Cognitive Psychology Of Conceptual Change Research Paper

1. Inevitability Of Conceptual Change

The key idea of conceptual change presupposes the domain-specificity of cognitive growth, instead of focusing on general logical structures across domains, as Piaget’s developmental view assumed. It also presumes, unlike Piaget’s view, that even young children have coherent bodies of knowledge about important aspects of the world. Proponents of conceptual change claim that such bodies of knowledge often constitute naive ‘theories’ containing ontological distinctions, coherent organizations among pieces of knowledge, and causal devices or explanations as essential components (Wellman 1990). They assume that humans have a basic tendency to construct a model or theory to make sense of an observed set of data. Some innate principles constrain this process of construction in a few selected domains that are critical for survival. However, because construction of the initial theory is based on a limited database, it has to be revised as more and more facts are incorporated into the body of knowledge, unless the initial set of observed facts constitutes a representative sample of all relevant facts. Some of the innate principles may be weakened or given up, as accumulated pieces of prior knowledge come to serve as constraints, which also makes conceptual change during childhood inevitable.

2. Conceptual Change As Fundamental Restructuring

The notion of conceptual change in cognitive development has been proposed as an alternative to ‘enrichment views’ (Carey 1985); it denotes that conceptual development involves not just enrichment or elaboration of the existing knowledge systems but their considerable reorganization or restructuring. Conceptual change involves change in core concepts, conceptions, or conceptualizations. Knowledge systems before and after the conceptual change may sometimes be locally incommensurable; that is, some pieces of knowledge in one system cannot properly be translated into the other, as exemplified by the shift from children’s undifferentiated concept of heat temperature to adults’ separate concepts of heat and temperature, or the shift from the simple disjunction between animals and plants to a single, integrated concept of living things.

Conceptual change often takes the form of theory change, because concepts are considered to be embedded in theories; changing one core concept in a theory generates changes in related concepts and eventually leads to a change in the whole set of concepts. Theory change involves changes in causal devices or explanations and/or changes in the phenomena or entities that are included. Four types of theory change can be distinguished with regard to the relationship between an old theory (as the prechange system) and a new theory (as the postchange system). First, a new theory emerges from an old theory with the latter being subsumed in, or replaced by, the former. For example, between ages 2 and 4–5, the early theory of mind, which is based solely on desire and perception, is transformed into the ‘representational theory of mind’, which includes beliefs as well (Gopnik and Wellman 1994).

Second, a new theory emerges and develops from an old one, and the latter continues to exist, although it becomes less salient. Sometimes the old theory is even extended by the new theory. For example, Perner (1991) claims that, although at about 4 years of age children’s understanding of the mind changes from a ‘situation theory’ (where mental states are construed in relation to situations) to a ‘representational theory’ (where mental states are understood as serving representational functions), the latter does not replace the former but merely extends it; even adults may be situation theorists when possible, but they, unlike young children, can take a representational view when necessary. Another example is the conceptual change in naive biology that takes place approximately between ages 6 and 10 or older. Young children tend to understand biological phenomena by relying on vitalistic causality, whereas older children and adults use mechanistic causality. However, vitalistic causality continues to function as a basis of understanding and to be used in situations where people do not think they are required to reason using so-called scientific biology (Hatano and Inagaki 1996).

Third, a new theory emerges from an old one through differentiation, and new and old theories develop separately afterwards. For example, when considering biological phenomena, very young children often apply a theory in which psychology and biology are undifferentiated, whereas older children rely on a purely biological theory (Carey 1985). Another example is the emergence of a theory of matter from a theory of physics in which objects and the materials from which they are made are not fully distinguished (Smith et al. 1985).

Fourth, a new theory emerges through the integration of old subtheories. For example, young Israeli children consider plants neither living things nor nonliving things, but ‘growers’ (Stavy and Wax 1989). In contrast, they easily recognize animals as living by attending to their self-initiated movement. In other words, young children seem to possess different theories for animals and plants. As they grow older, they acquire a theory of living things by integrating these different subtheories of animals and plants.

It should be noted that conceptual change seldom occurs suddenly, just as it has taken years for concepts, conceptions, or conceptualizations to change in the history of science. The process of conceptual change tends to be slow and gradual, even if its end result is drastically different from its initial state.

3. Spontaneous S. Instructionally-Based Conceptual Change

Forms of conceptual change can also be distinguished in terms of whether the change occurs spontaneously or is induced by instruction (Hatano and Inagaki 1996, Vosniadou and Ioannides 1998). Spontaneous conceptual change is the change that results from children’s enriched experience in their physical and sociocultural environment. In other words, it occurs without systematic instruction, though schooling certainly has some general facilitative effects on it. This form of change seems to occur readily, because it is usually found among most children growing up in highly technological societies. An example is the change that occurs in young children’s naive biology, i.e., the change from a biology that is personifying and vitalistic in nature to one relying on inference based on complex, hierarchically organized biological categories and mechanistic causality (Hatano and Inagaki 1997). Another example, drawn from physics (Vosniadou and Ioannides 1998), is the change from the internal force model (that there is an internal force within stationary and moving heavy objects) to the acquired force model (that there is an acquired force within moving objects only).

Instructionally based conceptual change occurs as a product of systematic science education, more specifically, by incorporating scientific concepts and thereby correcting ‘misconceptions’ (alternative conceptions based on limited databases). The acquisition of synthetic mental models of the earth (Vosniadou and Brewer 1992) or of scientific biology having conceptual devices such as ‘photosynthesis’ or ‘evolution’ (Hatano and Inagaki 1996) is a good example of instructionally based forms of conceptual change. This form of conceptual change requires systematic teaching, and even with good teaching, only a limited portion of older children and adults may achieve it. Many studies in science education have reported that instructionally based conceptual change is difficult to induce (e.g., Clement 1982).

Cognitive develop-mentalists have been primarily concerned with spontaneous conceptual change, and have focused on specifying the initial state (initial theory) and just sketching the consequences of changes, rather than specifying the exact mechanisms of its change. Science educators, in contrast, have primarily been interested in instructionally based conceptual change, attempting to achieve the goal state (an understanding of scientific theory) as an instructional aim. Both research groups have been working in parallel until recently. However, develop-mentalists have now become interested in instructionally based change as an aid for specifying the possible mechanisms of spontaneous conceptual change. Meanwhile, science educators are trying to incorporate findings on spontaneous conceptual change into the design of their instruction.

4. Mechanisms Of Conceptual Change

We have three sets of data on how conceptual change occurs: from the history of science, conceptual development, and science education. Although these different sets of data differ markedly in terms of time span, the complexity of target entities and phenomena, the degree of intellectual sophistication of the individuals involved, and many other variables, they all illuminate some mechanisms of conceptual change.

It is clear that in every case increased knowledge is required for conceptual change, and that the pre-change system serves as a cognitive constraint in conceptual change. A general mechanism for change is the spreading of the truth-value alteration. When new inputs change the truth-value of some pieces of knowledge, the changes bring about changes in the truth-value of other connected pieces, which may induce further changes in their neighbors. Thus, there can be a drastic change in almost all pieces through continued spreading and recurring effects. Those individuals who monitor the truth-value of pieces of knowledge constituting a theory (e.g., scientists) may be sensitive to and respond to a small amount of disconfirmation or disco ordination. A good example is the ‘thought experiment’ including limiting case analyses, as indicated by Galileo’s famous thought experiment showing that heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter ones (Nersessian 1992).

However, the spreading of the truth-value alteration works as a mechanism of conceptual change only when constituent pieces of knowledge of both old and new theories are available in the knowledge structure. Individuals may stick to the old theory even when predictions from it are not supported, if they do not think of any alternative theory, model, or interpretation. Thus, conceptual change may be triggered by analogy that suggests an alternative view. Using analogies, people map their knowledge about the source to the present new case (target) so that they can make a coherent interpretation of the set of observations for the target, or even build a tentative theory. Dunbar (1995) reports that scientists in real-world laboratories often rely on analogy to generate new ideas when faced with inconsistent experimental findings.

Social interactions, including group discussion, can be sources for generating inconsistencies or disco ordinations in individuals’ existing knowledge systems, because different perspectives are presented in the interactions, and they can also be sources for providing possible solutions. In this sense, discussion or question answering can contribute to the occurrence of conceptual change. Thus, conceptual change may be induced through discursive interactions even among less sophisticated thinkers (Hatano and Inagaki 1997). It can also be a powerful mechanism of inducing conceptual change among scientists, as reported by Dunbar (1995).

5. Issues Yet To Be Studied

Some psychologists emphasize the roles of motivational factors such as goals, interests, values, and so on as mediators of the process of conceptual change. A number of studies on classroom learning, for example, strongly suggest that learners’ different goal orientations lead to different processes of conceptual change (Pintrich et al. 1993). However, we know very little about these variables.

Another unsolved issue is how the conscious monitoring of multiple knowledge systems and the flexible switches among the systems are acquired. One of the differences between young children’s naive theory and adults’ intuitive theory is that the latter has meta-conceptual components, probably as a result of conceptual change. We do not know much about this issue because it has been neglected in conceptual change research.

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