Event‐Related Potential Evidence for Persistence of an Intuitive Misconception About Electricity

Abstract

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.

Coexistence of Misconceptions and Scientific Conceptions in Chemistry Professors: A Mental Chronometry and fMRI Study

“…Other tasks like this one have been used to study the effects of the presumed presence of scientific misconceptions in many scientific disciplines: electricity (Masson et al, 2014;Zhu et al, 2019), mechanics (Brault Foisy et al, 2015), states of matter (Babai and Amsterdamer, 2008), buoyancy (Potvin et al, 2015a; see Figure 2: In this task the misconception that larger/heavier objects have a stronger tendency to sink is tested. A = congruent; B = incongruent), biology (Babai et al, 2010), and sometimes many disciplines at the same time (Shtulman and Valcarcel, 2012;Allaire-Duquette et al, 2019, etc.…”

“…Indeed, delays in response are routinely interpreted as the result of the cognitive load that comes with the resolution of perceptual or conceptual internal conflicts. Likewise, late positive potential (LPP) and P-300 peaks (electrically positive difference at 300 ms), recordable by electroencephalography (EEG), have been associated with conflict resolution (Zhu et al, 2019). Finally, certain brain regions whose BOLD signal (Blood-Oxygen-Level Dependent) can be recorded through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Amaro and Barker, 2006), have also been associated with conflict detection or resolution.…”

A Revisited Conceptual Change in Mathematical-Physics Education from a Neurodidactic Approach: A Pendulum Inquiry

“…That means that a broader spectrum of activities is required to overcome this. Recent studies show that inhibition is slower in younger adolescent students than in university students [39]. It is important to emphasize that only teachers who are conscious of the students' misconceptions can successfully achieve effective conceptual changes [40].…”

Students’ Concept Organisation Regarding Chemical Equilibrium in Upper-Secondary Education: Based on Reaction Time Technique

“…In the research studies of science education, researchers have utilized reaction time technique to explore students' science learning. The research topics were concerning students' persistence of the naive science concept ISSN 1648-3898 /Print/ ISSN 2538-7138 /Online/ or intuitive reasoning on the science concept, including the research studies of matter classification (Babai & Amsterdamer, 2008), living thing classification (Babai, et al, 2010), physical phenomena (Potvin, et al, 2015), probability (Babai, et al, 2006), geometrical shape (Babai, et al, 2012), and electricity (Zhu, et al, 2019).…”