The Role of Visual Representations in Children's Learning about Biological Variability

视觉表征在儿童学习生物变异性中的作用

• 批准号: 1760940
• 负责人: Martha Alibali
• 金额: $ 107.87万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1760940&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Role; Visual; Representations; Children; Learning

Biological variation is among the most important ideas in modern science. Variability among members of a species provides the foundation for theories of genetics, natural selection, and evolution. However, people typically underestimate the amount of variability that occurs within a species over the life span of animals and from one generation to the next. Children especially seem to have cognitive biases that members of a species are largely identical. To improve children's learning about biology, educators need better ways to scaffold children's understanding of biological variability. Diagrams and other visual representations are useful in promoting learning about biological variability, but diagrams can also be confusing. This project focuses on designing better visual representations of important types of variability, such as variability across life stages (e.g., in metamorphosis) and variability between parent and offspring (in genetic transmission). By studying how to make more effective visual representations, this project will inform efforts to improve science education, and will also provide information about the ways in which children's cognitive biases influence their scientific thinking more generally. This project is supported by an award to the University of Wisconsin by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning. To investigate how visual representations can be used to promote learning and transfer about biological variability, researchers in cognitive development and education will focus on two types of visual representations: life cycle diagrams and genetic diagrams. The research will investigate three key issues. First, 6- to 12-year-old children's beliefs about inheritance will be investigated to examine how strongly they expect consistency of traits from parent to offspring (i.e., in genetic transmission). Second, a series of studies will investigate how features of diagrams affect children's learning and transfer of knowledge about the life cycle and about genetic transmission. The studies will address whether highlighting generality, avoiding extraneous details, and highlighting variability in diagrams lead to optimal learning and transfer. To investigate these issues, lab-based experiments will be carried out that compare children's learning from visual representations that vary in targeted ways. The data analysis will address how children transfer their knowledge beyond the exemplars that are the focus of the learning tasks. Third, the results of Studies 1 and 2 will be used to inform the design of optimized diagrams, and the effects of these optimized diagrams on learning about biological change will be investigated during science workshops at a children's museum and during community-based science events using a pre-test - intervention - post-test design. This aspect of the research will also examine whether effective learning activities about within-species variability support children's reasoning about natural selection, evolution, and inheritance. The potential for broader impacts is substantial. Enabling children (and adults) to recognize different types of variability could have a significant impact on their biological thought and on the design of biology instruction. Better understanding of how specific visual features of diagrams contribute to or detract from science understanding may have important implications for the design and use of visual representations to convey scientific information in both formal and informal learning environments. This project also supports collaboration between science educators and researchers in cognitive development, providing training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students. Results will be shared with academic researchers, and with educators in formal and informal science learning environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

生物变异是现代科学中最重要的思想之一。物种成员间的变异为遗传学、自然选择和进化等理论提供了基础。然而，人们通常低估了一个物种在动物的一生中以及从一代到下一代之间发生的变异性。儿童似乎尤其有认知偏见，认为一个物种的成员在很大程度上是相同的。为了提高孩子们对生物学的学习，教育工作者需要更好的方法来支撑孩子们对生物多样性的理解。图表和其他可视化表示在促进对生物可变性的学习方面很有用，但图表也可能令人困惑。这个项目的重点是为重要的可变性类型设计更好的视觉表现，例如生命阶段的可变性（例如，在变态中）和父母与后代之间的可变性（在遗传传递中）。通过研究如何制作更有效的视觉表现，这个项目将为改进科学教育的努力提供信息，也将提供关于儿童认知偏见如何更普遍地影响他们的科学思维的信息。该项目得到了威斯康星大学EHR核心研究（ECR）项目的支持，该项目支持推进STEM学习基础研究文献的工作。为了研究视觉表征如何用于促进生物变异性的学习和迁移，认知发展和教育领域的研究人员将重点关注两种类型的视觉表征：生命周期图和遗传图。该研究将调查三个关键问题。首先，研究人员将调查6至12岁儿童对遗传的信念，以检验他们对父母与后代（即遗传传递）特征一致性的期望有多强烈。其次，一系列研究将探讨图表的特征如何影响儿童关于生命周期和遗传传递的知识的学习和转移。这些研究将讨论是否强调一般性，避免无关的细节，以及强调图表中的可变性会导致最佳的学习和迁移。为了研究这些问题，我们将开展基于实验室的实验，比较儿童从不同方式的视觉表征中学习的情况。数据分析将讨论儿童如何将他们的知识转移到作为学习任务重点的范例之外。第三，研究1和2的结果将用于优化图表的设计，并将在儿童博物馆的科学研讨会和社区科学活动中使用前测-干预-后测设计来调查这些优化图表对生物变化学习的影响。这方面的研究还将检验关于物种内变异的有效学习活动是否支持儿童对自然选择、进化和遗传的推理。潜在的更广泛影响是巨大的。使儿童（和成人）认识到不同类型的可变性可以对他们的生物思想和生物教学的设计产生重大影响。更好地理解图表的具体视觉特征是如何促进或损害科学理解的，可能对在正式和非正式学习环境中设计和使用视觉表示来传达科学信息具有重要意义。该项目还支持科学教育工作者和研究人员在认知发展方面的合作，为研究生和本科生提供培训机会。结果将与学术研究人员以及正式和非正式科学学习环境中的教育工作者共享。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Do details bug you? Effects of perceptual richness in learning about biological change

• DOI: 10.1002/acp.3698
• 发表时间: 2020-06-21
• 期刊: APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
• 影响因子: 2.4
• 作者: Menendez, David;Rosengren, Karl S.;Alibali, Martha W.
• 通讯作者: Alibali, Martha W.

Like mother, like daughter: Adults’ judgments about genetic inheritance.

有其母必有其女：成年人对基因遗传的判断。

• DOI: 10.1037/xap0000436
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied
• 作者: Menendez, David;Mathiaparanam, Olympia N.;Seitz, Vienne;Liu, David;Donovan, Andrea Marquardt;Kalish, Charles W.;Alibali, Martha W.;Rosengren, Karl S.
• 通讯作者: Rosengren, Karl S.