Event‐related potentials are used to test the hypothesis that an intuitive misconception persists in the mind even after the acquisition of scientific knowledge. We investigated the temporal dynamics of neural mechanisms in solving a scientific problem involving a common misconception. It showed that the increased P2 component was elicited by the stimulus congruent with the misconception. The increased N2 component was elicited by the stimulus incongruent with the misconception. Additionally, the enhanced late positive potential component was evoked by the stimulus involving the conflict between the misconception and scientific knowledge. These results suggest that an intuitive misconception might still survive after the acquisition of scientific knowledge. It could be invoked automatically to evaluate the plausibility of incoming information. Subsequently, scientific knowledge is explicitly retrieved to monitor the conflict and inhibit the misconception. This study might have values in revealing the neural correlates of knowledge representation and scientific reasoning in education.
Studying the mental effort in problem-solving is important to the understanding of how the brain allocates cognitive resources to process information. The electroencephalogram is a promising physiological approach to assessing the online mental effort. In this study, we investigate the EEG indicators of mental effort while solving scientific problems. By manipulating the complexity of the scientific problem, the level of mental effort also changes. With the increase of mental effort, theta synchronization in the frontal region and lower alpha desynchronization in the parietal and occipital regions significantly increase. Also, upper alpha desynchronization demonstrates a widespread enhancement across the whole brain. According to the functional topography of brain activity in the theta and alpha frequency, our results suggest that the mental effort while solving scientific problems is related to working memory, visuospatial processing, semantic processing and magnitude manipulation. This study suggests the reliability of EEG to evaluate the mental effort in an educational context and provides valuable insights into improving the problem-solving abilities of students in educational practice.
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