Inhibitory control and counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in adolescence.

Annie Brookman-Byrne,Iroise Dumontheil,Andrew K Tolmie,Denis Mareschal,Bert De Smedt

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0198973

Annie Brookman-Byrne, Iroise Dumontheil + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198973

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Abstract

Existing concepts can be a major barrier to learning new counterintuitive concepts that contradict pre-existing experience-based beliefs or misleading perceptual cues. When reasoning about counterintuitive concepts, inhibitory control is thought to enable the suppression of incorrect concepts. This study investigated the association between inhibitory control and counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in adolescents (N = 90, 11–15 years). Both response and semantic inhibition were associated with counterintuitive science and maths reasoning, when controlling for age, general cognitive ability, and performance in control science and maths trials. Better response inhibition was associated with longer reaction times in counterintuitive trials, while better semantic inhibition was associated with higher accuracy in counterintuitive trials. This novel finding suggests that different aspects of inhibitory control may offer unique contributions to counterintuitive reasoning during adolescence and provides further support for the hypothesis that inhibitory control plays a role in science and maths reasoning.

Highlights

The acquisition of abstract concepts reflecting an understanding of how elements in the world relate to one another underpins school-based learning of science and maths [1]
The current study aimed to investigate the association between inhibitory control and counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in 11- to 15-year-olds
In line with the design of this task, participants tended to give the correct answer in control trials, with a mean accuracy of 82.2% (Table 2), while they made more errors on misconception trials, where the mean accuracy was 54.7%

Summary

Introduction

The acquisition of abstract concepts reflecting an understanding of how elements in the world relate to one another underpins school-based learning of science and maths [1]. These abstract concepts go beyond what is immediately perceptually available, and sometimes go against prior experience, beliefs or perceptual evidence. While students used to be thought to learn new concepts through the replacement, reorganisation, or restructuring of previously held concepts [3,8], newer research suggests that

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Conclusion