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Developmental changes in children's understanding of horizontal projectile motion
Author(s) -
Mou Yi,
Zhu Liqi,
Chen Zhe
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1002/ijop.12095
Subject(s) - trajectory , motion (physics) , projectile motion , psychology , projectile , salient , object (grammar) , inertial frame of reference , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , physics , classical mechanics , quantum mechanics , astronomy
This study investigated 5‐ to 13‐year‐old children's performance in solving horizontal projectile motion problems, in which they predicted the trajectory of a carried object released from a carrier in three different contexts. The results revealed that 5‐ and 8‐year‐olds' trajectory predictions were easily distracted by salient contextual features (e.g. the relative spatial locations between objects), whereas a proportion of 11‐ and 13‐year‐olds' performance suggested the engagement of the impetus concept in trajectory prediction. The impetus concept is a typical misconception of inertial motion that assumes that motion is caused by force. Children's performance across ages suggested that their naïve knowledge of projectile motion was neither well‐developed and coherent nor completely fragmented. Instead, this study presented the dynamic process in which children with age gradually overcame the influences of contextual features and consistently used the impetus concept across motion problems.