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

当前项目的长期目标是了解让幼儿了解世界的动态过程。众所周知，儿童会形成关于特征如何与另一个特征相关的想法，例如，一个物体的重量如何影响其浮力。大脑的这种形成信念的能力对包括感知、解决问题和推理在内的多种认知活动非常有益。然而，信念发展的过程并没有被很好地理解，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：纠正反馈并不总是导致概念上的改变。为了理解导致儿童信念及其变化的潜在过程，首先必须量化信念稳定性。目前的项目试图利用热力学中已成功应用于理解生态系统的想法来建立这样一种量化措施，称为优势度。为了测试认知系统这一测量的有效性，学龄前儿童参加了一项关于下沉物体的学习实验。对比了两种不同的学习情境。在其中一个测试中，孩子们可能只会从一次试验到另一次试验进行猜测。而在另一种学习环境中，孩子们很可能一开始就形成错误的信念(例如，重物下沉最快)，然后因为反馈而改变这种错误的信念。这一实验背景使得找到信念稳定性的转折点成为可能，这些转折点可以对照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就确定，当儿童被要求改变错误的信念时，他们面临着挣扎，例如关于物理现象的信念。这种对观念改变的抵制经常令人惊讶，特别是考虑到孩子们有时会自发地改变一种信念，即使根本没有任何干预。量化一种信念的稳定性将使我们有可能更好地理解这种相互矛盾的结果。更重要的是，这将使人们有可能更好地花时间努力改变错误的信念。因此，发展一种信念稳定性的衡量标准可能会对科学教育产生变革，使测试儿童最有可能参与概念变化的环境成为可能。虽然这只是理解儿童信仰本质的第一步，但这一项目的结果可能会为系统地理解儿童最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.