Overcoming Stumbling Blocks to Public Understanding of Science Through Refutation Texts and Graphics

• In Event: Promoting Public Understanding of Science: A Cornerstone of Diverse Democracies

Abstract

Sinatra, Kienhues, and Hofer (2014) reviewed challenges the public faces as they attempt to make informed decisions about whether to vaccinate their children, eliminate gluten from their diet, or install solar panels to lower their carbon footprint.

Research in epistemic cognition, motivated reasoning, and conceptual change contribute to understanding these challenges including appreciating complexity (Brem, Sinatra, Heddy, Stump, Reichenberg, & Nelson, 2013), overcoming negative emotions and attitudes (Heddy, Sinatra, Danielson, & Graham, 2014), and evaluating source trustworthiness (Lombardi, Seyranian, & Sinatra, 2014). Recently, our focus has shifted to developing interventions to reduce misconceptions (Heddy & Sinatra, 2013), promoting critical evaluation of scientific models (Lombardi, Sinatra & Nussbaum, 2013) and designing effective communications (Seyranian, Sinatra, & Polikoff, 2014). In this presentation, we will share results from a series of studies with different populations exploring understanding of scientific information through graphics and texts.

The first study examined whether understanding could be enhanced by adding a metaphor, a graphic, or both to a refutation text (Danielson, Sinatra, Jaeger & Wiley, 2015). The metaphor explained climate change in terms of a common summer experience – returning to a hot car left in the sun. Participants (122 undergraduate psychology students) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Learning was assessed post reading and one week later. We found that all conditions were effective at promoting and maintaining learning. However, the combination of the metaphor and graphic with the text outperformed the other conditions.

The second study contrasted a refutation text and graphic with more traditional graphics and expository text with 78 high school students. Learning was measured before and after reading, and one week later. Results indicate that those reading the refutation text, regardless of the graphic, showed significant learning gains, which were maintained after one week. Students reading the refutation texts were aware that there was a conflict between their prior knowledge and the information in the text, which is key for overcoming misconceptions (Kendeou & O’Brien (2014).

The results of these studies indicate that while graphics did not disrupt learning, they did not always aide learning as expected. A third study was conducted to examine if the graphic or the content failed to promote learning. Our sample included 150 adult members of the US public randomly assigned into one of three conditions. Everyone saw the same graphic (the famous “hockey stick” graph depicting CO2 rise over time) but the caption in each condition was altered. In one condition, the original graph with correct labeling was presented. In the other conditions the graphic was labeled as depicting either housing prices or autism rates over time. We found that adults had significantly more trouble reading the graphic when it depicted climate change, suggesting it may have been the content, not the graphic that caused learning difficulties.

Taken together, these studies suggest that the effectiveness of refutation text can be augmented with carefully constructed graphics and analogies to improve the publics’ understanding of scientific topics. (489 words)

Authors

• Gale M. Sinatra, University of Southern California

• Robert William Danielson, University of Southern California