TY  - JOUR
A1  - Brod, Garvin
A1  - Breitwieser, Jasmin
A1  - Hasselhorn, Marcus
A1  - Bunge, Silvia A.
T1  - Being proven wrong elicits learning in children – but only in those with higher executive function skills
T2  - Developmental science
N2  - This study investigated whether prompting children to generate predictions about an outcome facilitates activation of prior knowledge and improves belief revision. 51 children aged 9–12 were tested on two experimental tasks in which generating a prediction was compared to closely matched control conditions, as well as on a test of executive functions (EF). In Experiment 1, we showed that children exhibited a pupillary surprise response to events that they had predicted incorrectly, hypothesized to reflect the transient release of noradrenaline in response to cognitive conflict. However, children's surprise response was not associated with better belief revision, in contrast to a previous study involving adults. Experiment 2 revealed that, while generating predictions helped children activate their prior knowledge, only those with better inhibitory control skills learned from incorrectly predicted outcomes. Together, these results suggest that good inhibitory control skills are needed for learning through cognitive conflict. Thus, generating predictions benefits learning – but only among children with sufficient EF capacities to harness surprise for revising their beliefs.
KW  - belief revision
KW  - cognitive conflict
KW  - executive functions
KW  - surprise
KW  - violation of expectation
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/55895
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-558950
SN  - 1467-7687
VL  - 23.2020
IS  - e12916
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Oxford [u.a.]
ER  -