Cognition Across the Lifespan

8/10/2019 Cognition Across the Lifespan

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A49CL / Cognition across the Lifespan

Coursework: What does Kuhn mean when she talks about!cientific "hinking # With reference to metacogniti$e

de$elopment% present some ideas for how teachers mightencourage scientific thinking in the classroom&'

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In order to understand the concept of scientific thinking, one should ask himself/herself what it means to think scientifically. Kuhn defines scientific thinking as the combinationof theory and evidence. In her research Kuhn wanted to answer the question if scientific

thinking can be applied outside the scope of science. The answer to this question is yes,as Kuhn characterizes the scientific thinking as human activity engaged in most people.cientific thinking is more of a social nature rather than individual thinking process.

!lso scientific thinking can be defined as knowledge seeking. It is said that the scientificthinking is something people "#, not something they $!%&.

This leads to scientific understanding which is important for children's developmentalunderstanding. This is important since children make decisions based on their reasoningand their theories, which are mostly incomplete or incorrect. In other words, childrenthink with their theories rather than about them. The modern view of scientific thinkingas theory ( evidence coordination was introduced by )iaget and Inhelder *+ - . To seek

for knowledge is to admit that ones knowledge is incomplete or insufficient and that thereis always something new to learn. There is new evidence that the theory is sub0ect torevision. This can lead to two outcomes compatibility or discrepancy. The first one iscompatible with e1isting theories with no new results while the second has slightdiscrepancy between theory and evidence. It is necessary to mention that with thediscrepancy the outcome of revision remains open. In other words theory may or may not

be revised which leaves the room for confusion what is e1actly meant by theory ( evidence coordination.

The first 2conflict3 in theory and evidence in young children appears at the age of four when children start developing theories of their own. This is the first sign that childrenstart to think about their thinking. They are becoming aware that what they know doesnot automatically mean that everyone think as them. "uring this period they also becomemore aware of situations where two realities are possible and not knowing which is true.To prove these claims series of tests have been performed by many scientists, one of which was Kuhn's e1periment conducted with her colleague )earsall *4555 . The studywas on 6 to 7 year olds, who were given the series of pictures on which were shown tworunners competing in a race. ome photos are showing who will win. 8y showing this tothe 6 year olds shows the difficulty they have to 0ustify the answer to the question 2$owdo you know93 and 2:hy do you think so93 This becomes less confusing as childrengrow up. 8y the age of 7 years they tend to make fewer mistakes, while adults make nomistakes. 8y advancing from preschool years to early school years children are facedwith difficulty of categorizing new things such as categorizing classmate's favoriteactivities and representing their findings. If children are first asked to make their theoryfor certain things and than asked to compare that theory to information presented, thanthat creates even greater difficulties for children. In Kuhn's work appears the work of other researchers who e1amined how children think. #ne such work was done by ;ehrer and chauble.


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;ehrer and chauble *4555 introduced children from kinder garden to -th grade toe1amine set of paintings. Their task was to sort the paintings according to their believewhat the artists grade was. end task was to arrange these paintings according tocategories. ubstantial development was noticed during primary school years. Klahr *4555 noticed that only few studies of scientific thinking completes the entire cycle

through phases< inquiry, analysis, inference and argument.

#ther studies show how these strategies fit within the conte1t and how they influence oneanother. #ne such study was with pre=adolescent boys' investigation of single area in this

particular case the earthquake. The problem was presented as a computer simulation withfive possible causal effects. The causal effects chosen were type of bedrock, speed of waves which did not have any impact of the result, water quality, radon gas levels andsnake activity which have simple effects. In the first, inquiry, phase investigations beginwith +5 year old child 8rad. The primary ob0ective for him was to get the good outcome.Instead of focusing on different outcomes.

!t this age children are only e1perimenting to see what happens with no interest inshaping their investigation. The inquiry faze is important because at this point goals areset and questions about activity asked to shape this faze. The second, analysis, phase hasto be accessed, processed and represented as evidence in order to reach the third phase,inference. The strategies here are struggling to coordinate between theory and evidence.#n the other hand another childe, ++ year old Tom, has a more advanced level of investigation. !lthough advanced than 8rad, Tom has two limiting factors of theeffectiveness of his theory. >irst is that he believes that he can find effects of all featurescombined. econd is that his theory in his mind is not distinctive from evidence. !fter hisfirst given results he was ready to include multiple variables as causal outcome. Tom isquite satisfied with his theory because they, from his perspective, were empiricallyverified. In reality this was not the case. In second attempt Tom chose to do thingsdifferently, totally opposite from his previous theory. Tom performed some alterations tosee what result he will get. >rom his activity it can be shown that if data is notrepresented distinctively from theory, scientific analysis will be limited. killed scientificthinking always combines well coordinated theory and evidence which are clearlydistinguished. This e1periment shows that scientific thinking is not age related, it is moreof individual nature of children tested. In light of previously found results another e1periment was conducted with ?ark, also ++ year old child, who performs better thanTom in representing the data separately from theory, but as Tom he is also focused on oneco=occurrence of variable level of outcome. The performance of both Tom and ?ark is

based on co=occurrence mental model. :ith mental model both false e1clusion and falseinclusion are consistent. Kuhn et al. 4555, observed an association between the goal of identifying effects and use of controlled comparison as an analysis strategy. This theory is

based on maturity mental model of causality in which multiple individual variablesinfluence the outcome. The model of causality which tests Tom's and ?ark's

performance, limits adoption of either goals or strategies.

?ark and Tom's performance can be compared to that of +4 year old @obbie. @obbie'slevel of awareness is increased as he realizes the importance of certain factors that are


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involved in the test of the earthquake. This is important since he will be able to defend hisarguments in the debate of claims abut evidence and alternatives. The progression from+5 year old 8rad with complete absence of goals to the +4 year old @obbie with completeawareness of analysis strategies does not imply that this is related with the age of children

but it is more related to the inter individual variability. Intra=individual variability, as

important as inter=individual variability, found to be the norm in microgenetic studies.The idea of these tests is to see how children are managing tasks with several variablesinvolved. $ow they understand the comple1ity of their research and to see how they arethinking. tating that the individuals have available range of strategies of different levelof advancement and effectiveness. ?eta level understanding is a crucial part of scientificthinking. This process, like performance, shows improvement over time. )eer collaboration can be valuable in its form and effects.

!s can be seen from e1amples, scientific thinking rests on the understanding of metacognitive development and the way children are thinking. It has been noticed thatmetacognitive development begins evolving during early school years. That is the period

when children start doing things in more automated way, also start to focus on particular bits of information. Their filtering mechanism becomes more active so at that period theystart selecting what they want to store into their memory. imply said, they start to think about their thinking. They become more aware of how they are going to solve a problemand also what they have to do to get the answer right. They begin to understand what isdemanded from the task and by doing so they may focus their attention on that particular task. !nd by doing this they can organize their information so that they can retrieve iteasier later. Teachers, do not have the lu1ury to follow only one childe, but have thewhole classroom. It is essential that children are guided towards scientific thinking,

because by 0ust giving them research material will not make them develop morescientifically. 8y knowing all this, teachers can inspire children to think scientifically byencouraging them to do research, to see what the result will be if they alter somevariables. The quality of this teaching and learning is a bit complicated part, sinceteachers have to effectively use the information as children's response to task. 8earingthis in mind teachers have to make a concept of what kind of questions are worth askingand why.

@eferences

Kuhn, ". *4554 , 8lackwell $andbook of Ahildhood Aognitive "evelopment. #1ford< B4554 by 8lackwell )ublishers ;td., C.Doswami *ed , Ahapter +E, page FE+=F F.

Kuhn, ". *4554 , ;ehrerG chauble *4555 , 8lackwell $andbook of Ahildhood Aognitive"evelopment. #1ford< < B 4554 by 8lackwell )ublishers ;td., C.Doswami *ed . Ahapter+E, page FEE.

Kuhn "., and )earsall, . *4555 . "evelopmental origins of scientific thinking. Hournalof Aognition and "evelopment, +, ++F=+4

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Cognition Across the Lifespan