Categorical Information Improves the Effectiveness of Refutation Texts

We present the results of an empirical study, which investigated the effects of the amount of information and the type of information refuted in refutation texts. The study compared the effects of three refutation texts on elementary school children’s understanding of the scientific concept of the Earth. One text refuted only the belief that the Earth is flat, the second refuted in addition the belief that people cannot live at the ‘bottom’ of the spherical Earth because they would fall down, and the third added the categorical information that the Earth is an astronomical object. The term ‘categorical information’ is used to refer to information about the category to which a concept belongs. We hypothesized that the text refuting more information as well as the one that included the categorical information that the Earth is an astronomical object would be more effective in improving students’ scientific knowledge about the Earth. The refutation of categorical information is important because it is generic and carries a great deal of implicit information that can guide new learning. The findings showed that the text that included more information as well as the categorical information facilitated scientific understanding most. The results support the hypothesis that both the amount of information and the kind of information being refuted need to be taken into consideration when deciding what to refute in a refutation text.