Title: From perseverative errors to correct searching
Description: Young children seem to operate under the assumption that objects always fall in a straight vertical line. When asked to search for a ball dropped down an S-shaped opaque tube, they repeatedly search directly below. Hood (1995) proposed that children have difficulty inhibiting their prepotent expectation that objects fall in a straight line. Previous research that explored this phenomenon has proven to be very useful in showing that children generate naive expectations about the motion of objects based on their everyday experience. Furthermore, previous research has been useful in showing that domain general mechanisms -- such as inhibitory control -- play a very important role in how children's naïve expectations may guide their behavior. However, many questions remain open. First, it is not clear if factors other than inhibitory control contribute to the expression of the gravity error. More specifically, it is not clear if acquiring strong inhibitory control is the only necessary factor for overcoming the gravity bias. If in addition to inhibitory control, children's understanding of the tubes mechanism plays a key role, then interventions targeting children's understanding could help them overcome the gravity bias. Thus, in my thesis, I asked a) if factors other than inhibitory control are responsible for the expression of the gravity bias and b) if so, whether different types of intervention can help children overcome the bias. Study I showed that in addition to inhibitory control, children's understanding of the tubes mechanism also plays an important role in determining their response.

Study II showed that providing children with a behavioral strategy about how to find the ball helped them overcome the bias. Study III showed that providing children with verbal information about the causal role of the tubes in the tubes mechanism also helped them overcome the bias. An educationally relevant implication of these findings is that interventions that target children's knowledge are effective even when it is clear that children's performance also depends on their executive functioning mechanisms. Finally, another important educational implication is that it may sometimes be inappropriate to insist on the critical role of firsthand experience while marginalizing the role of verbal information.
Subjects: Psychology of Learning, Developmental psychology