Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Understanding both the processes and products of science are core components of science literacy, but do these types of knowledge interact during learning? We propose that Nature of Science (NoS) understanding can act as a schema to facilitate comprehension of science content. Across two experiments, we tested whether NoS lessons about theory change improve students' comprehension of psychology lessons which are centered around theory development. In Experiment 1, undergraduates who watched a NoS lesson showed improved NoS understanding, but this understanding did not lead to better comprehension of a matched psychology lesson compared to control. In Experiment 2, three NoS lessons were experimentally integrated into a college psychology course, preceding content lessons involving theory change. While this intervention did not improve learning, we found several relationships between science beliefs and academic performance. This work contributes to our limited understanding of how these distinct components of science knowledge interact during learning.