The Effect of Explaining Another's Actions on Children's Implicit Theories of Balance

Pine, Karen J.; Messer, David

doi:10.1207/s1532690xci1801_02

Cited by 72 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…For this purpose, we focus the current investigation on children's beliefs about balance relationships. We chose this domain both because children's beliefs about balance have been well established by prior research (e.g., Karmiloff-Smith & Inhelder, 1974;Case, 1985;Halford et al, 2002;Jansen & van der Maas, 2002;McClelland, 1989;McClelland, 1995;Normandeau, Larivee, Roulin, & Longeot, 1989;Shultz & Takane, 2007;Siegler, 1976;Siegler & Chen, 1998;Siegler & Chen, 2002;Pine & Messer, 2000;Raijmakers, van Koten, & Molenaar, 1996) and because balancing blocks are natural and accessible stimuli for exploratory play.…”

Section: Children's Beliefs About Balance Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These studies have typically focused on transitions in children's use of rules and strategies in balance scale tasks (e.g. Case, 1985;Halford, Andrews, Dalton, Boag, & Zielinski, 2002;Jansen & van der Maas, 2002;Normandeau et al, 1989;Siegler, 1976;Siegler & Chen, 1998;Siegler & Chen, 2002;Pine & Messer, 2000;Raijmakers et al, 1996). Consistent with the Karmiloff-Smith and Inhelder (1974) study, such research 1 Because we used the Karmiloff-Smith and Inhelder (1974) study as a starting point, we adopt their practice of referring to the children's beliefs about balance relations as "theories".…”

Section: Children's Beliefs About Balance Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Children balance theories and evidence in exploration, explanation, and learning.

Bonawitz¹,

Schulz²,

Schijndel³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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We look at the effect of evidence and prior beliefs on exploration, explanation and learning. In Experiment 1, we tested children both with and without differential prior beliefs about balance relationships (Center Theorists, mean: 82 months; Mass Theorists, mean: 89 months; No Theory children, mean: 62 months). Center and Mass Theory children who observed identical evidence explored the block differently depending on their beliefs. When the block was balanced at its geometric center (belief-violating to a Mass Theorist, but belief-consistent to a Center Theorist), Mass Theory children explored the block more, and Center Theory children showed the standard novelty preference; when the block was balanced at the center of mass, the pattern of results reversed. TheNo Theory children showed a novelty preference regardless of evidence. In Experiments 2 and 3, we follow-up on these findings, showing that both Mass and Center Theorists selectively and differentially appeal to auxiliary variables (e.g., a magnet) to explain evidence only when their beliefs are violated. We also show that children use the data to revise their predictions in the absence of the explanatory auxiliary variable but not in its presence. Taken together, these results suggest that children's learning is at once conservative and flexible; children integrate evidence, prior beliefs, and competing causal hypotheses in their exploration, explanation, and learning.

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Section: Children's Beliefs About Balance Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Children's Beliefs About Balance Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children balance theories and evidence in exploration, explanation, and learning.

Bonawitz¹,

Schulz²,

Schijndel³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Subsequent studies have shown that prompting for such self-explanations can lead to improved learning outcomes in numerous domains including arithmetic (Calin-Jageman & Ratner, 2005;Rittle-Johnson, 2006;Siegler, 2002), geometry (Aleven & Koedinger, 2002;Wong, Lawson & Keeves, 2003), interest calculations (Renkl, Stark, Gruber & Mandel, 1998), LISP programming (Bielaczyc, Pirolli, & Brown, 1995), argumentation (Schworm & Renkl, 2007), Piagetian number conservation (Siegler, 1995), probability calculation (Große & Renkl, 2003), biology text comprehension (Chi, DeLeeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994), and balancing beam problems (Pine & Messer, 2000). Moreover, these self-explanation effects have been demonstrated across a wide range of age cohorts, from 5-year-old students (CalinJageman & Ratner, 2005) to adult bank apprentices (Renkl et al, 1998).…”

Section: The Self-explanation Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The vast majority of prior experimental studies have held the number of examples or problems studied constant, with the result that students in the self-explanation conditions spend more time on the intervention (e.g. Atkinson, Renkl & Merrill, 2003;Pine & Messer, 2000;Rittle-Johnson, 2001;Siegler, 1995;Wong, Lawson & Keeves, 2002). Given that generating self-explanations generally requires more time per problem, it may be that self-explanation effects arise simply from encouraging students to spend more time thinking about the material, rather than by some mechanism specific to self-explanation.…”

Section: Explanation Quality As a Predictor Of Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

In pursuit of knowledge: Comparing self-explanations, concepts, and procedures as pedagogical tools

Matthews

Rittle‐Johnson

2009

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…Pine and Messer (2000) found significant improvements when children observed an adult modeling the correct solution and were encouraged to explain what they saw. In general, children in this condition showed greater learning gains than children who simply observed a model but did not produce an explanation.…”

Section: The Representational Redescription Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Explaining Another's Actions on Children's Implicit Theories of Balance

Cited by 72 publications

References 22 publications

Children balance theories and evidence in exploration, explanation, and learning.

Children balance theories and evidence in exploration, explanation, and learning.

In pursuit of knowledge: Comparing self-explanations, concepts, and procedures as pedagogical tools

More gestures than answers: Children learning about balance.

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