ABSTRACT

Inhibition is thought to help suppress interference from misconceptions in science learning. Using a pre-, post-, and delayed posttest design, we examined the influence on learning from science texts of three inhibitory-related functions—prepotent response inhibition, resistance to distractor interference, and resistance to proactive interference. Children in the fourth and fifth grades (N = 110) read two texts, one about energy and one about the food chain. One of the texts was a standard expository text; the other was a refutation text. We found that, regardless of text type, students’ conceptual knowledge increased between pretest and posttest, a result retained at delayed posttest. Prepotent response inhibition uniquely predicted conceptual learning but only from refutation texts at both posttests after controlling for prior knowledge and reading comprehension skills. Inhibiting proactive interference also contributed to long-term conceptual learning but only in refutation text readers. These findings suggest that specific inhibitory functions play a role in learning from science texts depending on text structure.

摘要

抑制被认为有助于抑制科学学习中错误观念的干扰。使用前，后和延迟的后测试设计，我们检查了三种抑制相关功能对科学课本​​学习的影响-潜在的反应抑制，对干扰物干扰的抵抗力和对前瞻性干扰的抵抗力。四年级和五年级的孩子（N= 110）阅读两篇教科书，一本关于能源，一本关于食物链。其中一种文本是标准说明性文本。另一个是反驳文本。我们发现，无论文本类型如何，学生的概念知识在预测试和后测试之间都会增加，而结果保留在延迟的后测试中。强有力的反应抑制独特地预测了概念学习，但仅在控制了先验知识和阅读理解能力之后的两次测验中都来自反驳文本。抑制主动干扰也有助于长期的概念学习，但仅限于反驳文本阅读器。这些发现表明，特定的抑制功能在根据文本结构学习科学文本中起作用。