Science, 30, 1195-1204
Noles, N, & Keil, F.C, (2019). Exploring the first possessor bias in children, PLOS ONE, 14, e0209422
Keil, F.C. (2019). The Challenges and Benefits of Mechanistic Explanation in Folk Scientific Understanding in R. Samuels & D. Wilkenfeld (Ed.). Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science, p. 41-56, Bloomsbury Academic Series: Advances in Experimental Philosophy
Keil, F. (2019). How Do Partial Understandings Work? 191-208, in Grimm, S. R. (Ed.) Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology. Oxford University Press.
Lockhart, K.L., Chuey, A., Kerr, S., & Keil, F.C. (2019). The Privileged Status of Knowing Mechanistic Information: An Early Epistemic Bias, Child Development, 5, 1772-1788
Yousif, S. R. & Keil, F.C. (2019). The additive area heuristic: An efficient but illusory means of visual area approximation, Psychological Science, 30, 495–503
Noyes, A. & Keil, F.C. (2018). Asymmetric Mixtures: Common Conceptual Priorities for Social and Chemical Kinds. Psychological Science, 29, 1094-1103. View
Fisher, M. & Keil, F.C. (2018). The Binary Bias: A Systematic Distortion in the Integration of Information, Psychological Science, 9, 1846-1858
Noyes, A., Keil, F.C., & Dunham, Y. (2018). The emerging causal understanding of institutional objects, Cognition, 17 ,83-87.
Fisher, M., Knobe, J. Strickland, B. & Keil, F.C. (2018).The Tribalism of Truth. Scientific American, 318, 50-53
Lockhart, K. L., Goddu, M. K., & Keil, F. C. (2018). When Saying” I’m Best” Is Benign: Developmental Shifts in Perceptions of Boasting. Developmental Psychology. 54, 521-535
Kominsky, J. F.; Zamm, A.P. & Keil, F.C. (2018). Knowing When Help is Needed: A Developing Sense of Causal Complexity, Cognitive Science, 42, 491-523.
Johnston, A. M., Sheskin, M., Johnson, S. G. B., & Keil, F. C. (2018). Preferences for Explanation Generality Develop Early in Biology, but not Physics, Child Development.8, 1110-1119.
Kominsky, J.F., Strickland. B., Wertz. A.E., Elsner. C. , Wynn, K & Keil, F.C. (2017). Categories and constraints in causal perception, Psychological Science, 28, 1649-1662. View
Noyes, A., & Keil, F. C. (2017). Revising deference: Intuitive beliefs about category structure constrain expert deference. Journal of Memory and Language, 95, 68-77. View
Strickland, B., Silver, I. & Keil, F.C. (2017). The texture of causal construals: Domain specific biases shape causal inference from discourse, Memory & Cognition, 45, 442–455 View
Johnston, A. M., Johnson, S. G. B., Koven, M. L., & Keil, F. (2017). Little Bayesians or little Einsteins? Probability and explanatory virtue in children’s inferences. Developmental Science. View
Ahl, R.E. & Keil, F.C. (2017). Diverse Effects, Complex Causes: Children Use Information About Machines’ Functional Diversity to Infer Internal Complexity. Child Development.88, 828-845. View
Lockhart, K. L., Goddu, M. K., & Keil, F.C. (2017). Overoptimism about Future Knowledge: Early Arrogance? Positive Psychology, 12, 36-46. View
Trouche, E., Chuey, A., Lockhart, K. L., & Keil, F. C. (2017). Why Teach How Things Work? Tracking the Evolution of Children’s Intuitions about Complexity. . In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp, 3368-3373)Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society
Fisher, M., Knobe, J., Strickland, B., & Keil, F.C. (2017). The influence of social interaction on intuitions of objectivity and subjectivity. Cognitive Science, 41, 1119-1134.View
Fisher, M., & Keil, F.C. (2016). The trajectory of argumentation and its multifaceted functions. In F. Paglieri (Ed.), The Psychology of Argument: Cognitive Approaches to Argumentation and Persuasion. London: College Publications.
Lockhart, K. L., Goddu, M. K., Smith, E. & Keil, F.C. (2016). What Could You Really Learn on Your Own?: Understanding the Epistemic Limitations of Knowledge Acquisition. Child Development.87, 477-493. View
Firestone, C. & Keil, F.C. (2016). Seeing the tipping point: Balance perception and visual shape. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(7), 872-881. View
Johnson, S.G.B, Rajeev-Kumar, G., & Keil F.C. (2016). Sense-making under ignorance. Cognitive Psychology, 89, 39-70. View
Kominsky, J., Langthorne, P. & Keil, F.C. (2016) The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance. Developmental Psychology, 42, 31-45. View
Banerjee, K., Kominsky, J., Fernando, M. & Keil, F.C (2015). Figuring Out Function: Children’s and Adults’ Use of Ownership Information in Judgments of Artifact Function. Developmental Psychology, 51, 1791–1801 View
Fisher, M. & Keil, F.C. (2016). The curse of expertise: When more knowledge leads to miscalibrated explanatory insight. Cognitive Science.,40,1251-1269 View
Fisher, M., Goddu, M.K., & Keil, F.C. (2015). Searching for explanations: How the Internet inflates estimates of internal knowledge. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 674–687. View
Edwards, B. J., Burnett, R.C., & Keil, F.C. (2015) Effects of causal structure on decisions about where to intervene on causal systems. Cognitive Science, 39, 1912–1924. View
Keil, F. C. & Kominsky, J. (2015). Grounding Concepts, pp. 677-692 in E. Margolis and S. Laurence (eds.) The Conceptual Mind: New Directions in the Study of Concepts, Cambridge, MIT Press.
Keil, F.C. & Newman, G. (2015). Order, Order Everywhere, and Only an Agent to Think: The Cognitive Compulsion to Infer Intentional Agents. Mind and Language, 30, 117-139. View
Keil, F.C. (2015). Developmental Insights into Mature Cognition. Cognition, 135, 10-13. View
Strickland, B., Fisher, M., Keil, F.C. & Knobe, J. (2014). Syntax and intentionality: An automatic link between language and theory-of-mind. Cognition 133, 249-261. View
Kominsky, J. & Keil, F. C. (2014). Overestimation of knowledge about word meanings: The “misplaced meaning” effect. Cognitive Science,38, 1604-1633. View
Johnson, S. G. B. & Keil, F.C. (2014). Causal inference and the hierarchical structure of experience. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 2223-2241. View
Keil, F. C. (2014). Developing dimensions of deference: the cognitive and social underpinnings of trust in testimony and its development. pp. 138-150 In. E J. Robinson & Shiri Einav (eds). Trust and Skepticism: Children’s Selective Learning from Testimony, Oxford, Psychology Press
Rottman, B.M., Kominsky, J. & Keil, F.C. (2014). Children Use Temporal Cues to Learn Causal Directionality. Cognitive Science 38, 489-513. View
Fisher, M. & Keil, F. C. (2014). The Illusion of Argument Justification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 425-433. View
Keil, F. C. (2013). The Roots of Folk Biology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 15857-8. View
Lockhart, K. L., Keil, F.C. & Aw, J. (2013). A Bias for the Natural? Children’s Beliefs about Traits Acquired through Effort, Bribes or Medicine. Developmental Psychology, 49, 1669-1682. View
Lyons, D. E. & Keil, F. C. (2013). Overimitation and the Development of Causal Understanding. In S. Gelman & M. Banaji (eds). The Development of Social Cognition, Oxford University Press: Oxford. Pp. 145-149.
Keil, F. C. & Kominksy, J. (2013) Missing Links in Middle School: Developing Use of Disciplinary Relatedness in Evaluating Internet Search Results. PloS one, 8(6), e67777. View
Keil, F.C. (2012). Running on empty? How folk science gets by with less. Current Directions in Psychology, 21, 329-334. View
Noles, N. S., Keil, F. C., Bloom, P., & Gelman, S. A. (2012). Children’s and Adults’ Intuitions about Who Can Own Things. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 12, 265-286. View
Choe, K. S., Keil, F.C. & Bloom, P. (2012). Developing Intuitions about How Personal and Social Properties are Linked to the Brain and the Body, Infant and Child Development, 21, 430–441. View
Rottman, B.M., & Keil, F.C. (2012). Causal Structure Learning over Time: Observations and Interventions. Cognitive Psychology, 64, 93–125. View
Keil, F.C. (2012). Does folk science develop? In S. Carver & J. Shrager (Eds.), The journey from child to scientist: Integrating cognitive development and the education sciences. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.pp. 67-86. View
Keil, F. C. (2011). The Problem of Partial Understanding. Current Trends in LSP Research: Aims and Methods Series: Linguistic Insights - 144, 251-276. View
Keil, F.C. (2011). Science Starts Early. Science, 331, 1022-1023. View
Strickland, B. & Keil, F. C. (2011). Event Completion: Event Based Inferences Distort Memory in a Matter of Seconds. Cognition, 121, 409-415. View
Rottman, B.M., & Keil, F.C. (2011). What matters in scientific explanations: Effects of elaboration and content. Cognition, 121, 324-37. View
Lyons, D.E., Damrosch, D., Lin, J.K., Simeone, D.M., & Keil, F.C. (2011). The scope and limits of overimitation in the transmission of artefact culture. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366, 1158-1167. View
Rottman, B. B., & Keil, F. C. (2011). Learning causal direction from repeated observations over time. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 1847-1852). View
Rottman, B. B., & Keil, F. C. (2011). Which parts of scientific explanations are most important? In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 378-383). View
Noles, N. & Keil, F.C. (2011). Exploring ownership in a developmental context. In H. S. Ross & O. Friedman (eds.) The Developmental Origins of Ownership of Property- New Directions for Child & Adolescent Development, 132, 91-103. View
Keil, F. C. (2011) The Hidden Strengths of Weak Theories. Anthropology and Philosophy, 10,59-80. (Special Issue on Concept Formation Edited by Mariano L. Bianca and Paolo Piccari 2009/2010). View
Keil, F.C. (2011). Graceful degradation and conceptual development. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34, 133-4. View
Keil, F. C. (2010). When And Why Do Hedgehogs And Foxes Differ? Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, 22, 415-426. View
Keil, F.C. (2010). Conceptual Development and Change. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences, 197-199, Cambridge Univ. Press.
Newman, G.E., Keil, F.C., Kuhlmeier, V., & Wynn, K. (2010). Sensitivity to Design: Early Understandings of the Link between Agents and Order. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107, 17140-17145. View
Keil, F.C. (2010). The Feasibility of Folk Science. Cognitive Science, 34, 826-862. View
Rottman, B. M., & Keil, F. C. (2010). Connecting causal events: Learning causal structures through repeated interventions over time. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 907-912. View
Keil, F.C. (2010). Hybrid Vigor and Conceptual Structure. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 215-216. View
Keil, F.C., and Newman, G.E. (2010). Darwin and Development: Why Ontogeny Does Not Recapitulate Phylogeny for Human Concepts. In: D. Mareschal, P. Quin, & S. Lea (eds.). The Making of Human Concepts (pp. 313-334). Oxford: Oxford University Press. View
Newman, G.E., Lockhart, K.L., & Keil, F.C. (2010). “End-of-life” Biases in Moral Evaluations of Others. Cognition, 115, 343-349. View
Keil, F.C., Lockhart, K.L., & Schlegel, E. (2010). A Bump on a Bump?: Emerging Intuitions Concerning The Relative Difficulty of the Sciences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139, 1-15. View
Erickson, J.E. Keil, F.C. & Lockhart, K.L. (2010). Sensing the coherence of biology in contrast to psychology: Young children’s use of causal relations to distinguish two foundational domains. Child Development, 81, 390-409. View
Edwards, B.J., Burnett, R.C. & Keil, F.C. (2008). Structural Determinants of Interventions on Causal Systems.Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2008. View
Mills, C.M., & Keil, F.C. (2008). Children’s developing notions of (im)partiality. Cognition, 107, 528-551. View
Baum, L.A., Danovitch, J.H., & Keil, F.C. (2008). Children’s sensitivity to circular explanations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 100, 146-155. View
Keil, F.C., & Newman, G. (2008). Two tales of conceptual change: what changes and what remains the same. In S. Vosniadou (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change, Earlbaum, 83-101. View
Newman, G., & Keil, F.C. (2008). ‘Where’s the Essence?’: Developmental Shifts in Children’s Beliefs About Internal Features. Child Development, 79, 1344-1356. View
Marcus, G., & Keil, F.C. (2008). Concepts, correlations, and some challenges for connectionist cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 722-723. View
Keil, F.C. (2008). Adapted Minds and Evolved Schools. Educational Psychologist, 43, 196-202. View
Keil, F.C. (2008). Getting to the Truth: Grounding Incomplete Knowledge. Brooklyn Law Review, 73 (3),1035-1052. View
Calabretta, R., Ferdinando, A.F., Parisi, D., & Keil, F.C. (2008). How to learn multiple tasks. Biological Theory, 3, 30-41. View
Keil, F.C. (2008). Space—The Primal Frontier? Spatial Cognition and the Origins of Concepts. Philosophical Psychology, 21(2), 241–250. View
Newman, G., Herrmann, P., Wynn, K., & Keil, F.C. (2008). Biases towards internal features in infants’ reasoning about objects. Cognition, 107, 420–432. View
Weisberg, D.S., Keil, F.C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477. View
Keil, F.C., Stein, C., Webb, L., Billings, V.D., & Rozenblit, L. (2008). Discerning the Division of Cognitive Labor: An Emerging Understanding of How Knowledge is Clustered in Other Minds. Cognitive Science, 32(2), 259-300. View
Lockhart, K.L., Nakashima, N., Inagaki, K., & Keil, F.C. (2008). From Ugly Duckling to Swan? Japanese and American Beliefs about the Stability and Origins of Traits. Cognitive Development, 23, 155-179. View
Keil, F.C. (2008). The Shape of Things to Come. Developmental Science, 11(2), 216-222. View
Danovitch, J.H., & Keil, F.C. (2008). Young Humeans: The role of emotions in children’s evaluation of moral reasoning abilities. Developmental Science, 11, 33-39. View
Lyons, D.E., Young, A.G., & Keil, F.C. (2007). The Hidden Structure of Overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 19751-19756. View Research Website
Keil, F.C., Greif, M.A., & Kerner, R.S. (2007). A World Apart: How concepts of the constructed world are different in representation and in development. In E. Margolis & S. Laurence (Eds.), Creations of the Mind: Essays on Artifacts and their Representation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. View
Keil, F.C. (2007). Biology and Beyond: Domain Specificity in a Broader Developmental Context. Human Development, 50(1), 31-38. View
Danovitch, J.H., & Keil, F.C. (2007). Choosing between hearts and minds: Children’s understanding of moral advisors. Cognitive Development, 22(1), 110-123. View
Keil, F.C. (2006). How Children Grasp the Causal Structure of the World. Proceedings of the 28th International Congress of Psychology. Hove, U.K.: Psychology Press.
Keil, F.C. (2006). Cognitive Science and Cognitive Development. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Series Eds.) & D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler (Vol. Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol 2: Cognition, perception, and language (6th ed.). New York: Wiley.
Greif, M., Kemler-Nelson, D., Keil, F.C. and Guiterrez, F. (2006). What do children want to know about animals and artifacts?: Domain-specific requests for information. Psychological Science, 17(6), 455-459. View
Keil, F.C., Lockhart, K.L., Keil, D.C., Keil, D.R. & Keil, M.F. (2006). Looking for Mr. Smarty Pants: Intelligence and Expertise in The Simpsons. In A. Brown and C. Logan (Eds.), D’Oh The Psychology of the Simpsons. Dallas, Texas: BenBella Books.
Lyons, D. E., Santos, L.R. & Keil, F.C. (2006). Reflections of other minds: how primate social cognition can inform the function of mirror neurons. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 16(2), 230-239.View
Keil, F.C. (2006). Patterns of Knowledge Growth and Decline. In E. Bialystok & F.I.M. Craik (Eds.),Lifespan cognition: Mechanisms of change. NY: Oxford University Press.
Keil, F.C. (2006). Explanation and Understanding. Annual Review of Psychology. 57, 227-254.View
Keil, F.C. (2006). Doubt, Deference and Deliberation. In J. Hawthorne and T. Gendler (Eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. View
Keil, F.C. (2005). Knowledge, categorization and the bliss of ignorance. In L. Gershkoff-Stowe, and D. Rakison (Eds.), Building object categories in developmental time ( pp.309-334). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. View
Keil, F.C. (2005). Exploring Boundary Conditions on the Structure of Knowledge: Some Nonobvious Influencees of Philosopy on Psychology. In D.S. Oderberg (Ed.), The Old New Logic: Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers (pp. 67-84). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. View
Keil, F.C. (2005). The Cradle of Categorization: Supporting Fragile Internal Knowledge Through Commerce with Culture and the World. In W.K. Ahn, R.L. Goldstone, B.C. Love, A. Markman, and P. Wolff (Eds.),Categorization Inside and Outside the Laboratory: Essays in Honor of Doug Medin (pp. 289-302). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association. View
Choe, K., Keil, F.C., Bloom, P. (2005). Children’s Understanding of the Ulysses Conflict. Developmental Science, 8(5), 387-392. View
Mills, C. and Keil, F.C. (2005). The Development of Cynicism. Psychological Science, 16, 385-390. (Editors’ Choice selection in Science, 5/13/05) View
Danovitch, J. and Keil, F.C. (2004). Should you ask a fisherman or a biologist?: Developmental Shifts in Ways of Clustering Knowledge. Child Development, 75, 918-931. View
Keil, F.C., Rozenblit, L.R. and Mills, C. (2004). What lies beneath? Understanding the limits of understanding. In D.T. Levin (Ed.), Thinking and Seeing: Visual Metacognition in Adults and Children. Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Mills, C. and Keil, F.C. (2004). Knowing the limits of one’s understanding: The development of an awareness of an illusion of explanatory depth. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 87, 1-32. View
Keil, F.C. (2004). Review of Pinker’s The Blank Slate. Language, 80, 859-862. View
Keil, F.C. (2003). Categorization, Causation and the Limits of Understanding. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18, 663-692. View
Keil, F.C. (2003). That’s Life: Coming to Understand Biology. Human Development, 46, 369-377. View
Keil, F.C. (2003). Categories, Cognitive Development and Cognitive Science. In D. H. Rakison & L. M. Oakes (Eds.), Early category and concept development: Making sense of the blooming buzzing confusion (pp. vi-xi). New York: Oxford University Press. View
Keil, F.C. (2003). Folkscience: Coarse interpretations of a complex reality. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 368-373. View
Kim, N.S. and Keil, F.C. (2003). From symptoms to causes: Diversity effects in Causal Reasoning. Memory and Cognition, 31, 155-165. View
Keil, F.C., Kim, N.S. & Greif, M.L. (2002). Categories and Levels of Information. In E. Forde and G. Humphreys (Eds.), Category-Specificity in Brain and Mind (pp.375-401). Psychology Press. View
Lutz, D.R. and Keil, F.C. (2002). Early Understanding of the Division of Cognitive Labor. Child Development, 73, 1073-1084. View
Rozenblit, L.R. and Keil, F.C. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26, 521-562. View
Levin, D.T., Takarae, Y., Miner, A., & Keil, F.C. (2001). Efficient visual search by category: Specifying the features that mark the difference between artifacts and animals in preattentive vision. Perception and Psychophysics, 63, 676-697. View
Keil, F.C. (2001). Good Intentions and Bad Words. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 1110-1111. View
Keil, F.C. (2001). The Scope of the Cognitive Sciences. Artificial Intelligence, 130, 217-221. View
Bloom, P. & Keil, F.C. (2001). Thinking through language. Mind and Language, 16, 351- 367. View
Keil, F.C. (2000). The Origins of Developmental Psychology. Journal of Cognition and Development, 1, 347-357. View
Yamamoto, K. & Keil, F.C. (2000). The acquisition of Japanese numerical classifiers - Linkages between grammatical forms and conceptual categories. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 9, 379-409. View
Keil, F.C. (2000). Nurturing Nativism, review of Cowie’s What’s Within. A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. View
Keil, F.C. & Wilson, R.A. (2000). Explaining Explanation. In F.C. Keil and R.A. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and Cognition (pp.1-18). Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Johnson, C. & Keil, F.C. (2000). Explanatory Knowledge and Conceptual Combination. In F.C. Keil and R.A. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and Cognition (pp.327-359). Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Keil, F.C. & Wilson, R.A. (2000). The Concept Concept: The Wayward Path of Cognitive Science, Review of Fodor’s Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. Mind and Language, 15, 308-318. View
Johnson, C. & Keil, F.C. (2000). Theoretical Centrality vs Typicality in Conceptual Combinations, In F.C. Keil and R.A. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and Cognition (pp. 327-360). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Keil, F.C. (1999). Developmental Mythology (review of Kagan’s Three Seductive Ideas). Contemporary Psychology, 44, 547-549.
Keil, F.C. (1999). Cognition, Content and Development. In M. Bennett (Ed.), Developmental Psychology: Prospects & Achievements (pp. 165-184). London: Psychology Press. View
Keil, F.C. , Levin, D., Gutheil, G. and Richman, B. (1999). Explanation, cause and mechanism: The case of contagion. In D. Medin & S. Atran (Eds.), Folkbiology (pp. 285-320). Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Keil, F.C. & Lockhart, K.L. (1999). Getting a grip on reality. In E. Winograd, R. Fivush and W. Hirst (Eds.),Ecological Approaches to Cognition: Essays in Honor of Ulric Neisser. Hillsdale, N.J.: Earlbaum. View
Keil, F. C. (1999). Nativism. In R. Wilson & F. Keil (Eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Keil, F. C. (1999). Conceptual Change. In R. Wilson & F. Keil (Eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Keil, F.C. and Richardson, D. (1999). Species, Stuff, and Patterns of Causation. In R.A. Wilson (Ed.),Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (pp. 263-282). Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Keil, F.C. and Lockhart, K.L. (1999). Explanatory Understanding in Conceptual Development. In E.K Scholnick, K. Nelson, S. A. Gelman, & P.H. Miller (Eds.), Conceptual Development: Piaget’s Legacy.Hillsdale, N.J.: Earlbaum. View
Eichenbaum, H.B., Cahill, L.F., Gluck, M.A., Hasselmo, M.E., Keil, F.C. , Martin, A.J., McGaugh, J.L., Murre, J., Myers, C., Petrides, M., Roozendaal, B., Schacter, D. L., Simons, D. J., Smith, W.C., and Williams, C.L. (1999). Learning and memory: Systems analysis. In M.J. Zigmond, F. E. Bloom, S. C. Landis, J. L. Roberts, and L. R. Squire (Eds.), Fundamental Neuroscience (ch. 56). San Diego: Academic Press. View
Keil, F. C. & Gutheil, G. (1998). Cognitive Development. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge.
Fitneva, S. & Keil, F. (1998). The epistemic content of evidentiality: How children use grammar to evaluate the reliability of information. In A. Greenhill, M. Hughes, H. Littlefield & H. Walsh (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vols. 1-2, pp. 213-223). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Yamamoto, K. and Keil, F.C. (1998). The Acquisition of Japanese Numeral Classifiers (Linkage between Grammatical Forms and Conceptual Categories). Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erbaum Associates.
Keil, F.C. (1998). Words, moms, and things: Language as a Road Map to Reality. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 63(1), 152-158. View
Gutheil, G., Vera, A. and Keil, F.C. (1998). Do houseflies think?: Patterns of induction and biological beliefs in development. Cognition, 66, 33-49. View
Wilson, R.A. and Keil, F.C. (1998). The shadows and shallows of explanation. Minds and Machines, 8, 137-159. Reprinted in revised form: Wilson, R.A. and Keil, F.C. (2000). In F.C. Keil and R.A. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and Cognition. Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Keil, F.C. and Wilson, R.A. (1998). Cognition and explanation. Minds and Machines, 8, 1-5. View
Keil, F.C, Smith, C.S., Simons, D. and Levin, D. (1998). Two dogmas of conceptual empircism. Cognition,65, 103-135. View
Keil, F.C. (1998). Cognitive Science and the origins of thought and knowledge. In R.M. Lerner (Ed.),Theoretical models of human development. Volume 1 of the Handbook of Child Psychology (5th. ed), Editor-in-Chief: William Damon. New York: Wiley.
Keil, F.C. (1998). The most basic units of thought do more, and less, than point. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21, 75-76.
Ram, A., Nersessian N.J., Keil F.C. (1997). Conceptual change. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6(1), 1-2.
Keil, F.C. (1997). Review of H. Roitblat and J. Meyer (Ed.) “Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Science”.Quarterly Review of Biology, 72, 110-111. View
Levin, D. T., Miner, A.G., & Keil, F.C. (1997). Understanding the perceptual information that drives visual search for kind. Investigative Opthamology & Visual Science, 38, 365.
Barrett, J. L. and Keil, F.C. (1996). Conceptualizing a non-natural entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts. Cognitive Psychology, 31, 219-247. View
Keil, F.C and Silberstein, C. S (1996). Schooling and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. In D.R. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.), The Handbook of Education and Human Development: New Models of Learning, Teaching and Schooling (pp. 621-645). Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.. View
Yamamoto, K. & Keil, F. C. (1996). Acquisition of Japanese Numerical Classifiers. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes, and A. Zukowski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Beale, J.M. and Keil, F.C. (1995). Categorical effects in the perception of faces. Cognition, 57, 217-239. View
Beale, J.M. and Keil, F.C. (1995). Categorical perception as an acquired phenomenon: What are the implications?. In L.S. Smith and P.J.B. Hancock (Eds.), Neural Computation and Psychology. London: Springer. View
Keil, F.C. (1995). The Growth of Causal Understandings of Natural Kinds: Modes of Construal and the Emergence of Biological Thought. In. A. Premack and D. Sperber (Eds.), Causal Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. View
Simons, D. and Keil, F.C. (1995). An abstract to concrete shift in the development of biological thought: theinsides story. Cognition, 56, 129-163. View
Keil, F.C. (1994). Explanation Based Constraints on the Acquisition of Word Meaning. Lingua, 92, 169-196. Reprinted: Keil, F.C. (1994). Explanation Based Constraints on the Acquisition of Word Meaning. In L. Gleitman and B. Landau (Eds.), The Acquisition of the Lexicon (pp. 169-196). Cambridge: MIT Press. View
Keil, F.C. (1994). The birth and nurturance of concepts by domains: The origins of concepts of living things. In L. A. Hirschfeld and S. A. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. View
Keil, F. C. (1993). Conceptual Change and Other Varieties of Cognitive Development. Proceedings of the 15th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 4. Hilldale, N.J.: Earlbaum.
Keil, F.C. (1992). The Origins of an Autonomous Biology. In M. Gunnar and M. Maratsos (Eds.), Modularity and Constraints in Language and Cognition: The Minnesota Symposia. Hilldale, N.J.: Earlbaum. View
Keil, F.C.(1991). Godzilla vs. Mothra and the Sydney Opera House: Boundary conditions on functional architecture in infant visual perception and beyond. Mind and Language, 6, 239-251. View
Keil, F.C.(1991). On being more than the sum of the parts: The Conceptual Coherence of Cognitive Science.Psychological Science, 2, 283-293. View
Keil, F.C. (1991). Theories, concepts, and the acquisition of word meaning. In J. P. Byrnes and S.A. Gelman (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and Cognition: Interrelations in Development (pp. 197-224). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. View
Springer, K. and Keil, F.C. (1991). Early differentiation of causal mechanisms appropriate to biological and nonbiological kinds. Child Development, 62, 767-781. View
Keil, F.C. (1991). The Emergence of Theoretical Beliefs as Constraints on Concepts. In S. Carey and R. Gelman (Eds.), The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition (pp. 237-256). Earlbaum. View
Keil, F. C. (1991). Intuitive belief systems and informal reasoning in cognitive development. In J. F. Voss, D. N. Perkins and J. Segal (Eds.), Informal reasoning and education (pp. 247-263). Earlbaum. View
Keil, F. C. (1991). Review of Markman’s Categorization and Naming in Children. Human Development.
Gallistel, C.R., Brown, A.L., Carey, S., Gelman, R. and Keil, F.C.(1991). Lessons from animal learning for the study of cognitive development. In S. Carey and R. Gelman (Eds.), The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition (pp. 3-36). Earlbaum. View
Keil, F. C. (1990). Constraints on the acquisition and representation of knowledge. In M. Eysenck (Ed.),Cognitive Psychology An International Review (pp. 197-219). Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press. View
Kelly, M.H., Springer, K., and Keil, F.C. (1990). The relation between syllable number and visual complexity in the acquisition of word meanings. Memory and Cognition, 18, 528-536. View
Keil, F. C. (1990). Constraints on constraints: Surveying the Epigenetic Landscape. Cognitive Science, 14,135-168. View
Keil, F. C. (1989). Spiders in the web of belief: The tangled relations between concepts and theories. Mind and language, 4, 43-50. View
Springer, K., & Keil, F. C. (1989). On the development of biologically specific beliefs: The case of inheritance. Child Development, 60, 637-648. View
Keil, F. C. (1988). Entre vista a Frank Keil. Cognitiva, 1(2), 213-222. (Translation of written interview by H. Peraita on concepts, word meanings, and cognitive development.)
Keil, F. C. (1988). Conceptual heterogeneity vs. developmental homogeneity (on chairs and bears and other such pairs). Human Development, 31(1), 35-43. View
Keil, F. C. (1987). Conceptual Development and Category Structure. In U. Neisser (Ed.), Concepts and Conceptual Development: The ecological and intellectual factors in categorization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. View
Keil, F. C. (1987). But what are they thinking about? Review of R. Siegler’s Children’s Thinking.Contemporary Psychology, 32(7), 618-619.
Keil, F. C., & Kelly, M. H. (1987). Developmental changes in category structure. In S. Harnad (Ed.),Categorical perception (pp. 491-510). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. View
Kelly, M. H. & Keil, F. C. (1987). Metaphor comprehension and knowledge of semantic domains. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 2, 33-51. View
Keil, F. C. (1986). Conceptual domains and the acquisition of metaphor. Cognitive Development, 1, 73-96. View
Keil, F. C. (1986). On the structure dependent nature of stages of cognitive development. In I. Levin (Ed.),Stage and Structure (pp. 144-163). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. View
Keil, F. C. (1986). The nonrepresentative nature of representational change: Some possible morals to draw from Nelson’s Making Sense. Cognitive Development, 1, 281-291. View
Keil, F. C. (1986). The acquisition of natural kind and artifact terms. In W. Demopoulos and A. Marras (Eds.),Language Learning and Concept Acquisition (pp. 133-153). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. View
Keil, F. C. & Kelly, M. H. (1986). Theories of constraints and constraints on theories. In W. Demopoulos and A. Marras (Eds.), Language Learning and Concept Acquisition (pp. 173-183). Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. View
Kelly, M. H., Bock, K. & Keil, F. C. (1986). Prototypicality in a linguistic context: Effects on sentence production and comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 59-74. View
Kelly, M. H. & Keil, F. C. (1985). The more things change… : Metamorphoses and conceptual structure.Cognitive Science, 9, 403-416. View
Keil, F. C. (1985). Review of R. Lerner, On the nature of human plasticity. American Scientist, 73, 488.
Keil, F. C. (1984). Gestalt semantics [Review of Jackendoff’s Semantics and Cognition]. Contemporary Psychology, 20 (12), 949-951.
Keil, F. C. (1984). Of Pidgins and Pigeons. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7.
Keil, F. C. (1984). Mechanisms in cognitive development and the structure of knowledge. In R. Sternberg (Ed.), Mechanisms of cognitive development (pp. 81-99). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. View
Keil, F. C. & Batterman, N. (1984). A characteristic-to-defining shift in the acquisition of word meaning.Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 221-236. View
Keil, F. C. (1983). On the emergence of semantic and conceptual distinctions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 112 (3), 357-389.
Keil, F. C. (1983). Semantic inferences and the acquisition of word meaning. In T. B. Seiler and W. Wannemacher (Eds.), Concept development and the development of word meaning. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. View
Keil, F. C. (1982). Intelligence and the rest of cognition. Intelligence, 6, 1-21. View
Krumhansl, C. L., & Keil, F. C. (1982). Acquisition of the hierarchy of tonal functions in music. Memory and Cognition, 10, 243-251. View
Keil, F. C. (1981). Children’s thinking: What never develops. Cognition, 10, 159-166. View
Keil, F. C. (1981). Natural categories and natural concepts. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4, 293-294.
Keil, F. C. (1981). Constraints on knowledge and cognitive development. Psychological Review, 88 (3), 197-227. (reprinted in Osherson, 1986) View
Keil, F. C. & Carroll, J. J. (1980). The child’s acquisition of “tall”: Implications for an alternative view of semantic development. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 19, 21-28. View
Keil, F. C. (1980). The development of the ability to perceive ambiguities; Evidence for the task specificity of a linguistic skill. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 9(3), 219-229. View
Keil, F. C. (1980). Reductionism and Cognitive Flexibility. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3 (1),141-142.
Keil, F. C. (1980). Language acquisition: An underrated achievement [Review of Out of the mouth of babes].Contemporary Psychology, 25, 845-846.
Keil, F. C. (1980). [Review of N. R. Smith and M. R. Franklin, Symbolic functioning in childhood]. Child development abstracts and bibliography, 54, 251-252.
Keil, F. C. (1979). The development of the young child’s ability to anticipate the outcomes of simple causal events. Child Development, 50, 455-462. View
Keil, F. C. (1979). [Review of M. Halle, J. Bresnan, and G. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality]. American Scientist, 67, 365-366.
Lytle, L. D., & Keil, F. C. (1974). Brain and peripheral monoamines: Possible role in the ontogenesis of normal and drug-induced responses in the immature mammal. In K. Fuxe, D. Olsen & Y. Zotterman (Eds.),Dynamics of regeneration and growth in neurons (pp. 575-591). New York: Pergamon Press.
Lytle, L. D., McGuire, R. A., Keil, F. C. & Becher, D. (1973). Amphetamine-induced thermic changes in developing rats. In E. Usdin and S. Snyder (eds.), Frontiers in Catecholamine Research (pp. 256-259). New York: Pergamon Press.