Randomized trial reveals that generating explanations and autonomy enhance evidence-based belief revision in adolescents, highlighting key mechanisms in scientific reasoning.
Key Points
To examine the investigatory strategies adolescents use when exploring data, evaluate the roles of evidence and explanation in updating beliefs, and determine the influence of learner autonomy.
Across three experimental studies involving adolescent learners (n = 155), participants freely investigated a multivariable database to test their initial beliefs.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: generating explanations both before and after data investigation, only after investigation, or generating no explanations.
Learner autonomy was assessed pre- and post-random assignment to evaluate changes across conditions and its association with belief change.
Only 8% of participants in sample 1 and 10% in sample 2 utilized controlled comparison strategies, predominantly relying instead on identifying favorable outcomes and co-occurring antecedents.
Prompting explanations both before and after or only after data investigation facilitated accurate belief revision compared to no explanations, with younger adolescents referencing data more frequently.
Learner-reported autonomy increased across the explanation conditions, and individual differences in autonomy significantly supported successful belief revision.