THE ROLE OF CONGRUENCE IN CHILDREN?S BELIEFS ABOUT PHYSICS

一致性在儿童物理信念中的作用

• 批准号: 7668555
• 负责人: Heidi Kloos
• 金额: $ 7.8万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-05 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7668555
• 关键词: 5 year old; Address; Age; Area; Attention; Belief; Child; Child Development; Child Mental Health; Child health care; Classification; Cognition; Cognitive; Data; Development; Education; Educational Intervention; Evidence based intervention; Foundations; Goals; Health; Instruction; Intervention; Knowledge; Learning; Link; Nature; Outcome; Physics; Procedures; Research; Role; Science; Scientist; Tail; Testing; Time; Translational Research; Work; base; density; evidence base; improved; insight

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a fundamental gap in understanding how young children change the many mistaken beliefs they hold about every-day physical phenomena. The long-term goal then is to identify evidence-based instructional interventions to promote such change. However, before this goal can be attained, the basis of young children's intuitive physics needs to be unraveled. Recent findings suggest that children's beliefs are constrained by other beliefs they hold, in that children strive toward a congruent configuration among their beliefs. The objective of the present R03 application is to investigate the nature of this bias toward congruent beliefs. The central hypothesis is that children actively strive toward congruent beliefs about physical phenomena, as a way of making sense of the world. Guided by preliminary data, this hypothesis will be tested in three specific aims: (1) Examine how children's bias toward congruence progresses as a function of age; (2) Examine the generality of children's bias toward congruence across domains and tasks; and (3) Explore ways of correcting children's errors that come out of their bias toward congruence. Under specific aim 1, an already established approach of testing children's bias toward congruence will be used across a wide range of ages. Under specific aim 2, children's bias toward congruence will be tested in different content domains and with different types of tasks. Finally, under specific aim 3, an intervention will be tested that shifts children's attention away from superficial and misleading congruence, and therefore circumvents mistaken beliefs that come out of this bias. The overall approach offers a fundamentally different picture of young children's naive physics, because it links young children's mistakes to adaptive principles of knowledge organization. The objective of this application to understand how children's bias toward organizing their knowledge leads to mistakes is an under-investigated area of child development. It is translational research with direct implications for elementary and secondary instruction in science, because it addresses what it would take to more effectively improve children's learning of physical concepts. On a more global level, the application has implications for our understanding of children's mental health, because the tendency to organize knowledge and the mistakes associated with this tendency are a sign of normal development.

描述（由申请人提供）：在理解幼儿如何改变他们对日常物理现象持有的许多错误观念方面，存在根本性的差距。因此，长期目标是确定以证据为基础的教学干预措施来促进这种变化。然而，在实现这一目标之前，需要解开幼儿直观物理的基础。最近的研究结果表明，儿童的信仰受到他们持有的其他信仰的约束，因为儿童努力在他们的信仰中找到一个一致的配置。本R03应用程序的目的是调查这种对一致信念的偏见的本质。其核心假设是，儿童积极地追求对物理现象的一致信念，作为理解世界的一种方式。在初步数据的指导下，这一假设将在三个具体目标上进行检验：(1)研究儿童对一致性的偏见如何随着年龄的增长而发展；(2)考察儿童跨领域和跨任务的一致性倾向的普遍性；(3)探索纠正儿童因对一致性的偏见而产生的错误的方法。在具体目标1下，一种已经建立的测试儿童对一致性偏见的方法将在广泛的年龄范围内使用。在特定目标2下，将在不同的内容域和不同类型的任务中测试儿童对一致性的偏见。最后，在特定的目标3下，将测试一种干预措施，将儿童的注意力从肤浅和误导性的一致性中转移出来，从而规避由这种偏见产生的错误信念。整体方法提供了一幅完全不同的幼儿天真物理的画面，因为它将幼儿的错误与知识组织的适应性原则联系起来。本应用程序的目的是了解儿童对组织知识的偏见如何导致错误，这是儿童发展中一个未被研究的领域。这是对中小学科学教学有直接影响的转化性研究，因为它解决了如何更有效地提高儿童对物理概念的学习。在更广泛的层面上，这一应用对我们对儿童心理健康的理解有影响，因为组织知识的倾向以及与此倾向相关的错误是正常发展的标志。