Young Andrew G, Shtulman Andrew
Department of Psychology, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL, United States.
Department of Psychology, Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Front Psychol. 2020 Jun 24;11:1247. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01247. eCollection 2020.
Learning science requires contending with intuitions that are incompatible with scientific principles, such as the intuition that animals are alive but plants are not or the intuition that solids are composed of matter but gases are not. Here, we explore the tension between science and intuition in elementary school-aged children and whether that tension is moderated by children's tendency to reflect on their intuitions. Our participants were children between the ages of 5 and 12 years ( = 142). They were administered a statement-verification task, in which they judged statements about life and matter as true or false, as well as a children's Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT-D), in which they answered "brain teasers" designed to elicit an intuitive, yet inaccurate, response that could be corrected upon further reflection. Participants also received a tutorial on the scientific properties of life or matter, sandwiched between two blocks of the statement-verification task. We found that performance on the statement-verification task, which pitted scientific conceptions against intuitive conceptions (e.g., "cactuses are alive"), was predicted by performance on the CRT-D, independent of age. Children with higher levels of cognitive reflection verified scientific statements more accurately before the tutorial, and they made greater gains in accuracy following the tutorial. These results indicate that children experience conflict between scientific and intuitive conceptions of a domain in the earliest stages of acquiring scientific knowledge but can learn to resolve that conflict in favor of scientific conceptions, particularly if they are predisposed toward cognitive reflection.
学习科学需要应对与科学原理不相容的直觉，比如认为动物是有生命的而植物不是，或者认为固体由物质构成而气体不是的直觉。在此，我们探究了小学年龄段儿童在科学与直觉之间的矛盾，以及这种矛盾是否会因儿童反思自身直觉的倾向而得到缓和。我们的参与者是5至12岁的儿童（ = 142）。他们接受了一项陈述验证任务，在该任务中他们判断关于生命和物质的陈述是真是假，还接受了儿童认知反思测试（CRT-D），在测试中他们要回答“脑筋急转弯”问题，这些问题旨在引出一种直觉但不准确的回答，而这种回答在进一步思考后可以得到纠正。参与者还接受了关于生命或物质科学属性的辅导，该辅导夹在陈述验证任务的两个部分之间。我们发现，在陈述验证任务（该任务将科学概念与直觉概念相对比，例如“仙人掌是有生命的”）中的表现可由CRT-D的表现预测，且与年龄无关。认知反思水平较高的儿童在辅导前能更准确地验证科学陈述，并且在辅导后准确性提高得更多。这些结果表明，儿童在获取科学知识的最初阶段会在某一领域的科学概念与直觉概念之间体验到冲突，但能够学会以科学概念来解决这种冲突，特别是如果他们倾向于进行认知反思的话。
