Why Do Children Have Permanent Belief about a Shadow? : Initial Experience and Knowledge on the Formation of Naive Physics

According to Piaget (1960) and DeVries (1986), children have the misconception of a shadow when we don't see a shadow of objects. In other words, children think that the shadow of objects is hidden somewhere. The purpose of this study is 1) to identify a cause of the permanent belief of the shadow, and 2) how the conceptual change occurred when children acquire domain knowledge. Participants in the study were 64 infants (experiment 1-1) and 73 4th graders (experiment 1-2). In experiment 1-1, it becomes clear that children can distinguish between objects and the phenomena except the situation when an obstacle blocks the light and the children are unable to see the shadow of the object. The reason of misconception is constrained by the conception of the objects. In experiment 1-2, it become clear that the knowledge of the reflection of the light helps children understand a shadow as the phenomenon, but children cannot change their misconception only by understanding a reflection of the light