Children's understanding of plants
151779785
Children's understanding of animal, plant, and artifact properties between 3 and 6 years
We investigated the kinds of biological properties that children aged 3 6 years attribute to animals, plants, and artifacts by administering a property attribution task and eliciting explanations for the resulting property attributions. Findings indicated that, from the age of 3 years, children more frequently attribute properties to animals than they do to plants or artifacts. Moreover, attributions increased with age for animals, decreased for artifacts, and remained constant for plants. Concerning the conceptual development of animals and plants, results showed that the properties subtending children's initial conceptualization of animals are movement and nutrition, followed by growth, backed up by perceptual, biological, and categorical explanations. By contrast, for plants, the properties are growth and then movement, backed up by perceptual and biological arguments. These findings provide some support for the idea that both conceptual information and perceptual cues influence children's conceptual development. Highlights This paper compares children's understanding of animals, plants, and artifacts between 3 and 6 years, in terms of property attributions and the spontaneous explanations of these objects. With a property attribution task, children more frequently attribute properties to animals than they do to plants or artifacts. Findings suggest that both conceptual information and perceptual cues influence children's conceptual development.
Nathalie Fouquet Olga Megalakaki Florence Labrell
219982087
How Children's Cognitive Reflection Shapes Their Science Understanding
Learning science requires contending with intuitions that are incompatible with scientific principles, such as the intuition that animals are alive but plants are not or the intuition that solids are composed of matter but gases are not. Here, we explore the tension between science and intuition in elementary school aged children and whether that tension is moderated by children's tendency to reflect on their intuitions. Our participants were children between the ages of 5 and 12 years (n 142) They were administered a statement verification task, in which they judged statements about life and matter as true or false, as well as a children's Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT D) in which they answered "brain teasers" designed to elicit an intuitive, yet inaccurate, response that could be corrected upon further reflection. Participants also received a tutorial on the scientific properties of life or matter, sandwiched between two blocks of the statement verification task. We found that performance on the statement verification task, which pitted scientific conceptions against intuitive conceptions (e.g. "cactuses are alive" was predicted by performance on the CRT D, independent of age. Children with higher levels of cognitive reflection verified scientific statements more accurately before the tutorial, and they made greater gains in accuracy following the tutorial. These results indicate that children experience conflict between scientific and intuitive conceptions of a domain in the earliest stages of acquiring scientific knowledge but can learn to resolve that conflict in favor of scientific conceptions, particularly if they are predisposed toward cognitive reflection.
Frontiers in Psychology
Andrew G Young Andrew Shtulman
146442242
Preschool Children's Understanding of the Dichotomy between the Natural and the Artificial
The current study examined preschool children's understanding of the dichotomy between the natural and the artificial, i.e. a classification consisting of all natural kinds (both animate and inanimate) on the one hand, and of all artifacts on the other. Whilst previous research has studied children's differentiation of animate (i.e. animals, plants) from inanimate kinds (i.e. natural substances, artifacts) as well as animals from artifacts on the basis of the items' intrinsic structural and causal properties, no study has so far examined children's understanding of the dichotomy between natural and artificial kinds as a supraordinate conceptual division based on the items' extrinsic origin. Two experiments are reported which support the presence of a well defined dichotomy in both preschool children and adults. That is, children in the current study have no difficulties understanding the contrast between natural and artificial as well defined categories, unlike their counterparts in those studies which investigate the contrasts between different natural categories, on the one hand, and the single artificial category, on the other. The discrepancy between the present findings and the earlier research is explained in terms of children's greater familiarity with the criterion (extrinsic to the object) which underlies the dichotomy between the natural and the artificial than with criteria (intrinsic to the object) which underlie the less inclusive divisions such as animate vs inanimate, and animal vs artifact.
Olivera Petrovich
132994352
Young children's environmental judgement and its relationship with their understanding of the concept of living things
Abstract Do young children think that plants deserve morally based respect or, on the contrary, do they feel that respect for plant life is nothing more than another behavioural norm similar to, for instance, one that states that you should not pick your nose in public? This study examines how dilemmas involving environmental, moral and socio conventional situations are comprehended in early childhood so as to investigate the issue of whether young children attach a significant degree of severity to transgressions against plant life in comparison with disregarding socially accepted rules. Additionally, young children's judgements are put into perspective alongside their understanding of the concept of living things in order to shed light on the role that grasping essential biological notions might play in the emergence of young children's assessments of actions that pose a threat to the environment. The sample of the study consists of 328 children (162 girls and 166 boys) who attend Early Years Education or Primary Education and the data examined comes from the individual interviews conducted with the children. The results are discussed in connection with the current understanding of the source of ethical judgements which emphasises the importance that emotions seem to play in the construction of moral thinking.
Jose Domingo Villarroel Alvaro Anton Daniel Zuazagoitia Teresa Nuno
54169850
Pupils' Understanding of Food Concept: The Assessment of Children's Preconceptions Ideas about Food
This paper explains students' ideas about food as a scientific concept that a questionnaire was administered to 40 secondary level students. The findings have been shown that in students' mind food was essential for living, growth and supplying energy. Also students could accept the idea of food could be in liquid form. Students' understanding of the biological concept of food was anthropocentric and not applied across living organisms in heterotrophs (animals) or autotrophs (plants) as a whole.Many students confused water food or not. Mostly water not accepted as a food because of it does not yield energy for organisms. It looks a vital point that to emphasizing food as any substance (in solid or liquid state) can obtainable energy during respiration during alive activity. Keywords: Food, misconceptions, secondary pupils
Fulya Oztas Haydar Oztas
189534297
Microworlds for Ecology Explorations: From DigitalSeed to Biosphera in fostering children's understanding of plant biology
The essence of this study is the idea to use the human ability to notice patterns in the environment, alter these patterns and observe the consequences, as the key manipulatory experiences to grasp some ideas about plant biology. Some of the findings here contained show a positive impact of this framework in children's interaction with plants. In addition, observations suggest th at plant's fragility and slow reaction to stimuli are factors responsible for children's misconceptions and lack of interest in them. Two solutions found here will be described in terms of their design and evaluated. They are the DigitalSeed and the Biosphera, for each of which, an interplay between virtual reality and physical elements will constitute the strategy to facilitate development in children's representations. The former highlights the concept of life cycle enabling the learner to "physically" feed a virtual seed; the latter enables the learner to define a "growth program" for a virtual plant bound to an actual plant. A key aspect of the design is the use of physical and virtual avenues of discovery, freeing the user to interact with the system, following non linear paths of interaction, and testing multiple possible futures of the "plant story" The main value of this work will rest in the design domain because no systematic study has been completed on the long term impact of this technology on children's understanding of plant biology.
Mario Cherubini
148143501
Children's understanding of illness
Whether young children have dependent naive biology is still a debatable question. This study investigated whether children could distinguish living from nonliving things in terms of illness and whether they understood its non intentional cause. Three age groups, 72 preschoolers were interviewed, with half from rural and half from urban area. Results showed that while most 3 year olds thought only human beings could get sick, more and more older children realized that both animals and plants could. Children thought that one could not stop sickness or get sick just by their intention. There was significant performance difference between rural and urban children whose parents had different educational background
Lq Zhu Hf Gang
84569315
Early understanding of the concept of living things: an examination of young children's drawings of plant life
This paper looks at the drawings of a sample of 118 children aged between 4 and 7 years old on the topic of plant life and relates the content to their knowledge of the concept of living things. The research project uses two types of tests: a task to analyse the level of understanding of the concept of living things and a free drawing activity. The data presented indicates that children with the most accurate knowledge concerning what living things are, more frequently draw key aspects of plant life such as the sun, rainfall and clouds and also tend to draw more types of plants. These conclusions point to the use of examining young children's depictions in order to study how the concept of living things is developed in early childhood.
Jose Domingo Villarroel Guillermo Infante
144372848
Children's justifications of plants as living things between 5 and 7 years of age
Children do not recognize plants as living things before the age of 6. In order to consider plants as part of the biological domain, children have to inhibit motion as a mandatory characteristic of life and consider other properties as well. We designed a special animated task to help us study how children's explanations about plants change during preschool. This task contained pairs of items, with unexpectedly moving plants being contrasted with motionless animals and artefacts. Children were requested to compare these pairs and to answer "why" questions. Participants were 60 typically developing children aged 5, 6 and 7. Mention of the unexpected motion of plants increased with age, while biological justifications tended to be more frequent in older children for animals only. Functional justifications were hardly ever provided and only for plant artefact pairs. These findings contribute to a better understanding of young children's conceptions of plants.
Laurianne Brule Florence Labrell Olga Megalakaki Nathalie Fouquet Stephanie Caillies
201355450
EFFECT OF IPAD USE ON SAUDI CHILDREN'S CLASSIFICATION OF AND JUSTIFICATIONS REGARDING LIVING THINGS: A SOCIO CULTURAL LEARNING PERSPECTIVE
This semi empirical research utilises a structured interview interview approach to explore Saudi children's ideas about living things and to examine the effects of iPad use based on a socio cultural perspective involving group work and discussion. The sample comprised 40 grade 1 children; 20 were empirically taught using iPads according to a socio cultural perspective, and 20 were taught in the traditional teaching style. The structured interview approach in which children classified 21 cards (7 animals, 7 plants, and 7 artefacts) as living or nonliving things. The results indicated that children had varied misconceptions regarding the classification of and justifications about living things, especially regarding plants. The use of iPads according to a socio cultural perspective had a positive effect on children's knowledge development. Children in the iPad group performed better in categorising different types of animals and plants and in justifying their views.
Journal of Baltic Science Education
Fayadh Hamed Alanazi