Abstract
Learning science requires contending with intuitions that are incompatible with scientific principles, such as the intuition that animals are alive but plants are not or the intuition that solids are composed of matter but gases are not. Here, we explore the tension between science and intuition in elementary school–aged children and whether that tension is moderated by children’s tendency to reflect on their intuitions. Our participants were children between the ages of 5 and 12 years (n = 142). They were administered a statement-verification task, in which they judged statements about life and matter as true or false, as well as a children’s Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT-D), in which they answered “brain teasers” designed to elicit an intuitive, yet inaccurate, response that could be corrected upon further reflection. Participants also received a tutorial on the scientific properties of life or matter, sandwiched between two blocks of the statement-verification task. We found that performance on the statement-verification task, which pitted scientific conceptions against intuitive conceptions (e.g., “cactuses are alive”), was predicted by performance on the CRT-D, independent of age. Children with higher levels of cognitive reflection verified scientific statements more accurately before the tutorial, and they made greater gains in accuracy following the tutorial. These results indicate that children experience conflict between scientific and intuitive conceptions of a domain in the earliest stages of acquiring scientific knowledge but can learn to resolve that conflict in favor of scientific conceptions, particularly if they are predisposed toward cognitive reflection.
Highlights
Our first theories of natural phenomena – intuitive theories – are often incompatible with the scientific theories we learn later in life
We analyzed each outcome with a linear mixed model (LMM), with statement type, test, instruction, and their interactions as fixed effects and by-participant and by-predicate random effects
We explored the potential effects of Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT)-D performance by estimating an LMM with statement type, test, instruction, CRT– Developmental Version (CRT-D), and their interactions as fixed effects and by-participant and bypredicate random effects
Summary
Our first theories of natural phenomena – intuitive theories – are often incompatible with the scientific theories we learn later in life They are developed by children from a combination of inputs, including innate biases, firsthand experience, and cultural teachings (Vosniadou, 1994; Carey, 2009; Shtulman, 2017), and they play the same inferential role as scientific theories, helping us explain past events, predict future events, and intervene on present events (Gopnik and Wellman, 2012). Preschoolers classify moving but non-living entities, such as the sun and the clouds, as alive and classify living but non-moving objects, such as plants and trees, as not alive These mistakes persist until children conceive of life as supported by the interrelated functions of internal organs, typically by age 10 years. Young children understand that organisms must eat and sleep in order to move and grow, but they lack the physioanatomical knowledge needed to conceive of them as bodily machines
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