Heidi Kloos, Ph.D. - US grants

The goal of the proposed research is to explore the development and change of young children?s misconceptions about physics. The PI challenges the common interpretation of misconceptions as reflecting stable, a priori concepts, some of which must be overcome in order to come to a to sophisticated formal understanding in the domain. A common recommendation is to engage children?s misconceptions first, and then to provide them with disconfirming evidence. Unfortunately, children show a surprising resistance to changing their mistaken beliefs, and spontaneous emergence of correct beliefs is rare. In this proposal, the PI draws on another set of findings in basic cognition indicating that a child?s misconceptions, rather than being a stable part of the child?s knowledge, are an attempt to organize and make sense of the immediate context in which the child acts. These findings imply that a successful teaching intervention could provide children with a sophisticated organizing principle first, rather than letting them come up with one on their own. However, the effectiveness of such an alternative teaching approach has not been tested explicitly. The proposed project will involve 14 randomized and controlled experiments ranging from those investigating the nature and development of children?s tendency to organize pieces of information to those testing the effectiveness of an intervention, based on these principles, with elementary school children.

How well can you walk and talk at the same time? To behave adaptively, living beings must coordinate body and mind. However important questions remain as to how this may occur. First, is the direction of control exclusively mind or brain to body? For instance does the coordination of motor components in walking change the coordination of cognitive components in talking? Motor acts are commonly treated as consequent on or independent of cognitive activity (e.g., thinking proceeds apace, whether one sits or walks). But preliminary data of this research project corroborate that coordination of motor behavior has an impact on cognitive dynamics. Second, how do control and coordination of cognitive dynamics change across the lifespan? The dynamics of motor coordination has a linear progression, in which dynamic patterns change from a greater fractal dimension in childhood to a lesser fractal dimension in old age. Does the same hold for cognitive tasks? For instance, it is unclear whether cognitive coordination deteriorates with age.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Van Orden and his colleagues will substantially bridge these knowledge gaps as they investigate control and coordina-tion of cognitive and motor behavior across the life span. Their empirical studies will contribute to two distinct areas. First, findings of interdependence of motor and cognitive components may overhaul the common view that cognition unfolds independently of the motor actions of the body. Second, findings on how control and coordination of cognitive activity changes as a function of age will broadly inform developmental theory, including theory that links behavioral changes to cortical organization in a child's or adult's brain. The project also includes the use of new non-linear methods of recurrence quantifica-tion analysis as tools for fractal analysis, which may circumvent problems of linear tools, supply a more detailed picture of fractal behavior, and add methodological rigor to the study of fractal phenomena in all fields that confront such phenomena. Furthermore, support for this project will contribute catalytic funds to fully realize a planned interdisciplinary center for Cognition, Action & Perception at the U. of Cincinnati.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a fundamental gap in understanding how young children change the many mistaken beliefs they hold about every-day physical phenomena. The long-term goal then is to identify evidence-based instructional interventions to promote such change. However, before this goal can be attained, the basis of young children's intuitive physics needs to be unraveled. Recent findings suggest that children's beliefs are constrained by other beliefs they hold, in that children strive toward a congruent configuration among their beliefs. The objective of the present R03 application is to investigate the nature of this bias toward congruent beliefs. The central hypothesis is that children actively strive toward congruent beliefs about physical phenomena, as a way of making sense of the world. Guided by preliminary data, this hypothesis will be tested in three specific aims: (1) Examine how children's bias toward congruence progresses as a function of age; (2) Examine the generality of children's bias toward congruence across domains and tasks; and (3) Explore ways of correcting children's errors that come out of their bias toward congruence. Under specific aim 1, an already established approach of testing children's bias toward congruence will be used across a wide range of ages. Under specific aim 2, children's bias toward congruence will be tested in different content domains and with different types of tasks. Finally, under specific aim 3, an intervention will be tested that shifts children's attention away from superficial and misleading congruence, and therefore circumvents mistaken beliefs that come out of this bias. The overall approach offers a fundamentally different picture of young children's naive physics, because it links young children's mistakes to adaptive principles of knowledge organization. The objective of this application to understand how children's bias toward organizing their knowledge leads to mistakes is an under-investigated area of child development. It is translational research with direct implications for elementary and secondary instruction in science, because it addresses what it would take to more effectively improve children's learning of physical concepts. On a more global level, the application has implications for our understanding of children's mental health, because the tendency to organize knowledge and the mistakes associated with this tendency are a sign of normal development. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): There is a fundamental gap in understanding how young children change the many mistaken beliefs they hold about every-day physical phenomena. The long-term goal then is to identify evidence-based instructional interventions to promote such change. However, before this goal can be attained, the basis of young children's intuitive physics needs to be unraveled. Recent findings suggest that children's beliefs are constrained by other beliefs they hold, in that children strive toward a congruent configuration among their beliefs. The objective of the present R03 application is to investigate the nature of this bias toward congruent beliefs. The central hypothesis is that children actively strive toward congruent beliefs about physical phenomena, as a way of making sense of the world. Guided by preliminary data, this hypothesis will be tested in three specific aims: (1) Examine how children's bias toward congruence progresses as a function of age;(2) Examine the generality of children's bias toward congruence across domains and tasks;and (3) Explore ways of correcting children's errors that come out of their bias toward congruence. Under specific aim 1, an already established approach of testing children's bias toward congruence will be used across a wide range of ages. Under specific aim 2, children's bias toward congruence will be tested in different content domains and with different types of tasks. Finally, under specific aim 3, an intervention will be tested that shifts children's attention away from superficial and misleading congruence, and therefore circumvents mistaken beliefs that come out of this bias. The overall approach offers a fundamentally different picture of young children's naive physics, because it links young children's mistakes to adaptive principles of knowledge organization. The objective of this application to understand how children's bias toward organizing their knowledge leads to mistakes is an under-investigated area of child development. It is translational research with direct implications for elementary and secondary instruction in science, because it addresses what it would take to more effectively improve children's learning of physical concepts. On a more global level, the application has implications for our understanding of children's mental health, because the tendency to organize knowledge and the mistakes associated with this tendency are a sign of normal development.

The long-term goal of the current project is to understand the dynamic process that allows young children to learn about the world. It is well established that children formulate ideas about how features relate to one anther, for example how the heaviness of an object affects its buoyancy. This ability of the mind--to form beliefs--is highly beneficial for multiple cognitive activities, including perception, problem solving, and reasoning. However, the process that underlies the development of beliefs is not well understood, a gap that becomes most apparent when an educator tries to replace a child's mistaken belief: corrective feedback does not always lead to conceptual change. In order to understand the underlying process that gives rise to a child's belief and its change, it is first necessary to quantify belief stability. The current project seeks to establish such a quantifying measure, referred to as ascendency, using ideas from thermodynamics that have been applied successfully to understanding eco-systems. To test the validity of this measure for a cognitive system, preschoolers participate in a learning experiment about sinking objects. Two different learning contexts are contrasted. In one of them, children are likely to merely make guesses from one trial to the next. And in the other learning context, children are likely to form mistaken beliefs at first (e.g., that heavy stuff sinks fastest) and then change such mistaken belief as a result of feedback. This experimental context makes it possible to find transition points of belief stability, transition points that can be tested against changes in the measure of ascendency.

Research in cognitive development and education has long established the struggle children face when they are required to change a mistaken belief, for example a belief about a physical phenomenon. This resistance to conceptual change is often surprising, especially given that children sometimes spontaneously change a belief, even without any intervention at all. Quantifying the stability of a belief would make it possible to better understand such conflicting results. More importantly, it would make it possible to better time efforts to change a mistaken belief. Thus, developing a measure of belief stability could prove transformative to science education, making it possible to test the circumstances in which a child is most likely to engage in conceptual change. While only a first step towards understanding the nature of children's beliefs, the results of this project are likely to set the stage for a systematic understanding of the context in which children best learn about the world.

This REU site at the University of Cincinnati, Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Complex Psychological Systems, aims to broaden participation of underrepresented individuals within the STEM disciplines by recruiting, engaging, and training undergraduates with an interest in psychological science. Undergraduate students are trained in an interdisciplinary approach to exploring psychological science that emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between basic and applied science. Employing the integrative framework of complex systems, students are exposed to theories and methodologies that promote understanding and investigation of psychological phenomena that emphasize how the interactions that bind components of an environmentally situated, complex human system give rise to emergent and self-organized patterns of behavior.



Intellectual Merit: The primary objectives of this REU are to (1) provide undergraduate students with direct scientific experience and enable an in-depth understanding with the field of complex systems and psychology, (2) offer the preparation necessary for graduate training, (3) engage students through professional development and immersive mentoring to facilitate engagement with the field, and (4) broaden the participation of underrepresented groups through targeted recruitment and mentoring. Specifically, students gain experience in all aspects of scientific work as they daily conduct individual research projects with a faculty mentor and the faculty member?s lab. Students are also afforded an opportunity to learn about all aspects of psychological science beyond their specific project across such sub-disciplines as social, cognitive, clinical and community psychology, through weekly faculty colloquia and community and industry networking opportunities. At the end of the program, students present the outcomes of their training to the University community in a day-log symposium. In addition to research, students participate in a series of weekly professional development workshops designed to prepare them for the different career paths of psychology, including preparation for graduate school admission, GRE preparation, skills training, and scientific methods and discipline specific practices. Finally, students work and interact with an ethnically and racially diverse group of mentors and graduate students that provide not only critical research skills, but also important role models that can engender a sense of belonging and efficacy within the discipline.

Broader Impacts: A number of broader impacts will emerge for participants in this REU. First, students gain the valuable experience of developing long-term collaborative relationships that will result in scientific and scholarly research products. Second, this REU is specifically designed to promote engagement and development of underrepresented undergraduates within psychology. As such, it broadens participation in the STEM disciplines by creating pathways that ensure a more diverse supply of interested and prepared future doctoral candidates. This program further promotes sustainability of pathways through proactive recruitment practices and collaborative, cross-institutional networking. Finally, this REU also provides an innovative training opportunity unlike any other in both its focus on complex systems and psychology, and its synergistic approach to basic and applied science.

This research project builds upon an Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) project (DRL#1114674) that investigated preschoolers' self-directed science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related play experiences in outdoor nature-based playscapes. An emerging trend, nature-based playscapes have great potential for exposing young children to STEM-related phenomena, concepts, and processes in a variety of early childhood education settings, including daycare centers, pre-schools, playgrounds, and children's museums. In contrast to traditional playgrounds, playscapes are designed to result in complex, sensory-rich environments in which extensive access to natural materials and resources inspires young children's investigative and exploratory behaviors. This study explores the hypothesis that play in nature provides young children (ages 3-5) with extensive contact with science content and that a play-based curriculum could expand opportunities for STEM learning.

This Research-in-Service of Practice project will: 1) design, implement, and evaluate four digital play-based professional development curriculum modules for pre-school educators across multiple partner sites; 2) research the impact of professional training on educators' facilitation of STEM content and activities; 3) examine the impacts of play-based facilitation on young children's understanding of and engagement with STEM; and 4) evaluate the transferability and sustainability of new playscape design principles at three partner sites. This investigation will be led by researchers at the University of Cincinnati in close collaboration with early childhood educators at the Arlitt Center, Cincinnati Nature Center, and two local early childhood organizations that serve children in Head Start programs. The study will use a mixed-methods approach. Data sources include video observations, behavior mapping, teacher self-studies, surveys, interviews, child assessments and children's photo documentation of their experiences.

This research project is being funded by the AISL program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. Research that promotes the understanding of how designed play-based natural environments and related instructional approaches support the development of young children's engagement with STEM could lead to new learning theory, pedagogical approaches, and inform the design of effective informal learning experiences. Understanding the affordances of particular components of playscapes with respect to young children, as well as how pre-school educators could productively facilitate young children's engagement with, and understanding of, STEM would be a contribution to the informal STEM field.