Contributions of causal reasoning to early scientific literacy

Shavlik, Margaret; Koeksal, Oezguen; French, Brian F.; Haden, Catherine A.; Legare, Cristine H. und Booth, Amy E. (2022): Contributions of causal reasoning to early scientific literacy. In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Bd. 224, 105509

Abstract

Although early causal reasoning has been studied extensively, inconsistency in the tasks used to assess it has clouded our under-standing of its structure, development, and relevance to broader developmental outcomes. The current research attempted to bring clarity to these questions by exploring patterns of performance across several commonly used measures of causal reasoning, and their relation to scientific literacy, in a sample of 3-to 5-year-old children from diverse backgrounds (N = 153). A longitudinal confir-matory factor analysis revealed that some measures of causal rea-soning (counterfactual reasoning, causal learning, and causal inference), but not all of them (tracking cause-effect associations and resolving confounded evidence), assess a unidimensional fac-tor and that this resulting factor was relatively stable across time. A cross-lagged panel model analysis revealed associations between causal reasoning and scientific literacy across each age tested. Causal reasoning and scientific literacy related to each other con-currently, and each predicted the other in subsequent years. These relations could not be accounted for by children's broader cognitive skills. Implications for early STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) engagement and success are discussed.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Psychologie und Pädagogik
• Themengebiete: 100 Philosophie und Psychologie > 150 Psychologie
• ISSN: 0022-0965
• Sprache: Englisch