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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdpys.2025.1496651
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Metacognition and Reflection View all 9 articles

Mind over Matter: Consistency Monitoring and Domain-Specific Learning

Provisionally accepted
Igor Bascandziev Igor Bascandziev 1*Adani Abutto Adani Abutto 2Caren M. Walker Caren M. Walker 3Elizabeth Bonawitz Elizabeth Bonawitz 1
  • 1 Harvard University, Cambridge, United States
  • 2 Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States
  • 3 University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Children’s naïve understanding of the physical world is permeated with inconsistencies among beliefs. For example, young children who believe that air does not occupy space also believe that balloons are filled up with air. Here, we asked if an ability to explicitly notice inconsistencies among statements is associated with a more mature understanding of the physical world. We tested 100 children who received a Physics Interview, a battery of Executive Functioning measures, a Cognitive Reflection measure, and a Consistency Monitoring measure. We found that Consistency Monitoring is associated with Physics Understanding, even when controlling for Age, Executive Functioning, and Cognitive Reflection. This finding highlights the importance of explicit consistency monitoring skills in the accumulation and expression of domain-specific understanding of the physical world, and it suggests future avenues for development and research of educational interventions that take into account the role of consistency monitoring skills in science learning.

    Keywords: Consistency Monitoring, Physics understanding, Cognitive reflection, executive functioning (EF), Naive theories and misconceptions

    Received: 15 Sep 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Bascandziev, Abutto, Walker and Bonawitz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Igor Bascandziev, Harvard University, Cambridge, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.