EAGER: Stability and Fluidity in Children's Learning of Physics Concepts

University Of Cincinnati Main Campus, Cincinnati OH

Investigators

Abstract

The long-term goal of the current project is to understand the dynamic process that allows young children to learn about the world. It is well established that children formulate ideas about how features relate to one anther, for example how the heaviness of an object affects its buoyancy. This ability of the mind--to form beliefs--is highly beneficial for multiple cognitive activities, including perception, problem solving, and reasoning. However, the process that underlies the development of beliefs is not well understood, a gap that becomes most apparent when an educator tries to replace a child's mistaken belief: corrective feedback does not always lead to conceptual change. In order to understand the underlying process that gives rise to a child's belief and its change, it is first necessary to quantify belief stability. The current project seeks to establish such a quantifying measure, referred to as ascendency, using ideas from thermodynamics that have been applied successfully to understanding eco-systems. To test the validity of this measure for a cognitive system, preschoolers participate in a learning experiment about sinking objects. Two different learning contexts are contrasted. In one of them, children are likely to merely make guesses from one trial to the next. And in the other learning context, children are likely to form mistaken beliefs at first (e.g., that heavy stuff sinks fastest) and then change such mistaken belief as a result of feedback. This experimental context makes it possible to find transition points of belief stability, transition points that can be tested against changes in the measure of ascendency. Research in cognitive development and education has long established the struggle children face when they are required to change a mistaken belief, for example a belief about a physical phenomenon. This resistance to conceptual change is often surprising, especially given that children sometimes spontaneously change a belief, even without any intervention at all. Quantifying the stability of a belief would make it possible to better understand such conflicting results. More importantly, it would make it possible to better time efforts to change a mistaken belief. Thus, developing a measure of belief stability could prove transformative to science education, making it possible to test the circumstances in which a child is most likely to engage in conceptual change. While only a first step towards understanding the nature of children's beliefs, the results of this project are likely to set the stage for a systematic understanding of the context in which children best learn about the world.