Children’s success at detecting circular explanations and their interest in future learning

Abstract

These studies explore elementary-school-aged children’s ability to evaluate circular explanations and whether they respond to receiving weak explanations by expressing interest in additional learning. In the first study, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds (n = 53) heard why questions about unfamiliar animals. For each question, they rated the quality of single explanations and later selected the best explanation between pairs of circular and noncircular explanations. When judging single explanations, 8- and 10-year-olds, and to some extent 6-year-olds, provided higher ratings for noncircular explanations compared to circular ones. When selecting between pairs of explanations, all age groups preferred noncircular explanations to circular ones, but older children did so more consistently than 6-year-olds. Children who recognized the weakness of the single circular explanations were more interested in receiving additional information about the question topics. In Study 2, all three age groups (n = 87) provided higher ratings for noncircular explanations compared to circular ones when listening to responses to how questions, but older children showed a greater distinction in their ratings than 6-year-olds. Moreover, the link between recognizing circular explanations as weak and interest in future learning could not be accounted for solely by individual differences in verbal intelligence. These findings illustrate the developmental trajectory of explanation evaluation and support that recognition of weak explanations is linked to interest in future learning across the elementary years. Implications for education are discussed.

“I Want to Know More!”: Children Are Sensitive to Explanation Quality When Exploring New Information

“…This seemed primarily driven by responses to the circular explanations, which older children rated significantly lower than younger children, t (79) = 4.04 p < .001; in contrast, the two age groups rated the mechanistic explanations similarly, t (79) = 0.61, p = .55. This is in line with previous research (Mills et al., ). See Fig.…”

“…Even after statistically controlling for age, higher PVT scores were linked with lower ratings of circular explanations, r (74) = −.38, p < .001. This provides additional evidence to support past research finding a relationship between verbal intelligence and success at recognizing weak explanations (Mills et al., ).…”

“…A larger set of explanations were piloted with adults and narrowed down to items that were seen to best fit the above explanation categories. Similar to previous research (e.g., Corriveau & Kurkul, ; Mills et al., ), circular and mechanistic explanations were matched for length and complexity, as measured by Flesch Reading Ease Scores (Flesch, ; M circular = 93.14, M noncircular = 89.73, t (22) = 0.76, p = .455). One female recorded the voice for the questions and a different female recorded the voice for the explanations.…”

“…The closest research has instead looked at the relationship between explanation assessment and interest in learning at a general level. In this research, children who were better at detecting low‐quality explanations about animal processes took home more animal fact cards after a study than children who struggled to recognize low‐quality explanations (Mills et al., ). From this research, it is difficult to tell if children took home more animal fact cards because they recognized that they had received many weak explanations or because they were generally more interested in animals and were more carefully evaluating the explanations as a result.…”

“…In order to examine how children respond to weak explanations, we needed to first find a type of explanation sometimes given in response to questions about science that children could recognize was weak. Most research has examined children's ability to determine which of two explanations in a pair is strongest, not how children assess the quality of explanations presented one at a time (see Mills et al., for a review). But based on research to date, circular explanations (i.e., explanations reiterating information from an original question without offering any meaningful new information) appear to be an ideal weak explanation candidate for initial work examining the link between recognizing weak explanations and interest in gathering more information.…”