title: Selective effects of explanation on learning during early childhood.
abstract: Two studies examined the specificity of effects of explanation on learning by prompting 3- to 6-year-old children to explain a mechanical toy and comparing what they learned about the toy's causal and non-causal properties with children who only observed the toy, both with and without accompanying verbalization. In Study 1, children were experimentally assigned to either explain or observe the mechanical toy. In Study 2, children were classified according to whether the content of their response to an undirected prompt involved explanation. Dependent measures included whether children understood the toy's functional-mechanical relationships, remembered perceptual features of the toy, effectively reconstructed the toy, and (for Study 2) generalized the function of the toy when constructing a new one. Results demonstrate that across age groups, explanation promotes causal learning and generalization but does not improve (and in younger children can even impair) memory for causally irrelevant perceptual details.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. Electronic address: legare@austin.utexas.edu.
authors.forename: Cristine H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Legare
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Tania
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lombrozo
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011340:Problem Solving; D002666:Psychology, Child; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods
keywords: Causal explanation; Causal reasoning; Cognitive development; Early childhood; Generalization; Learning; Self-explanation