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ERIC Number: EJ754279
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-May
Pages: 26
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-0277
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Interlinking Physical Beliefs: Children's Bias towards Logical Congruence
Kloos, Heidi
Cognition, v103 n2 p227-252 May 2007
Young children's naive beliefs about physics are commonly studied as isolated pieces of knowledge. The current paper takes a different approach. It asks whether preschoolers interlink individual beliefs into larger configurations or Gestalts. Such Gestalts bring together knowledge such as how an object's mass relates to its sinking speed, how an object's volume relates to its sinking speed, and how mass and volume are correlated. The particular form of organization explored here is referred to as "logical congruence", the logical correspondence in directions among three physical relations. Are children's guesses about one physical relation congruent with their beliefs about the other two relations? And can they learn a congruent set of relations more readily than an incongruent set? Two different physical domains were explored, one in which children commonly hold pre-existing beliefs, and one in which they are likely to lack such beliefs. The results in both domains show a strong bias towards congruent knowledge configurations in young children. These findings may explain children's difficulties learning inherently incongruous concepts such as density.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Preschool Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A