To Compare or Space? The Role of Timing in Children's Science Learning

这项研究将有助于理解科学概念是如何学习的。这个项目将研究如何从个别例子中概括概念，从而继续为关于这个主题的认知科学文献提供信息。实验将根据不同的时间模式向学生呈现多个科学概念的例子，以便学生抽象出它们之间的异同。这些研究将直接解决一组看似自相矛盾的发现：同时和分开展示例子都被证明可以促进科学学习。因此，这项工作将解决认知科学和科学教育中相互矛盾的发现，并反过来产生一系列研究，阐明设计学习环境的富有成效的方法。这项工作的长期目标是为STEM教育工作者提供教育性的课程补充材料，概述促进学生学习成果的时间模式。该项目得到了NSF的EHR核心研究(ECR)计划的支持。ECR计划强调基础STEM教育研究，以产生该领域的基础知识。一系列实验将测试相互矛盾但可能相互启发的假设。认知科学中的一条研究路线提出，同时展示科学概念的例子可以促进学生对概念的抽象和即时概括。然而，另一项工作认为，跨时间间隔演示有助于学生对概念的抽象和长期概括。目前的工作通过检查同时和间隔的陈述促进学生概括的条件来连接这两条研究路线。这项工作的中心假设是，学生认知能力的发展变化，如注意力、记忆力和科学知识，将导致呈现时间表的变化，从而促进他们对概念的概括。这项工作的结果将产生一个认知模型，即演示时机如何影响学生的科学学习。这一认知模型将允许研究人员和STEM教育工作者对演讲时机做出预测，这将最好地促进学生对科学概念的获得和概括。

This research will contribute to understanding how science concepts are learned. This project will study how concepts are generalized from individual examples, thus continuing to inform the cognitive science literature on this topic. The experiments will present students with multiple examples of science concepts according to different timing patterns so that students can abstract similarities and differences among them. The studies will directly address a seemingly paradoxical set of findings: presenting examples at the same time and apart in time have both been shown to promote science learning. As such, this work will resolve conflicting findings in cognitive science and science education and, in turn, will generate a body of research that elucidates fruitful methods for designing learning environments. The long-term goal of this work is to provide STEM educators with educative curricular material supplements that outline the timing patterns that promote students' learning outcomes. This project is supported by NSF's EHR Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field.A series of experiments will test conflicting but possibly mutually informing hypotheses. One line of research in cognitive science has proposed that presenting examples of science concepts simultaneously promotes students' abstraction and immediate generalization of concepts. However, another line of work has argued that spacing presentations across time promotes students' abstraction and long-term generalization of concepts. The current work bridges these two lines of research by examining the conditions under which simultaneous and spaced presentations promote students' generalization. The central hypothesis in this work is that developmental changes in students' cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, and science knowledge, will create shifts in which presentation schedule promotes their generalization of concepts. The results of this work will generate a cognitive model of how presentation timing impacts students' science learning. This cognitive model will allow researchers and STEM educators to make predictions about the presentation timing that will best promote students' acquisition and generalization of science concepts.