Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In this study we investigated the role of conceptually rich explanations and anomalous evidence in children’s scientific belief revision. We also explored whether the order in which children experience these two learning opportunities influences their belief revision ability. Five-year-old children were assigned to one of two conditions, where they either first received conceptual explanations about buoyancy and then observed anomalous data in a guided activity (Explanation- First), or the reverse (Anomalies-First). Results showed that (1) conceptually rich explanations lead to more accurate predictions about which objects sink and which float than anomalous data presentation, and (2) when explanations and anomalous data were combined, children’s correct predictions increased significantly from pre-test to post-test when they received the conceptual information before the anomalous evidence (Explanation-First), but not in the opposite order condition (Anomalies-First). These results suggest that children are more likely to maintain their misconceptions when exposed to anomalies without prior instruction involving conceptually rich explanations.