Acquisition of formal scientific reasoning by 10- and 13-year-olds: Detecting interactive patterns in data.

Attempted to teach a scientific reasoning skill, the detection of interactive patterns in data, to 128 10- and 13-yr-olds. The instructional procedure was closely based on a flow chart model of a strategy sufficient to solve the types of interaction problems that would be presented. Predictions from the model concerning the general efficacy of the procedure, the relative difficulty of the problems, and the pattern of learning were largely supported. The fact that some of the predictions ran counter to previous, related findings and to the general intuitions provided additional evidence of the model's utility. The advantages of formal models in deriving nonintuitive predictions and in distinguishing what is taught from what is learned are discussed. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)