Abstract

The theory that children's development of strategies of science experimentation is a consequence of developments in their theory of mind was examined. Seventy-two children in Grades 1, 3, and 5 participated in 5 theory-of-mind tasks and 2 multivariate physics experiments. The students' ability to predict, explain, and affect the reasoning of an alter (i.e., a doll or cartoon character) was found to predict their performance in planning controlled experiments and in justifying their causal and noncausal inferences. Implications for developmental theory and science education are discussed.

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