Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/bjep.12649
Keywords
domain-general cognition; domain-specific knowledge; primary school education; problem-solving; rule knowledge
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This study aimed to investigate the cognitive network underlying science problem-solving in early and middle childhood. The results showed that science problem-solving primarily relies on domain-general cognitive abilities rather than domain-specific rule knowledge. These findings have implications for cognitive theories and early science education.
BackgroundProblem-solving in early and middle childhood is of high relevance for cognitive developmental research and educational support. Previous research on science problem-solving has focussed on the process and strategies of children handling challenging tasks, but less on providing insights into the cognitive network that enables science problem-solving.AimsIn this study, we aimed to investigate whether performance in science problem-solving is mainly determined by domain-specific rule knowledge, by domain-general cognitive abilities or both.MethodsIn our study, 215 6- to 8-year-old children completed a set of three domain-specific rule knowledge tasks and three corresponding problem-solving tasks that were content-coherent, as well as a vocabulary task, and a reasoning task.ResultsCorrelational and regression analyses revealed a negligible impact of domain-specific rule knowledge on corresponding problem-solving tasks. In contrast, the associations between problem-solving performance in different domains and the associations between problem-solving performance and domain-general abilities (vocabulary and reasoning) were comparably strong.ConclusionsThe findings suggest that science problem-solving in primary school children primarily relies on domain-general cognitive abilities. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to cognitive theories and early science education.
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