Jessie-Raye Bauer|Amy E. Booth
Exploring potential cognitive foundations of scientific literacy in preschoolers: Causal reasoning and executive function
The University of Texas at Austin|The University of Texas at Austin
despite increasing emphasis united states promoting student engagement achievement science technology engineering mathematics stem fields origins scientific literacy remain poorly understood begin address limitation considering potential contributions two distinct domaingeneral skills early scientific literacy given relevance making predictions evaluating evidence consider degree causal reasoning skills relate scientific literacy measured adaptive standardized test specifically designed preschoolers also consider executive function ef potentially fundamental contributor previous research demonstrated ef predictive achievement core academic domains like reading math relationship scientific literacy particularly early childhood received little attention examine causal reasoning ef together potentially relate development scientific literacy young children recruited 125 3yearolds complete three causal reasoning tasks three ef tasks aforementioned measure scientific literacy results series hierarchical regressions revealed ef one measure causal reasoning causal inferencing related scientific literacy even controlling age ethnicity maternal education vocabulary knowledge moreover causal inferencing ability significant partial mediator ef scientific literacy although additional research required specify nature relationships current work suggests ef potential support scientific literacy perhaps part scaffolding causal reasoning skills