The role of spatiotemporal, probability and language skills in facilitating understanding of causation

Lead Research Organisation: University College London

Abstract

This project aims to explore the link between spatiotemporal thinking and causal understanding in primary age children. We postulate that spatiotemporal skills are central to apprehension of cause-effect relations, since they invole the ability to conceptualise sytematic dynamic transformations of object states over time, and project these onto current conditions to extrapolate to past or future states.

Publications

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Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
ES/P000592/1 01/10/2017 30/09/2027
1924589 Studentship ES/P000592/1 01/10/2017 03/07/2019 Selma Coecke
 
Description Causal reasoning is a fundamental component of any credible form of human thinking and has been a core topic of various fields, for the reason that understanding the means by which people grasp physical causality is crucial to the formation of everyday and scientific thinking. Causal relations can be conceived from discrete events and also from temporally continuous processes. However, the process view of causation is highly neglected in psychology literature. This capacity however paves the way for understanding various fundamental issues ranging from i.e. food security to climate change. How or when the ability to reason about continuous causal processes evolves into a mature form is unknown. What kind of cognitive abilities are involved in this evolution is largely unexplored. My studies provided the first systematic investigation on these and answered the following questions:
1. Whether children can figure out causal connections form single event demonstrations?
2. Whether children's understanding varies depending on the way a causal phenomenon is presented?
3. What developmental trajectories tell us about these? How children move from stage to stage; how various cognitive competences play a role in these?
4. What are the most promising candidate abilities in predicting children's ability to reason about causal processes: is it spatial, spatial-temporal, statistical thinking indexed by probability and covariation analysis, or other verbal and nonverbal abilities?
5. Whether children's socioeconomic background affect the developmental trajectories?

Of course society needs a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) research workforce, but it more crucially needs successful reasoners in their causal judgments for full participation in a globally shaped enhanced life. Given that science literacy is increasingly linked to economic growth and is necessary for finding solutions to complex social, biological, and environmental issues, a population level engagement is needed to deal with demands of 21st century life.

Not only knowledge, but also understanding of science and its methodologies are fundamental. My studies focused on this fundamental need, and aimed to take an important step by providing robust evidence for unexplored cognitive abilities directing early scientific thinking: understanding the nature of which is necessary for teaching and learning. The way to develop this particular thinking is not through transmission of the content, instead by developing causal thinking, in particular mechanism level understanding. At the core of this, the ability to extract spatial-temporal information to understand about causal processes seems to be a key element, highly relevant to effective observation. Apparently, this is accompanied by the ability to construct mental transformations/imagery to infer invisible factors; potentially by probabilistic thinking to deal with unseen exceptions; increase in both daily and scientific vocabulary; and also development of other nonverbal abilities, as this thesis delineated. These elements can guide (1) why the gap between "literate' and 'scientifically literate' may start to widen in the population, and (2) how this gap can be closed in early years by effective interventions.

The outcomes therefore are oriented to both academic and non-academic users, and have the potential to substantially inform developmental, cognitive and educational science, alongside the development of pedagogical approaches targeting its users, such as children, teachers, their parents, producers of learning materials, school communities, and relevant institutions.
Exploitation Route Initial understanding of, and attitudes towards science have great importance in the later stages of children's and young people's education, and in adult life. Skill-based approaches to improving science performance have received less attention, and the consequences of this seem to be unrecoverable later. In the national context, although the second most educated country in the world, UK secondary students remain middle-ranking performers, falling outside of the top 20 countries in science (OECD, 2017), with national PISA science scores below OECD average (OECD, 2018), highlighting the gap in the population between being 'literate' and 'scientifically literate'. Although the primary school curriculum in England has space for science learning, and performance on TIMMS at primary level in England is generally better (Mullis et al., 2016), the focus of teaching is typically on basic scientific knowledge, event demonstrations and some practical skills of investigation (DfE, 2013). Many important aspects of scientific thinking are neglected, as articulated in the new Ofsted Framework (Ofsted, 2019), and students' progress is subject to substantial and unmitigated individual differences, leaving many children ill-prepared for more principle/mechanism-focused science in secondary school. We are working on a project and seeking for funding to take two corrective steps towards these by (1) investigating cognitive abilities directing early scientific thinking via neural and behavioural evidence, and (2) trialling an evidence-driven intervention to promote these abilities, targeting a national approach to primary science delivery.
The expected outcomes will be oriented to both academic and non-academic users, and have the potential to substantially inform developmental, cognitive and educational science, alongside the development of pedagogical approaches targeting its users - primary science educators, teacher educators, science education advisors and education policy makers, but also children themselves as learners. Outputs from the research will target academic audiences in psychology and education via journal publications, conference presentations and workshop activity with key partners.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Healthcare,Other
 
Description Academic papers, conference talks, CPD activities within the schools.
First Year Of Impact 2018
Sector Education
Impact Types Cultural,Societal
 
Description UCL, Bloomsbury and East London Doctoral Training Partnership
Amount £10,765,195 (GBP)
Funding ID ES/P000592/1 
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2017 
End 09/2027
 
Description UCL, Bloomsbury and East London ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership funding for the "Causal Cognition in Humans and Machines" workshop, 2019 (UK).
Amount £5,000 (GBP)
Organisation University College London 
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 12/2018 
End 12/2018