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

对COVID-19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本质。这项研究将探讨这些想法是针对COVID-19特有的，还是它们更普遍地反映了对生物现象进行推理的直觉推理模式，以及它们在小学早期儿童中的普遍程度。这项研究的进一步重点将放在照顾者和教师身上，他们是儿童重要的信息来源。此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，本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，以解决儿童和成人对COVID-19的推理问题，并纳入有关生物感染背后因果机制的更一般信息。这项干预将以早期研究人员使用动画叙事成功地向儿童和成人教授复杂生物学概念的干预为蓝本。该RAPID奖由DRL的EHR核心研究（ECR）项目提供，资金来自《冠状病毒援助、救济和经济安全（CARES）法案》。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，为理解生物界的复杂现象提供了快速有效的指导，但有时会出错。先前nsf资助的研究表明，这些倾向——例如，直觉目的论、本质主义和人类中心主义的推理模式——是如何在早期出现的，并在所有年龄段的生物信息学习中起到过滤器的作用。有时，这些直觉与正式的生物学推理是一致的，可以在课堂上利用它们来支持学习，但有时它们不是，并导致整个发展过程中系统和根深蒂固的生物学误解。关于COVID-19的信息也不例外。在这个项目中，研究人员将：(1)调查一至二年级学生的教师和护理人员对COVID-19传播和感染的因果机制的直观推理，以及更普遍的疾病推理；(2)与一至二年级学生进行平行调查；(3)根据从这些调查中收集到的证据，针对小学儿童、照料者和教师，快速设计和试点一项针对COVID-19及相关疾病的认知知情教育干预措施。为了更广泛地了解成人对COVID-19和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，包括：(a)关于COVID-19的因果关系、治疗和预防的开放式访谈；(b)风险行为检测任务，以评估对常见行为风险的认识和信念；(c)对疾病传播和感染机制提出更广泛的问题的因果知识评估。这些措施将通过在线调查来实施。从这些措施中获得的见解将迅速用于制定一项试点干预措施，该干预措施将使用动画叙事视频来支持儿童和成人对COVID-19及相关疾病传播和预防的机制理解。前期和后期测试将确定这一试点干预措施的有效性，并为今后的研究和干预奠定基础。这项研究将揭示儿童和成人对COVID-19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可能会加剧误解。它还将阐明以认知知情的方式教育成年人有关复杂的生物现象，作为解决与他们互动的儿童误解的一种方式。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。

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.