Belief Change from Exploration in Preschool-Aged Children

• In Event: Developmental Change in the Form and Function of Exploratory Learning

Abstract

The preschool years are a fertile time for conceptual change across a variety of content domains. These changes are thought to be due to two related mechanisms. One is children’s motivation to explore their learning environments to gain information relevant to their current understandings. A second is their abilities to use the information gained in those explorations to appropriately strengthen or revise those understandings. Here we will present data from two studies using different methods aimed at tracking developmental changes in these mechanisms over the preschool period.

In the first study (N=90), 3- to 5-year-old children from a predominantly White community were invited to discover the weights of simple objects. The first object, a painted geometric solid, weighed one Newton. Once thoroughly explored, this first object was replaced with a second one that was heavier (3 Newtons). For children in the focal experimental condition, this object looked the same as the first object, and thus, the additional weight was unexpected. For children in the control condition, the object looked different and so children’s expectations about its weight were likely not as strong. Results from kinematic measures showed that 4-year-olds showed little evidence of kinematic refinement of their lifting behavior following the unexpected weight whereas 5-year-olds refined their lifts in more adult-like ways. These findings suggest that 4-year-olds had difficulty using their experience to overcome their initial expectations about the object’s weight.

In the second study (N=20, data collection ongoing) 4- and 5-year-old children from the same population were asked to play a computerized “treasure hunt” game in which over successive trials, they were invited to search for treasure in one of three boxes. The boxes were presented on the screen in a row and each was the same shape but a different color. The game was rigged such that children’s first trial was a success no matter which box they selected, and then they had 15 more trials to find as much treasure as they could. On each trial, the box positions were scrambled, and thus, there were two obvious strategies children could take to explore based upon their initial success – one could look in the same spatial location or in the box that was the same color. Prior similar research has shown that children’s initial explorations tend to prioritize a spatial strategy. In our study, however, searching by color was the correct strategy. Children’s behavior as they transitioned from location-based to color-based exploration was characterized with logistic modeling. Relative to 5-year-olds, 4-year-olds showed evidence of substantial difficulty in transitioning away from their initial spatial exploration strategy and towards the correct color strategy.

Together these findings suggest that the preschool years see substantial growth in children’s abilities to use information gleaned from their exploratory behaviors to overcome their initial expectations and come to new understandings. In particular, our evidence shows that this skill may mature substantially between the ages of 4- and 5-years-old, which in turn has important implications for understanding conceptual change over this developmental period.

Authors

• Mark Alan Sabbagh, Queen’s University
  Presenting Author

• Brooke Hilton, Queen’s University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Caitlin Atkinson, Queen’s University
  Non-Presenting Author