Is the world round or flat? Children's understanding of the earth

Panagiotaki, Georgia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2975-1196, Nobes, Gavin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1991-1130 and Banerjee, Robin (2006) Is the world round or flat? Children's understanding of the earth. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3 (2). pp. 124-141. ISSN 1740-5629

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Abstract

Investigation of children's understanding of the earth provides important insights into the origins of children's knowledge, the structure of their concepts, and the development of scientific ideas. Vosniadou & Brewer (Citation1992) proposed that, under the influence of intuitive constraints and observations, children form naïve but coherent mental models of the earth: for example they believe it to be flat, or that we live inside a hollow sphere. To test this claim, 59 children aged 6 – 8 years and 33 adults were given multiple-choice questions and a 3D model selection task. This approach avoided the criticisms of recent studies by providing participants with a full range of possible answers. Even the youngest children preferred scientific responses and so demonstrated some knowledge of the earth. Only 10% of the children showed any evidence of naïve mental models; other participants who gave non-scientific answers were inconsistent and unsystematic. It is argued that intuitive constraints have little or no influence on the development of children's ideas in this domain, and that emerging knowledge of the earth progresses from being fragmented to consistently scientific.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Mental Health Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > UEA Experimental Philosophy Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Research on Children and Families
Depositing User:	Vishal Gautam
Date Deposited:	01 Jun 2006
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2023 10:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/16447
DOI:	10.1080/17405620500397732

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