Abstract
Receiving and generating explanations is fundamental to children’s acquisition of scientific concepts. Explanations not only support conceptual change, but they can also promote further exploration and learning. For explanations to lead to exploration, children must first recognize when the explanations that they encounter are faulty or unsatisfactory. Recognizing gaps in explanatory knowledge is a powerful motivator for children’s interest in seeking out additional information to fill those gaps. However, not all children react to explanations in the same way. The likelihood of engaging in exploration may reflect individual differences in children’s background knowledge and their willingness to incorporate new information into their existing beliefs. Children’s responses to explanations may also be influenced by their prior experiences at home, and in their society. Understanding when and how explanations lead to exploration has important implications for education, particularly in the sciences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, J. M., Johnson, K. E., & Kelley, K. (2012). Longitudinal analysis of the relations between opportunities to learn about science and the development of interests related to science. Science Education, 96, 763–786. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21018
Baum, L. A., Danovitch, J. H., & Keil, F. C. (2008). Children’s sensitivity to circular explanations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 100, 146–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2007.10.007
Bennett, J., & Hogarth, S. (2009). Would you want to talk to a scientist at a party? High school students’ attitudes to school science and to science. International Journal of Science Education, 31, 1975–1998. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690802425581
Bloom, P., & Weisberg, D. S. (2007). Childhood origins of adult resistance to science. Science, 316, 996–997. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1133398
Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Feinstein, J. A., & Jarvis, W. B. G. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197–253. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.2.197
Callanan, M. A., & Jipson, J. (2001). Explanatory conversations and young children’s developing scientific literacy. In K. Crowley, C. D. Schunn, & T. Okada (Eds.), Designing for science: Implications from everyday, classroom, and professional science (pp. 21–49). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Castelain, T., Bernard, S., der Henst, V., & Mercier, H. (2015). The influence of power and reason on young Maya children’s endorsement of testimony. Developmental Science, 19, 957–966. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12336
Chi, M. T. H., de Leeuw, N., Chiu, M., & LaVancher, C. (1994). Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding. Cognitive Science, 18, 439–477. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1803_3
Chouinard, M. M. (2007). Children’s questions: A mechanism for cognitive development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 72, 1–126. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5834.2007.00413.x
Corriveau, K. H., & Kurkul, K. (2014). “Why does rain fall?”: Children prefer to learn from an informant who uses noncircular explanations. Child Development, 85, 1827–1835. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12240
Crowley, K., & Callanan, M. (1998). Describing and supporting collaborative scientific thinking in parent-child interactions. Journal of Museum Education, 23(1), 12–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.1998.11510365
Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A., Tenenbaum, H. R., & Allen, E. (2001). Parents explain more often to boys than to girls during shared scientific thinking. Psychological Science, 12, 258–261. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00347
Crowley, K., & Siegler, R. S. (1999). Explanation and generalization in young children’s strategy learning. Child Development, 70, 304–316. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00023
Danovitch, J. H., Fisher, M., Schroder, H., Hambrick, D. Z., & Moser, J. (2017). Intelligence and neurophysiological markers of error monitoring relate to children’s intellectual humility. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12960. [Epub ahead of print].
Doebel, S., Rowell, S. F., & Koenig, M. A. (2016). Young children detect and avoid logically inconsistent sources: The importance of communicative context and executive function. Child Development, 87, 1956–1970. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12563
Dunning, D. (2011). The Dunning-Kruger effect: On being ignorant of one’s own ignorance. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 247–296.
Fernbach, P. M., Sloman, S. A., Louis, R. S., & Shube, J. N. (2013). Explanation fiends and foes: How mechanistic detail determines understanding and preference. Journal of Consumer Research, 39, 1115–1131. https://doi.org/10.1086/667782
Fisher, M., & Keil, F. C. (2015). The curse of expertise: When more knowledge leads to miscalibrated explanatory insight. Cognitive Science, 40, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12280
Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A., & Wellman, H. M. (2009). Preschoolers’ search for explanatory information within adult-child conversation. Child Development, 80, 1592–1611. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01356.x
Frazier, B. N., Gelman, S. A., & Wellman, H. M. (2016). Young children prefer and remember satisfying explanations. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17, 718–736. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2015.1098649
Gauvain, M., Munroe, R. L., & Beebe, H. (2013). Children’s questions in cross-cultural perspective: A four-culture study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44, 1148–1165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022113485430
Gopnik, A. (1998). Explanation as orgasm. Minds and Machines, 8, 101–118. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008290415597
Gopnik, A. (2000). Explanation as orgasm and the drive for causal knowledge: The function, evolution, and phenomenology of the theory formation system. In F. Keil & R. A. Wilson (Eds.), Explanation and cognition (pp. 299–323). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gottfried, A. E., Preston, K. S. J., Gottfried, A. W., Oliver, P. H., Delany, D. E., & Ibrahim, S. M. (2016). Pathways from parental stimulation of children’s curiosity to high school science course accomplishments and science career interest and skill. International Journal of Science Education, 38, 1972–1995. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2016.1220690
Gutheil, G., Vera, A., & Keil, F. C. (1998). Do houseflies think? Patterns of induction and biological beliefs in development. Cognition, 66, 33–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(97)00049-8
Harris, P. L. (2012). Trusting what you’re told: How children learn from others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Adamson, L. B., Bakeman, R., Owen, M. T., Golinkoff, R. M., Pace, A., … Suma, K. (2015). The contribution of early communication quality to low-income children’s language success. Psychological Science, 26, 1071–1083. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615581493
Johnson, C. N., & Wellman, H. M. (1982). Children’s developing conceptions of the mind and brain. Child Development, 53, 222–234. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129656
Johnston, A. M., Sheskin, M., Johnson, S. G., & Keil, F. C. (2017). Preferences for explanation generality develop early in biology but not physics. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12804. [Epub ahead of print].
Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Cohen, G. C., Gastil, J., & Slovac, P. (2010). Who fears the HPV vaccine, who doesn’t, and why? An experimental study of the mechanisms of cultural cognition. Law and Human Behavior, 34, 501–516. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-009-9201-0
Keil, F. C. (2006). Explanation and understanding. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 227–254. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190100
Koenig, M. A., Clément, F., & Harris, P. L. (2004). Trust in testimony: Children’s use of true and false statements. Psychological Science, 15, 694–698. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00742.x
Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480
Kurkul, K. E., & Corriveau, K. H. (2017). Question, explanation, follow-up: A mechanism for learning from others? Child Development. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12726
Landrum, A. R., Lull, R. B., Akin, H., Hasell, A., & Jamieson, K. H. (2017). Processing the papal encyclical through perceptual filters: Pope Francis, identity-protective cognition, and climate change concern. Cognition, 166, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.015
Legare, C. H. (2014). The contributions of explanation and exploration to children’s scientific reasoning. Child Development Perspectives, 8, 101–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12070
Legare, C. H., & Lombrozo, T. (2014). Selective effects of explanation on learning during early childhood. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 126, 198–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.03.001
Lombrozo, T. (2006). The structure and function of explanations. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 464–470. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.08.004
Lombrozo, T., & Vasilyeva, N. (2017). Causal explanation. In M. Waldmann (Ed.), The oxford handbook of causal reasoning (pp. 415–432). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Luce, M. R., Callanan, M. A., & Smilovic, S. (2013). Links between parents’ epistemological stance and children’s evidence talk. Developmental Psychology, 49, 454–461. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031249
Lutz, D. J., & Keil, F. C. (2002). Early understanding of the division of cognitive labor. Child Development, 73, 1073–1084. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00458
Markman, E. M. (1979). Realizing that you don’t understand: Elementary school children’s awareness of inconsistencies. Child Development, 50, 643–655. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128929
Marshall, P. J., & Comalli, C. E. (2012). Young children’s changing conceptualizations of brain function: Implications for teaching neuroscience in early elementary settings. Early Education & Development, 23, 4–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2011.616134
Mercier, H. (2016). The argumentative theory: Predictions and empirical evidence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20, 689–700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.001
Mercier, H., Bernard, S., & Clément, F. (2014). Early sensitivity to arguments: How preschoolers weight circular arguments. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 125, 102–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.11.011
Mercier, H., Sudo, M., Castelain, T., Bernard, S., & Matsui, T. (2017). Japanese preschoolers’ evaluation of circular and non-circular arguments. European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2017.1308250
Mills, C. M., Danovitch, J. H., Rowles, S. P., & Campbell, I. L. (2017). Children’s success at detecting circular explanations and their interest in future learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1195-2
Mills, C. M., & Keil, F. C. (2004). Knowing the limits of one’s understanding: The development of an awareness of an illusion of explanatory depth. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 87, 1–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2003.09.003
Mills, C. M., Legare, C. H., Grant, M. G., & Landrum, A. R. (2011). Determining who to question, what to ask, and how much information to ask for: The development of inquiry in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110, 539–560. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.06.003
Morris, B. J., & Hasson, U. (2010). Multiple sources of competence underlying the comprehension of inconsistencies: A developmental investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 277–287. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017519
National Research Council. (2013). Next generation science standards. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Osherson, D. N., & Markman, E. (1975). Language and the ability to evaluate contradictions and tautologies. Cognition, 3, 213–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(74)90009-2
Ranney, M. A., & Clark, D. (2016). Climate change conceptual change: Scientific information can transform attitudes. Topics in Cognitive Science, 8, 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12187
Rothbart, M. K., & Jones, L. B. (1998). Temperament, self-regulation, and education. School Psychology Review, 27(4), 479–491.
Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive Science, 26, 521–562.
Ruffman, T. (1999). Children’s understanding of logical inconsistency. Child Development, 70, 872–886. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00063
Sands, K. R., Mills, C. M., Rowles, S. P., & Campbell, I. L. (2017). “Click for more info”: Children’s engagement in information seeking to close information gaps. Poster presented at the April 2017 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX.
Shneidman, L., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., & Woodward, A. L. (2016). Learning from others and spontaneous exploration: A cross-cultural investigation. Child Development, 87, 723–735. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12502
Shtulman, A. (2017). Scienceblind: Why our intuitive theories about the world are so often wrong. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Sobel, D. M. & Letourneau S. M. (in press). Curiosity, Exploration, and Children’s Understanding of Learning, in the book Active Learning from Infancy to Childhood Chapter to appear in Saylor, M. M. & Ganea, P. (Eds). Active Learning from Infancy to Childhood: Social Motivation, Cognition, and Linguistic Mechanisms. Springer International. New York, NY.
Tizard, B., & Hughes, M. (1984). Young children learning: Talking and thinking at home and at school. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Walker, C., Bonawitz, E., & Lombrozo, T. (2017). Effects of explaining on children’s preference for simpler hypotheses. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1144-0
Walker, C. M., Lombrozo, T., Legare, C. H., & Gopnik, A. (2014). Explaining prompts children to privilege inductively rich properties. Cognition, 133, 343–357. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.07.008
Wellman, H. M. (2011). Reinvigorating explanations for the study of early cognitive development. Child Development Perspectives, 5, 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-8606.2010.00154.x
Williams, A., Danovitch, J. H., & Mills, C. M. (2015). How assessing one’s own explanatory knowledge influences children’s interest in learning. Poster presented at the October 2015 meeting of the Cognitive Development Society, Columbus, OH.
Williams, J. J., & Lombrozo, T. (2013). Explanation and prior knowledge interact to guide learning. Cognitive Psychology, 66, 55–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2012.09.002
Wilson, R. A., & Keil, F. (1998). The shadows and shallows of explanation. Minds and Machines, 8, 137–159. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008259020140
Woolley, J. D., & Ghossainy, M. (2013). Revisiting the fantasy–reality distinction: Children as naïve skeptics. Child Development, 84, 1496–1510. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12081
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by National Science Foundation grant DRL-1551862 awarded to Judith Danovitch and grant DRL-1551795 awarded to Candice Mills. Special thanks to Asheley Landrum and Nicholaus Noles for feedback on ideas discussed in this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Danovitch, J.H., Mills, C.M. (2018). Understanding When and How Explanation Promotes Exploration. In: Saylor, M., Ganea, P. (eds) Active Learning from Infancy to Childhood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77182-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77182-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77181-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77182-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)