THE ROLE OF CHILDRENS THEORY OF MIND IN SCIENCE EXPERIMENTATION

The theory that children's development of strategies of science experi mentation is a consequence of developments in their theory of mind was examined. Seventy-two children in Grades 1, 3, and 5 participated in 5 theory-of-mind tasks and 2 multivariate physics experiments. The stu dents' ability to predict, explain, and affect the reasoning of an alt er (i.e., a doll or cartoon character) was found to predict their perf ormance in planning controlled experiments and in justifying their cau sal and noncausal inferences. Implications for developmental theory an d science education are discussed.