THE ROLE OF CONGRUENCE IN CHILDREN?S BELIEFS ABOUT PHYSICS

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的许多错误信念方面存在着根本的差距。因此，长期目标是确定以证据为基础的教学干预措施，以促进这种变化。然而，在实现这一目标之前，需要解开幼儿直觉物理的基础。最近的发现表明，儿童的信念受到他们持有的其他信念的制约，因为儿童努力在他们的信念中实现一致的配置。本R03应用程序的目的是调查这种偏向一致信念的性质。中心假设是，孩子们积极地争取对物理现象的一致信念，以此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得到检验：(1)考察儿童对一致性的偏向是如何随着年龄的增长而发展的；(2)考察儿童跨域和跨任务对一致性的偏向的普遍性；(3)探索纠正儿童因偏向一致性而产生的错误的方法。在具体目标1下，将在广泛的年龄范围内使用一种已经建立的测试儿童对一致性的偏见的方法。在特定目标2下，将在不同的内容领域和不同类型的任务中测试儿童对一致性的偏见。最后，在具体目标3下，将测试一种干预措施，将儿童的注意力从表面上和误导性的一致性上转移出来，从而避免这种偏见产生的错误信念。总体方法提供了一幅完全不同的幼儿幼稚物理图景，因为它将幼儿的错误与知识组织的适应性原则联系在一起。这个应用程序的目标是理解儿童偏向于组织他们的知识是如何导致错误的，这是儿童发展中一个未被充分研究的领域。这是一项转化性研究，对科学的小学和中学教学有直接影响，因为它解决了如何更有效地改善儿童对物理概念的学习。在更全球性的层面上，这项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和与这种倾向相关的错误是正常发展的标志。

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.