Do objects of different weight fall at the same time? Updating naive beliefs about free-falling objects from fictional and informational books in young children

The Role of Alternative Theories and Anomalous Evidence in Children’s Scientific Belief Revision

“…In contrast, in the Explanation-first condition, when children were exposed to rich conceptual explanations about what makes objects sink and float, children were more likely to rely on this information to make new predictions and justifications. This gives corroborating evidence that children can learn scientific information from picture books (Ganea et al, 2011;Kelemen, 2019;Kelemen et al, 2014;Strouse & Ganea, 2016;Venkadasalam & Ganea, 2018) and can apply this knowledge to reason and interpret new phenomena.…”

“…Picture books are an excellent medium to present children with complex conceptual information in a naturalistic and developmentally appropriate manner. Both this study and related research have shown that children can acquire conceptually rich explanations from picture books, whether the format is narrative or expository (Emmons, Smith, & Kelemen, 2016;Ganea et al, 2011;Gripshover & Markman, 2013;Kelemen et al, 2014;Venkadasalam & Ganea, 2018). Few studies have used comparable texts to examine the effect of genre on children's learning of science concepts (Donovan & Smolkin, 2002;Duke & Billman, 2009), and proposals have been made for increasing the use of both narratives (Avraamidou & Osborne, 2009) and expository text (Donovan & Smolkin, 2002;Duke, 2000;Mantzicopoulos & Patrick, 2011) to teach science.…”

“…The current research extends this prior work by focusing on a sample of young children, whose theories may be more flexible and thus more responsive to anomalies compared to the samples used in prior research. We also build on recent research that has demonstrated the beneficial effect of rich conceptual explanations for young children’s learning of new scientific knowledge, as shown by their improved scientific understanding when exposed to viable theories about concepts in the domain of biology (Ganea, Ma, & Deloache, 2011; Kelemen, Emmons, Seston Schillaci, & Ganea, 2014; Strouse & Ganea, 2016; Larsen, Venkadasalam, & Ganea, 2020; Venkadasalam & Ganea, 2018). We extend on this prior work by examining the effect of conceptual explanations (which provide an alternative viable theory to children’s naive theory) on children’s ability to capitalize on the observation of anomalous evidence, and their combined effect on children’s scientific belief revision.…”

“…Both of these learning strategies were delivered in developmentally appropriate ways. We used a picture book format to deliver the conceptually rich explanations, because picture book reading is an enjoyable activity for many children, and moreover, there is evidence that children learn new scientific information from picture books (Ganea et al, 2011; Kelemen et al, 2014; Venkadasalam & Ganea, 2018). For the anomalous evidence, we used a guided activity, to allow children to actively engage with real, physical objects (Nayfeld, Brenneman, & Gelman, 2011; Peterson & French, 2008) and to ensure that children could notice and produce the evidence with guidance.…”

Eksperimen Mandiri Siswa dalam Penentuan Percepatan Gravitasi Bumi pada Materi Gerak Jatuh Bebas

“…Dalam kasus lain yang baru-baru ini dilakukan Venkadasalam & Ganea (2018) melalui penelitian pretestnya, beberapa anak diminta untuk membuat prediksi tentang pasangan benda-benda yang memiliki berat yang sama atau berbeda. Skor pretest menunjukkan bahwa banyak anak mulai dengan kesalahpahaman bahwa benda yang lebih berat jatuh lebih cepat daripada objek yang lebih ringan.…”