Engaging in the construction and interpretation of graphs is a complex process involving concerted activation of context-specific cognitive resources. As students engage in this process, they apply fine-grained, intuitive ideas to graphical patterns: graphical forms. Using data involving pairs of students constructing and interpreting graphs, we…

Research suggests that a number of cognitive processes--including pattern perception, intentionality bias, proportionality bias, and confirmation bias--may underlie belief in a conspiracy theory. However, there are reasons to believe that conspiracy theory beliefs also depend in part on a failure to understand the probability of actual events…

Corrections are not always effective at reducing belief in misinformation. Negated corrections, which state a piece of information is not true, may only be effective at inhibiting information an observer has already encountered. We compared the effectiveness of negated corrections and replacements while manipulating initial exposure to a target…

Conspiracy beliefs have been studied mostly through cross-sectional designs. We conducted a five-wave longitudinal study (N = 376; two waves before and three waves after the 2020 American presidential elections) to examine if the election results influenced specific conspiracy beliefs and conspiracy mentality, and whether effects differ between…

The phenomenon of misconception and poor conceptual understanding is a problem that often occurs in science learning, not least in physics learning. Learning models that specifically aim to improve conceptual understanding and remediate misconceptions are not widely available. This study aims to determine the effect of the CCBL model in improving…

Information can change: science advances, newspapers retract claims, and reccomendations shift. Successfully navigating the world requires updating and changing beliefs, a process that is sensitive to a person's motivation to change their beliefs as well as the credibility of the source providing the new information. Here, we report three studies…

People are motivated to maintain consistency between importantly held identities, preferences, and judgments. In political contexts, motivated reasoning can help explain a wide range of political phenomena, including extremism, polarization, and misperceptions. However, recent findings in psychology have challenged this account. These perspectives…

In today's rapid dissemination of information, discerning truth from falsehood is crucial. We investigated how cues signaling information veracity influence memory accuracy and confidence in coherent narratives. Two studies manipulated perceptual difficulty in distinguishing true-labeled from false-labeled information in event descriptions using…

Research suggests exposure to misinformation continues to impact belief and reasoning, even if that misinformation has been corrected (referred to as the Continued Influence Effect, CIE). The present experiment explores two potentially important factors that may impact the effect: (1) learner age; and (2) length of delay between retraction and…

The ability to recognize and correct errors in one's explanatory understanding is critically important for learning. However, little is known about the mechanisms that determine when and under what circumstances errors are detected and how they are corrected. The present study investigated thought experiments as a potential tool that can reveal…

The Math Kangaroo is one of the biggest international mathematics competitions. In Finland, the number of participants has been around 15,000 in recent years. In this research, we considered Finnish fourth to ninth graders' performance in the Math Kangaroo Finland 2011, 2015 and 2019. We investigated the following problems: What kind of…

Learning processes that involve cognitive incongruity are closely tied to emotional experiences such as curiosity or confusion. The present study examined how discovering that a confidently held misconception is incorrect influences emotions and in turn the motivation to seek additional information. We asked 275 preservice teachers to judge if…

This study investigates the cognitive processes of novice students in science learning, with a specific focus on how inhibitory control is employed to overcome a common student misconception about the buoyant force in liquid, which leads to the belief that "the greater the depth an object is in a liquid, the greater the buoyant force it…

The purpose of this study was to determine K-8 preservice teacher (PST) candidates' statistical thinking when selecting the best center representation for the given data. Forty-four PSTs enrolled in a Statistics and Probability for K-8 Teachers course in a university located in the southeastern region of the United States were asked to complete a…

Future teachers face the challenge of whether and how to address their students' misconceptions--naïve concepts that often conflict with the correct scientific concepts taught at school. We developed a short-term digital training intervention on instructional knowledge about strategies for addressing students' misconceptions in physics. It…