Theory & Methods

1. Theory & Methods Key Insights Penner & Klahr, Child Development, 1996 The Interaction of Domain-Specific Knowledge and Domain-General Discovery Strategies: A Study with Sinking Objects Subjects: 10, 12, 14 year-olds Procedure: 1. Why do things sink? What makes things sink fast? 2. Experiment by dropping 1-2 objects in water - objects vary in size, shape, weight, and material; all variables co-vary; cannot infer from single exp’t 3. What causes an object to sink fast? Mean trial when 1st non-weight-based experiment conducted 10 12 14 Findings Strengths and Weaknesses • Most children initially believe that weight alone affects sink rate, but after experimentation all the children learn that other attributes affect sink rate too • Older children are more likely to generate hypotheses • Older children are less likely to design experiments that demonstrate their pre-existing beliefs; they design experiments to test non-favored hypotheses • Children who find surprising results almost never follow them up with more experiments, and these results rarely change their beliefs Strengths • Quantitative and qualitative data • Examined process data as well as outcomes • Well-designed task • In-depth analyses Weaknesses/Questions • Perhaps domain-general prior knowledge is affecting the results here? • Need to expand this idea of domain-specific prior knowledge and domain-general skills • A deficit model • Small N (10 per age group)