Linking Brain Growth with the Development of Scientific Reasoning Ability and Conceptual Change during Adolescence

Abstract

The hypothesis that an early adolescent brain growth plateau and spurt exists and that this plateau and spurt influence students' ability to reason scientifically and to learn theoretical science concepts was tested. In theory, maturation of the prefrontal lobes during early adolescence allows for improvements in students' abilities to inhibit task-irrelevant information and coordinate task-relevant information, which along with both physical and social experience influences scientific reasoning ability and the ability to reject scientific misconceptions and accept scientific conceptions. Two hundred ten students ages 13 -16 years enrolled in four Korean secondary schools were administered tests of four prefrontal lobe activities, a test of scientific reasoning ability, and a test of air pressure concepts derived from kinetic-molecular theory. A series of 14 lessons designed to teach the concepts were then taught. The concepts test was then readministered following instruction. As predicted, among the 13-and 14-year-olds, performance on the prefrontal lobe measures remained similar or regressed. Performance then improved considerably among the 15-and 16-year-olds. Also as expected, the measures of prefrontal lobe activity correlated highly with scientific reasoning ability. In turn, prefrontal lobe activity and scientific reasoning ability predicted concept gains and posttest performance. A principal components analysis showed that the study variables had two main components, which were interpreted as an inhibiting and a representing component. Therefore, theoretical concept acquisition was interpreted as a process involving both the inhibition of task-irrelevant information (i.e., the rejection of intuitively derived misconceptions) and the representation of task-relevant information (i.e, complex hypothetico-deductive arguments and counterintuitive scientific conceptions about nonobservable entities). © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: [44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] 2000 Theoretical RationaleThe purpose of the present research was to test the theory that the acquisition of theoretical concepts (e.g., air pressure) as a consequence of science instruction depends also on the development of hypothetico-deductive reasoning ability. Furthermore, the development of hypothetico-deductive reasoning depends in part on maturation of the brain's prefrontal lobes. In theory, the acquisition of a theoretical concept such as air pressure depends in part on the development of hypothetico-deductive reasoning ability because this ability is needed to construct arguments used to reject intuitively derived misconceptions (e.g., suction) prior to acquiring theoretically derived scientific concepts (i.e., undergo the necessary conceptual change). As depicted in Figure 1, the development of hypothetico-deductive reasoning ability depends in part on maturation of the brain's prefrontal lobes. Presumably this is so because such maturation results in increases i...

Proposition for improving the classical models of conceptual change based on neuroeducational evidence: conceptual prevalence

“…It appears that inhibition can explain from 18 (Thibault, 2013) to 29 percent (Kwon & Lawson, 2000) of the conceptual gain in certain tests, including the well-known Force Concept Inventory (Hestenes, Wells, & Swackhammer, 1992), in a semester.…”

Middle School Students’ Approaches to Reasoning about Disconfirming Evidence

“…We further focused on middle-school students because prior research has documented relationships between the measures relevant to our research questions in this age group. There is a correlation between scientific reasoning and WCST, a measure of complex cognitive ability, in middle-and high-school students (Kwon & Lawson, 2000). In addition, prior research has found a relation between achievement in mathematics, a subject closely related to science, and motivational orientation -possessing an incremental versus entity theory of implicit intelligence -in middle-school students (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007).…”

“…That better scientific reasoning was associated with making more perseverative errors on the WCST was surprising given that such errors are associated with lesions to prefrontal cortex (Milner, 1963), with lower executive function and psychometric intelligence (Miyake et al, 2000), and with worse logico-scientific reasoning in middle and high school children (Kwon & Lawson, 2000). We offered a post hoc interpretation of this finding above, which we articulate further here.…”

“…To put these fits in context, only one previous educational psychology study has used cognitive measures to predict scientific reasoning ability in middle (and high) school students. Kwon and Lawson (2000) found that age, WCST, Tower of London, Group Embedded Figures, and "mental capacity" accounted for 56.1% of the variance on a measure of logico-scientific reasoning (Lawson, 1978). The final, full regression models for each group are shown in Table 3.…”

“…The current work also has implications for the developmental neuroscience of scientific reasoning and cognitive abilities more generally (Kwon & Lawson, 2000). Neuroimaging studies of children and adults have established prefrontal cortex as a neural correlate of WM (Darki & Klingberg, 2015), inhibition (Rueda et al, 2004), and WCST performance (Konishi et al, 2008).…”