Motivated Scientific Reasoning Biases, Epistemological Beliefs, and Theory Polarization: A Two-Process Approach to Adolescent Cognition (original) (raw)
Related papers
Middle School Students’ Approaches to Reasoning about Disconfirming Evidence
Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, 2018
This study investigated differences in how middle school children reason about disconfirming evidence. Scientists evaluate hypotheses against evidence, rejecting those that are disconfirmed. Although this instant rationality propels empirical science, it works less for theoretical science, where it is often necessary to delay rationality – to tolerate disconfirming evidence in the short run. We used behavioral measures to identify two groups of middle-school children: strict reasoners who prefer instant rationality and quickly dismiss disconfirmed hypotheses, and permissive reasoners who prefer delayed rationality and retain disconfirmed hypotheses for further evaluation. We measured their scientific reasoning performance as well as their cognitive ability and motivational orientation. What distinguished the groups was not overall differences in these variables, but their predictive relation. For strict reasoners, better scientific reasoning was associated with faster processing, wh...
Reasoning about science-related uncertain issues and epistemological perspectives among children
Instructional Science, 2009
In order to fulfill social responsibility, one of the goals in science education is to equip students with the competence of scientific reasoning. Nevertheless, psychological studies have found that people in general do not have adequate ability to make scientific arguments in everyday situations. Later studies found that the inadequate ability was associated with the development of personal epistemology. However, the conclusion is drawn mostly from research with adults or adolescents. This study attempted to examine the relation between scientific reasoning in informal contexts and the epistemological perspectives demonstrated by elementary school pupils. Participants of the study were 62 sixth graders who were interviewed to criticize two science-related uncertain issues. Content analysis showed that most children had developed the absolutist form of personal epistemology. Chi-square analyses suggested that the more multiplist view toward the certainty of knowledge and the process of knowing, the better coordination of theory and evidence as well as reflective reasoning. In addition, children's beliefs about the certainty of knowledge, source of knowledge and concept of justification were seemingly consistent across different issues. Nevertheless, content analysis showed that the criteria used to make judgments varied with problem contexts.
Psychology and Aging, 2000
Age-related differences in everyday reasoning biases were explored. In each of 2 social domains, examination of theoretical beliefs and biases along 2 dimensions of scientific reasoning, involving the law of large numbers and the evaluation of experimental evidence, revealed that, across age groups, scientific reasoning was used to reject evidence that contradicted prior beliefs; relatively cursory reasoning was used to accept belief-consistent evidence. Biased reasoning was more common among middle-aged and older adults than among young adults. Dispositions to engage in analytic processing were negatively related to biases, but intellectual abilities and bias were not related. The findings support a 2-process view of adult cognitive development and suggest that the tendency to rely on heuristic information processing increases with age. The social and cognitive psychology literatures are replete with demonstrations of erroneous everyday reasoning (see Evans & Over, 1996; Stanovich, 1999). At the heart of many reasoning fallacies, miscues, and poor decisions lay networks of beliefs and personal theories. Although theories of the causal mechanisms in specific social domains (e.g., faith in God leads to salvation) have numerous adaptive functions (e.g., reducing cognitive load), overreliance on these belief systems interferes with the objectivity of reasoning and decision making. An understanding of the manner in which personal, "naive" theories influence reasoning is thus vital to the advancement of theories of everyday cognition, yet adult developmentalists have paid scant attention to the theoryreasoning relationship. Consider, for instance, an observer who believes that low socioeconomic status (SES) promotes laziness and that economic success is a product of intelligence. Told that a specific welfare recipient has not sought employment for several months, the adult accepts this evidence as proof that his or her theory is correct and does not examine the evidence for alternative explanations of the observed correlation (e.g., the unemployed party is disabled). Alternatively, presented evidence that a person became wealthy despite a low score on an intelligence test, the observer is likely to seek flaws in the evidence and to construct explanations that would render the correlation spurious (e.g., the assessment instrument is invalid) or anomalous (e.g., the intelligence-wealth belief cannot be discredited by a single observation).
British Journal of Educational Psychology, 1999
Background. Recent curricula initiatives have promoted experimentation as a means by which relatively young children can appraise their personal beliefs and thereby modify these beliefs towards received scienti c ideas. However, key psychological theories signal problems, and the enterprise is not in any event securely grounded in empirical research. Aims. As a consequence, the study reported here aimed to provide comprehensive information about children's abilities to use experimentation to appraise their beliefs, while allowing full exploration of theorised constraints. Samples. The study involved 24 children at each of three age levels within the 9 to 14 range. Methods. The children were rst interviewed to establish their beliefs about in uences on outcome in four educationally signi cant topic areas: otation, pressure, motion and shadows. Subsequently, they were asked to conduct investigations to determine whether selected beliefs were correct. Results. The results showed that, regardless of age or topic, very few children appreciated that to explore whether some variable is in uencing outcome it is necessary to manipulate that variable experimentally and that variable only. There was a strong tendency to manipulate other variables, a tendency attributed to the intrusion of everyday reasoning practices into the experimental context. Once extraneous variables had been introduced, the children experienced great dif culties with subsequent stages in the experimental process, e.g., predicting, observing and drawing conclusions. Conclusions. It is concluded that experimentation as a means of appraising beliefs is not straightforward in the 9 to 14 age group, and that the pattern of dif culties has psychological signi cance given the background theories.
An argument evaluation inventory distinguishing between different levels of theory-evidence differentiation was designed corresponding to the levels of argument observed in argument generation tasks. Five scenarios containing everyday theories about a social problem, and arguments to support those theories were presented to 170 participants from two age groups (15 and 22 years) and different educational tracks. Participants had to rate the validity of arguments proposed by a story figure, to support the theory, to choose the best argument, and to justify their choice. The rating task proved to be very difficult for all age groups, with only 49% of the university students consistently rating valid evidence-based arguments higher than flawed arguments. Competence improved with age and educational level. In the choice task more than 80% of the adults preferred an argument that reflected theory-evidence differentiation over mere theory elaboration or flawed reasoning. However, only adul...
Epistemic Doubt During Adolescence
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015
Naïve beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowingepistemic beliefsare present from childhood onward and undergo development through a relatively fixed sequence of levels from realism through relativism to rationalism. There appears to be more than one pass through this sequence, with the first pass occurring from middle childhood through late adolescence, and the second pass occurring from late adolescence through early adulthood. The period of relativism during adolescence is characterized by generic doubt about the possibility of establishing a valid, rational basis for one's beliefs, coupled with interesting and varied ways of coping with that doubt.
1989
The mechanism linking instruction in scientific topics and instruction in logical reasoning strategies is not well understood. This study assesses the role of science topic instruction combined with logical reasoning strategy instruction in teaching adolescent students about blood pressure problems. Logical reasoning instruction for this study emphasizes the controllingvariables strategy. Science topic instruction emphasizes variables affecting blood pressure. Subjects receiving logical reasoning instruction link their knowledge of blood pressure variables to their knowledge of controlling variables more effectively than those receiving science topic instruction alone-their specific responses show how they attempt to integrate their understanding.
Changes in epistemological beliefs in elementary science students
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 2004
Epistemological beliefs, or beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing, are currently a target of increased research interest. The present study examined two research questions: (1) how do epistemological beliefs change over time? and (2) what role do gender, ethnicity, SES, and achievement play in their development? The study was correlational with an ethnically diverse sample of 187 fifth grade students (46% Latino, 27% Anglo, and 27% African American, and 67% low SES). Self-report questionnaires that tapped four dimensions of beliefs (source, certainty, development, and justification) were given to students at two time points during the course of a nine-week science unit. Results showed that students became more sophisticated in their beliefs about source and certainty of knowledge over time, but that there were no reliable changes in development and justification. There also were no main or moderating effects of gender or ethnicity, but there were main effects of SES and achievement. Low SES and low achieving children had less sophisticated beliefs in comparison to average SES and high achieving children. There were no significant interactions between gender, ethnicity, SES, and achievement for any of the four belief measures. Results are discussed in terms of personal and contextual factors and their role in the facilitation of epistemological belief development.
Epistemic Beliefs and Achievement Motivation in Early Adolescence
The Journal of Early Adolescence, 2010
This study seeks to establish the relevance of middle school students' naïve beliefs about knowledge and learning in science to their achievement motivation in this domain. A predominantly Hispanic and lower-income sample of 459 middle school students (sixth through eighth grades) completed measures of epistemic beliefs along with several measures of motivation. Results indicated that a belief that scientific knowledge develops and that justification is necessary to valid knowledge in science were positively related to mastery goals, task value, and self-efficacy. Epistemic beliefs were also found to predict science grades over and above the contributions of motivational factors. Surprisingly, an uncritical acceptance of authority figures and a belief in scientific knowledge as certain were more typical of students who adopted motivational states (e.g., mastery goals) previously found to be supportive of learning. The latter findings may be unique to early adolescence within the ethnic and socioeconomic status parameters of the present sample.