The role of truth and bias in parents' judgments of children's science interests.

Parents' judgments about their children's level of interest in different science topics may affect the science-learning opportunities they provide their children. However, little is known about how parents judge these interests. We used the truth and bias model of judgment of West and Kenny (Psychological Review [2011], Vol. 118, pp. 357-378) to examine factors that may affect parents' judgments of their children's science interests such as the truth (children's self-reported interest) and potential sources of parental bias. We also investigated whether several individual difference measures moderated the effect of truth or bias on judgments. Children (N = 139, ages 7-11 years) rated their level of interest in five science and five non-science topics. Separately, parents (N = 139) judged their children's interest in the same topics. Overall, parents accurately judged their children's science interests, but we also found evidence of some forms of bias, namely that parents generally under-estimated their children's science interests. In addition, parents' personal science attitudes were related to judgments of science interests, such that parents more favorable of science tended to rate their children's interest in science topics higher than parents with a less favorable view. We did not find evidence that individual differences among parents moderated the effect of truth or bias on judgments; however, parents were more accurate at judging the non-science interests of older children than younger children. Parents should be aware that they may be under-estimating their children's interest in science topics and that their personal attitudes about science may be influencing their judgments of their children's science interests.

What would happen if?: A comparison of fathers' and mothers' questions to children during a science activity.

Parents' questions are an effective strategy for fostering the development of young children's science understanding and discourse. However, this work has not yet distinguished whether the frequency of questions about scientific content differs between mothers and fathers, despite some evidence from other contexts (i.e., book reading) showing that fathers ask more questions than mothers. The current study compared fathers' and mothers' questions to their four- to six-year-old children (N = 49) while interacting with scientific stimuli at a museum research exhibit. Results indicated that fathers asked significantly more questions than mothers, and fathers' questions were more strongly related to children's scientific discourse. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of adult questions for the development of children's scientific understanding as well as broadening research to include interlocutors other than mothers.

Investigating Science Together: Inquiry-Based Training Promotes Scientific Conversations in Parent-Child Interactions.

This study examined the effects of two pedagogical training approaches on parent-child dyads' discussion of scientific content in an informal museum setting. Forty-seven children (mean age = 5.43) and their parents were randomly assigned to training conditions where an experimenter modeled one of two different pedagogical approaches when interacting with the child and a science-based activity: (1) a scientific inquiry-based process or (2) a scientific statement-sharing method. Both approaches provided the same information about scientific mechanisms but differed in the process through which that content was delivered. Immediately following the training, parents were invited to model the same approach with their child with a novel science-based activity. Results indicated significant differences in the process through which parents prompted discussion of the targeted information content: when talking about causal scientific concepts, parents in the scientific inquiry condition were significantly more likely to pose questions to their child than parents in the scientific statements condition. Moreover, children in the scientific inquiry condition were marginally more responsive to parental causal talk and provided significantly more scientific content in response. These findings provide initial evidence that training parents to guide their children using scientific inquiry-based approaches in informal learning settings can encourage children to participate in more joint scientific conversations.