RAPID: Collaborative Research: Designing an Educational Intervention to Address Intuitive Misconceptions about COVID-19

对新冠肺炎传播的误解可能导致不遵守预防性公共卫生建议。这个由波士顿大学和东北大学的研究人员领导的项目的第一个目标是了解这些生物学误解的更深层次的概念性本质。这项研究将探索这些想法是否是新冠肺炎特有的，或者它们是否反映了对生物现象进行推理的直观推理模式，以及它们在早期小学生中的普遍程度。这项研究的另一个重点将是照顾者和教师--他们是儿童的重要信息来源。之前由美国国家科学基金会资助的研究表明，对生物现象的误解在发育早期就会出现，并可能变得根深蒂固。因此，这项研究的第二个主要目标是快速设计和测试一项试点教育干预措施，以解决儿童和成年人对新冠肺炎的推理，并纳入有关生物传染背后的因果机制的更一般信息。这项干预将仿照研究人员早期的干预措施，使用动画叙事成功地向儿童和成年人教授复杂的生物学概念。这一快速奖励是由DRL的EHR核心研究(ECR)计划利用冠状病毒援助、救济和经济安全(CARE)法案的资金做出的。ECR支持推进STEM学习基础研究文献的工作。人类拥有强大的直觉、解释和推理倾向，为理解生物世界中的复杂现象提供了快速有效-但有时容易出错-的指导方针。之前由美国国家科学基金会资助的工作已经表明，这些倾向--例如，直观的目的论、本质论和以人类为中心的推理模式--如何很早就出现，并在所有年龄段作为生物信息学习的过滤器。有时这些直觉与正式的生物学推理是一致的，可以在课堂上被用来支持学习，但有时它们不是这样的，并导致整个发展过程中系统性的和根深蒂固的生物学误解。关于新冠肺炎的信息也不例外。在这个项目中，研究人员将：(1)在教师和一年级学生的照顾者中调查关于新冠肺炎传播和感染的原因机制的直觉推理--以及更普遍的关于疾病的推理；(2)对一年级到二年级学生本身进行平行调查；以及(3)基于从这些调查中收集到的证据，迅速设计和试点在新冠肺炎上针对小学生、照顾者和教师的认知知情教育干预措施。为了了解成人对新冠肺炎-以及更广泛的疾病-的推理对儿童的影响，该项目将开发儿童和成人版本的调查工具，其中包括：(A)关于新冠肺炎的因果关系、治疗和预防的开放式访谈；(B)危险行为检测任务，以评估关于常见行为风险的知识和信念；(C)因果知识评估，更广泛地询问疾病传播和感染的机制。这些措施将通过在线研究进行管理。从这些措施中获得的见解将很快被用于开发试点干预措施，该干预措施将使用动画叙事视频，支持儿童和成人对新冠肺炎及相关疾病传播和预防的机械性理解。前测和后测将决定本次试点干预的有效性，为今后的研究和干预奠定基础。这项研究将揭示儿童和成年人对新冠肺炎的理解，以及儿童的想法在多大程度上受到直觉解释倾向的影响，以及来自照顾者和教师的特定错误信息会加剧误解。它还将阐明认知知情的方法，教育成年人关于复杂的生物现象，作为解决与他们互动的儿童中的误解的一种方式。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Misconceptions about the transmission of COVID-19 can lead to noncompliance with preventive public health recommendations. The first goal of this project, led by researchers at Boston University and Northeastern University, is to understand the deeper conceptual nature of these biological misconceptions. The research will explore whether these ideas are specific to COVID-19 or whether they reflect intuitive reasoning patterns of reasoning about biological phenomena more generally, and how prevalent they are in early elementary school children. A further focus of this research will be on caregivers and teachers–adults who are important sources of information to children. Prior NSF-funded research has shown that misconceptions about biological phenomena emerge early in development and can become entrenched. Therefore, the second major goal of this research is the rapid design and testing of a pilot educational intervention that addresses children’s and adults’ reasoning about COVID-19 and also incorporates more general information about the causal mechanisms that underlie biological contagion. The intervention will be modeled on earlier interventions by the investigators that used animated narratives to teach complex biological concepts successfully to children and adults. This RAPID award is made by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program in DRL, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. ECR supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning.Humans possess powerful intuitive explanatory and inferential tendencies that provide fast and efficient – but sometimes fallible – guidelines for making sense of complex phenomena in the biological world. Prior NSF-funded work has shown how these tendencies–for example, intuitive teleological, essentialist, and anthropocentric modes of reasoning–emerge early and act as filters on the learning of biological information at all ages. Sometimes these intuitions are consistent with formal biological reasoning and can be leveraged in the classroom to support learning, but sometimes they are not and lead to systematic and entrenched biological misconceptions across development. Information about COVID-19 is no exception. In this project, the researchers will: (1) investigate intuitive reasoning about the causal mechanisms of COVID-19 transmission and infection–along with reasoning about illness more generally–among teachers and caregivers of 1st - 2nd grade students; (2) conduct parallel investigations with the 1st - 2nd grade students themselves; and (3) rapidly design and pilot test a cognitively-informed educational intervention on COVID-19, and related illnesses, for elementary children, caregivers, and teachers based on the evidence that will be gleaned from these investigations. In order to understand the influence on children of adults’ reasoning about COVID-19–and disease more generally–this project will develop child and adult versions of a survey instrument consisting of: (a) an open-ended interview on the causality, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19; (b) a risky behavior detection task to assess knowledge and beliefs about the risks of common behaviors; (c) a causal knowledge assessment that asks more generally about the mechanisms of illness transmission and infection. These measures will be administered via online research. Insights gained from these measures will be quickly used to develop a pilot intervention that will use an animated narrative video to supported children's and adults’ mechanistic understanding of COVID-19 and related disease transmission and prevention. Pre- and post-testing will determine the effectiveness of this pilot intervention and lay the foundation for future research and intervention. This research will shed light on children’s and adults’ understandings about COVID-19, and the degree to which children’s ideas are shaped by intuitive explanatory tendencies and that misconceptions can be exacerbated by specific misinformation from caregivers and teachers. It will also illuminate cognitively-informed ways to educate adults about complex biological phenomena as a way of addressing misconceptions in the children with whom they interact.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.