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

当前项目的长期目标是了解幼儿了解世界的动态过程。众所周知，孩子们会形成关于特征如何与花药相关的想法，例如物体的重量如何影响其浮力。这种形成信念的思维能力对于多种认知活动非常有益，包括感知、解决问题和推理。然而，人们对信念发展的过程还没有很好地理解，当教育者试图取代孩子的错误信念时，这一差距变得最为明显：纠正性反馈并不总是会导致概念上的改变。为了了解儿童信念产生及其变化的根本过程，首先有必要量化信念稳定性。当前的项目旨在利用已成功应用于理解生态系统的热力学思想来建立这样一种量化措施，称为优势。为了测试这种测量方法对认知系统的有效性，学龄前儿童参加了有关下沉物体的学习实验。对比两种不同的学习环境。在其中一个实验中，孩子们很可能只是从一次试验到下一次试验进行猜测。在另一种学习环境中，孩子们可能一开始会形成错误的信念（例如，重的东西下沉最快），然后通过反馈改变这种错误的信念。这种实验背景使得找到信念稳定性的转变点成为可能，这些转变点可以根据优势衡量标准的变化进行测试。认知发展和教育方面的研究早已确定了儿童在需要改变错误信念（例如对物理现象的信念）时所面临的斗争。这种对概念改变的抵制常常令人惊讶，特别是考虑到孩子有时会自发地改变信念，甚至根本没有任何干预。量化信念的稳定性将有助于更好地理解这种相互矛盾的结果。更重要的是，它可以更好地努力改变错误的信念。因此，制定一种信念稳定性的衡量标准可能会对科学教育产生变革，从而可以测试孩子最有可能进行概念改变的环境。虽然这只是理解儿童信仰本质的第一步，但该项目的结果可能为系统地理解儿童最好地了解世界的背景奠定基础。

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.