Strategies of Knowledge Acquisition

Methodologies of Knowledge Acquisition Author(s): Deanna Kuhn, Merce Garcia-Mila, Anat Zohar, Christopher Andersen, Sheldon H. White, David Klahr, Sharon M. Carver Source: Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 60, No. 4, Strategies of Knowledge Acquisition (1995), pp. i+iii+v-vi+1-157 Published by: Blackwell Publishing in the interest of the Society for Research in Child Development Stable URL: http://www. jstor. organization/stable/1166059 . Gotten to: 16/09/2011 13:38 Your utilization of the JSTOR document demonstrates your acknowledgment of the Terms and Conditions of Use, accessible at . ttp://www. jstor. organization/page/data/about/strategies/terms. jsp JSTOR is a not-revenue driven assistance that helps researchers, scientists, and understudies find, use, and expand upon a wide scope of substance in a confided in advanced chronicle. We use data innovation and devices to expand efficiency and encourage new types of grant. For more data about JSTOR, i f it's not too much trouble contact [emailâ protected] organization. Blackwell Publishing and Society for Research in Child Development are working together with JSTOR to digitize, safeguard and stretch out access to Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. ttp://www. jstor. organization OF MONOGRAPHS THE IN FOR SOCIETY RESEARCH CHILD DEVELOPMENT Serial No. 245, Vol. 60, No. 4, 1995 OF STRATEGIES KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION Deanna Kuhn Merce Garcia-Mila Anat Zohar Andersen Christopher BY WITH COMMENTARY SheldonH. White David Klahr and Sharon M. Carver BY AND A REPLY THEAUTHORS MONOGRAPHSTHE OF SOCIETY RESEARCH FOR INCHILD DEVELOPMENT SerialNo. 245, Vol. 60, No. 4, 1995 CONTENTS ABSTRACT v I. Presentation 1 II. Technique 24 III. Information IN ACQUISITION ADULTS 33 IV. Information IN ACQUISITION CHILDREN 42 V. Procedures STRATEGY AND CHANGE ADULTS 50 IN VI.STRATEGIES STRATEGY AND CHANGE CHILDREN 64 IN VII. THE PROCESS CHANGE OF 75 VIII. Ends 98 REFERENCES121 ACKNOWLEDG MENTS 128 COMMENTARY TOWARD EVOLUTIONARY AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC REASONING SheldonH. White 129 SCIENTIFIC THINKING ABOUT SCIENTIFIC THINKING David Klahr and Sharon M. Carver 137 REPLY SCIENTIFIC AND KNOWLEDGE THINKING ACQUISITION Deanna Kuhn 152 CONTRIBUTORS 158 STATEMENT OF EDITORIAL POLICY 160 ABSTRACT KUHN, DEANNA; GARCIA-MILA,MERCE; ZOHAR, ANAT; and ANDERSEN, CHRISTOPHER. WithCommentary Strategiesof KnowledgeAcquisition. nd H. KLAHR SHARON CARVER; and SHELDON WHITE by DAVID M. by KUHN. also, a Reply by DEANNA theSociety Research in Monographs of for Child 1995, 60(4, SerialNo. 245). Improvement, In this Monograph, is knowledgeacquisition examinedas a processinthe coordinationof existing theorieswith new proof. In spite of the fact that volving scientists studyingconceptualchange have describedchildren'sevolving theorieswithinnumerousdomains,relatively little attentionhas been given to the components meansof whichtheoriesare shaped and revisedand by knowledgeis therebyacqui red.Centralto the presentworkis the claimthat strategiesof information acquisitionmay differ significantlyacross (just as inside) individualsand can be conceptualizedwithin a formative structure. To studythese strategiesand their development,we utilize a microgenetic strategy. Our application the strategy allowsextendedobservation the of securing knowledgewithina domain,of the strategiesused to get this knowledge,and of the changein these methodologies overtime.The technique likewise permits qualitativeanalysisof individualsand quantitativeanalysisof gatherings to be utilized in corresponding manners. Information obtaining processeswereexaminedat twoage levels. Junior college grown-ups and preadolescentsparticipatedin two 30-45-min individualsessionseach week over a 10-weekperiod. Subjectsworked on problemsinvolvinga wide scope of contentfrom both physicaland social spaces. An exchange configuration was arranged inside this microgeneticframework,for the purposeof assessinggenerality of systems withthe presentation of new content.Subjectsof the two ages showedprogressacrossthe 10 weeksin the degree of strategiesused just as closeness the structure that this progresstook. in levelsthatdid not varygreatly,childrenshowed Despiteinitialperformance V less vital improvement than grown-ups and substandard information obtaining. Key advancement was kept up by the two gatherings when new issue content was presented halfway through the meetings. The outcomes along these lines show critical sweeping statement of procedures and technique change across content, just as populations.A further sign of simplification was the rise of new systems at about a similar time in the social and physical areas, despite the fact that exhibition in the social space by and large falled behind that in the physical space. At the individual level, blended use of legitimate and invalid methodologies was the standard. This finding in a grown-up populace recommends that this inconstancy is an incr easingly broad quality of human execution, as opposed to one remarkable to conditions of formative transition.Another wide ramifications of this changeability is that solitary event appraisal may give a, best case scenario fragmented, and frequently deceptive, portrayal of a person's methodology. Still another ramifications is that in any event part of inconstancy in execution across content lives in the subject, as opposed to solely in the assignment. That prevalent techniques present in a person's repertory are not generally applied features the way that more is associated with equipped execution than the capacity to execute viable strategies.Metastrategic capability the capacity to ponder and oversee vital information and metacognitive fitness the capacity to think about the substance of one's information are underlined as basic segments of intellectual turn of events. These skills decide the methodologies that are really utilized, among those possibly accessible, and along these lines the viability of a person's exhibition. At long last, the nearness of different procedures and numerous types of capability incredibly entangles the depiction of formative change. Instead of a nidimensional progress from a to b, the change procedure must be conceptualized as far as numerous parts following individual (despite the fact that not free) ways. VI I. Presentation Knowledge securing is a procedure principal to endurance that starts early and proceeds for the duration of the life expectancy. What do we are aware of the procedure? Research inside the most recent decade has clarified that since the beginning information is sorted out into speculations that are expounded and modified after some time and that fill in as vehicles for understanding the world.In different words, information procurement to an enormous degree happens through a procedure of hypothesis arrangement and amendment. Among analysts embracing an information or hypothesis based way to deal with intell ectual turn of events, the emphasis has been on depicting the substance of these developing speculations in a wide scope of spaces, and we presently know a decent arrangement about the continuously increasingly explained information that offspring of different ages are probably going to have inside various substance areas (Gelman and Wellman, in press; Wellman and Gelman, 1992).In difference, generally little consideration has been given to the procedure of information procurement itself, that is, the systems by methods for which speculations are shaped and updated and information is subsequently obtained. It is this subject is the focal point of the current work. Inside the information based methodology, the suspicion that has been at any rate understood, and is every so often voiced expressly (Brewer and Samarapungavan, 1991; Carey, 1985a, 1986), is that these components stay pretty much steady across development.The present work lays on a differentiating guarantee that techniques of information securing change altogether across (just as inside) people and can be conceptualized in formative terms. Information AS ACQUISITION THEORY-EVIDENCE COORDINATION The general type of information and information procurement concentrated here is that of the connection between one classification of occasion and another. Most generally, such relations are understood causally (Cheng and Nisbett, 1993), with a precursor class of occasion deciphered as affecting a result IKUHNETAL. class (e. g. , ingestion of food and a youngster's real development). Supporting this type of information is a progressively essential one having to do with how occasions or articles fit together into classifications (e. g. , nourishments, nonfoods, and changeless versus transitory real changes). In spite of the fact that the last isn't analyzed here, the two types of information include speculations as sorting out gadgets (Barrett, Abdi, Murphy, and Gallagher, 1993; Keil, 1991; Medin, 1989; Wisniew ski and Medin, 1994).Children's and grown-ups' hypotheses about causal relations experience correction as new proof is experienced. Thus, information procurement procedures include the assessment of proof and inductive causal derivation. Late hypotheses of inductive causal deduction in grown-ups (Cheng and Novick, 1990, 1992) are reliable with prior records (Alloy and Tabachnik, 1984; Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, and Thagard, 1986) in ascribing unmistakable jobs both to earlier desire (or hypothesis) and to proof of covariation (of the significant components) in encouraging surmisings of causality.It is hard to clarify straightforward idea arrangement (Keil, 1991) however even essential molding marvels in creatures without summoning a build that includes desire (Holyoak, Koh, and Nisbett, 1989). An origination of inductive derivation as including a coordination of hypothesis and proof (Kuhn, 1989) appears differently in relation to prior ways to deal with the improvement of inductive surmising systems for instance, the Piagetian research on formal activities wherein such methodologies were viewed as to a great extent area autonomous and in this manner similarly relevant to any substance independent of earlier information or expectation.In observational investigations of grown-ups' multivariable inductive causal deduction, subjects ordinarily are given a lot of various cases in which at least one potential causes does or doesn't happen and a