Examining the reasoning of conflicting science information from the information processing perspective-an eye movement analysis

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to investigate how readers’ visual attention distribution during reading of conflicting science information is related to their scientific reasoning behavior. A total of 25 university students voluntarily participated in the study. They were given conflicting science information about earthquake predictions to read while their eye movements during reading were recorded by the FaceLAB eye tracking system. After reading, the participants were interviewed to probe their reasoning performance. Our study showed that when university students were asked to read and reason about conflicting science information, those who paid more cognitive attention and efforts to the text areas related to backing theory, data, and warrants demonstrated better performances in coordinating theory and evidence, identifying evidence, and providing rebuttals, compared to students who paid less attention and made fewer cognitive efforts to these areas. The association between students’ background knowledge and performance of scientific reasoning was weak. Compared to those with irrelevant backgrounds, students with relevant background knowledge tended to read more of the facts when the science information involved a simple experimental study, while their attention was directed more to data and claims when the experimental study was complicated or unfamiliar. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 10: 1347–1372, 2017

Students’ Procedure When Solving Problem Tasks Based on the Periodic Table: An Eye-Tracking Study

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Influence of science text reading difficulty and hands‐on manipulation on science learning: An eye‐tracking study

“…In addition, prior knowledge and spatial ability may influence science reading and science learning (Hodgkiss et al, 2018;Kozhevnikov & Thornton, 2006;van den Broek, 2010;Vosniadou & Skopeliti, 2018;Yang, 2017). As for prior knowledge, Patterson et al (2018) indicated that reading comprehension of science texts influences learning of scientific concepts.…”

“…In science reading comprehension, students need to organize various pieces of scientific information to form a new concept, and their prior knowledge can influence how they read texts and link it to science propositions (van den Broek, 2010). Vosniadou and Skopeliti (2018) indicate that poor prior knowledge leads to the forming of misconceptions, and Yang (2017) found that it is associated with weaker scientific reasoning. As for spatial ability, Kozhevnikov and Thornton (2006) show that spatial ability could help students imagine physics phenomena, and students with low spatial awareness need the assistance of visual materials to learn physics concepts.…”

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“…Some interesting findings of illustrated science text reading were revealed. For example, whether adults, teenagers, or children are text-driven readers, they spend much more time reading texts than on scientific diagrams in science text reading (Jian, 2018, Jian, 2021Jian, 2019;Hegarty & Just, 1993;Mason et al, 2013;Yang, 2017); high-ability readers with good reading comprehension spend a much longer time on scientific diagrams and made many more eye saccades between texts and diagrams in the science articles than the low-ability students (Hannus & Hyönä, 1999;Jian & Ko, 2017); high-knowledge students transferred their eye fixations across thematically relevant contents in scientific diagrams, but low-knowledge students focused on superficial features such as color differences (Cook et al, 2008).…”