The development of representational ability in physical sciences in relation to the ability to reason in the social domain

In this paper we investigated children’s ability to handle representations related to their intuitive experience of the world, alongside the scientific, non-intuitive knowledge acquired during school years. The results of our previous studies have shown that understanding of scientific, non-intuitive explanations does not necessarily lead to an understanding of the different ways in which the same situation in the world can be interpreted. The ability to think at the same time for two different representations shows a developmental progress as children gradually understand "seeing" and "seeing as". This understanding seems to be related to changes not only in children’s ontological commitments but also in their epistemological commitments as well as in their representations. The hypothesis that the beginnings of this understanding can be found in children’s ability to think about the differences between their beliefs and the beliefs of others in the social domain (Theory of the Mind) was investigated in this study. Sixty-three students (mean age: 10 years and 8 months) were administered Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks and Theory of the physical world tasks. The results seem to confirm the existence of common cognitive-epistemological elements between the two domains of thought. ToM appeared to be a strong predictor of children's ability to reason on different perspectives of the physical world. The results are discussed based on their likely impact on the design of educational interventions that promote conceptual change. © 2022, Natassa Kyriakopoulou, Stella Vosniadou Licence CC-BY-SA 4.0