Omni Brain

These may not be exactly what you're looking for, but they're sure interesting...

Here's one: "Separate bodies of research suggest that young children have a broad tendency to reason about natural phenomena in terms of purpose and an orientation toward intention-based accounts of the origins of natural entities. This article explores these results further by drawing together recent findings from various areas of cognitive developmental research to address the following question: Rather than being �artificialists� in Piagetian terms, are children �intuitive theists��disposed to view natural phenomena as resulting from nonhuman design? A review of research on children's concepts of agency, imaginary companions, and understanding of artifacts suggests that by the time children are around 5 years of age, this description of them may have explanatory value and practical relevance."

Also check this one
"Teleological-functional explanations account for objects by reference to their purpose. They are a fundamental aspect of adults' explanatory repertoire. They also play a significant role in children's reasoning although prior findings indicate that, in contrast to adults, young children broadly extend teleological explanation beyond artifacts (e.g. chairs) and biological properties (e.g. eyes) to the properties of non-living natural phenomena (e.g. clouds, rocks). The present study extends earlier work with American children to explore British children's application of teleological explanation. The motivation is that while Britain and America are, culturally, as close to a minimal pair as the global context affords, there are differences in the religiosity of the two nations such that British children might be less inclined to endorse purpose-based explanation. Results reveal that young British children also possess a promiscuous teleology although they differ in the kinds of purposes that they attribute. Additional findings include a replication of earlier effects using a modified task with young American children."

And finally this one
"Two separate bodies of research suggest that young children have (a) a broad tendency to reason about natural phenomena in terms of a purpose (e.g., Kelemen, 1999c) and (b) an orientation toward "creationist" accounts of natural entity origins whether or not they come from fundamentalist religious backgrounds (e.g., Evans, 2001). This study extends this prior work to examine whether children's purpose-based reasoning about nature is actively related to their intelligent design reasoning in any systematic fashion. British elementary school children responded to 3 tasks probing their intuitions about purpose and intelligent design in context of their reasoning about the origins of natural phenomena. Results indicated that young children are prone to generating artifact-like teleo-functional explanations of living and nonliving natural entities and endorsing intelligent design as the source of animals and artifacts. They also reveal that children's teleo-functional and intelligent design intuitions about natural phenomena are interconnected."

Posted by: Chris Chatham | January 4, 2007 3:46 PM

I would say to do a google search using the words "stupid" and "magic", but I don't want to start another Flame war between Ed, and PZ with Dr. Dawkins and us caught in the middle.

Posted by: J-Dog | January 4, 2007 3:54 PM

We posted on a study on this topic not long ago:

When you die, do you know you're dead?

Posted by: Dave Munger | January 4, 2007 4:09 PM

Kelemen, D. (1999a). The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children. Cognition, 70, 241-272. 36.

Kelemen, D. (1999b). Beliefs about purpose: On the origins of teleological thought. In M. Corballis, & S. Lea (Eds.), The descent of mind: Psychological perspectives on hominid evolution (pp. 278-294). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kelemen, D. (1999c). Why are rocks pointy? Children's preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1440-1453.

Kelemen, D., & DiYanni, C. (2005). Intuitions about origins: Purpose and intelligent design in children's reasoning about nature. Journal of Cognition and Development, 6(1), 3-31.

Here's a nice review of work on children's acceptance of testimony in spiritual and scientific domains:

Harris, P.L., Pasquini, E.S., Duke, S., Asscher, J.J., & Pons, F. (2006). Germs and angels: The role of testimony in young children's ontology. Developmental Science, 9(1), 76�96.

Margaret Evans has been doing some cool work on beliefs about creationism and evolution in development, along with other religion and religious-related beliefs. Here are some of her refs:

Evans, E. M. (2001). Cognitive and contextual factors in the emergence of diverse belief systems: Creation versus evolution. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 217-266.

Poling, D. A., & Evans, E. M. (2002). Why do birds of a feather flock together? Developmental change in the use of multiple explanations: Intention, teleology, essentialism. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20, 89-112.

Or if you're lazy, you can check out Paul Bloom's Descartes' Baby. Atran also talks a little bit about development in his work on religion (In Gods We Trust, for eample).

Posted by: Chris | January 4, 2007 4:11 PM

Help you find Google Scholar?

Archives of General Psychiatry
Vol. 38 No. 8, August 1981

Childhood sexual identity, childhood religiosity, and "homophobia" as influences in the development of transsexualism, homosexuality, and heterosexuality
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R. E. Hellman, R. Green, J. L. Gray and K. Williams
...

Law an Human Behavior
Adolescent Development and the Measurement of Juvenile Psychopathy
Daniel Seagrave and Thomas Grisso
...

Psychological theories of religious development: a Seventh-day Adventist perspective
Victor A. Korniejczuk

Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | January 4, 2007 4:21 PM

In experiments with children, Jesse Bering and David Bjorklund, have shown that smaller children believe more in the afterlife than older ones. News article (bottom third is where the meat is).

My reflections on this are here.

Cheers
/jorgen

Posted by: jorgen | January 4, 2007 4:27 PM