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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Published on: June 1, 2015

Situated naïve physics: task constraints decide what children know about density.

Heidi Kloos¹, Anna Fisher, Guy C Van Orden

¹Center for Cognition, Action, and Perception, Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0376, USA. heidi.kloos@uc.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. General

|September 22, 2010

Summary

Children

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Science Education

Background:

Children often exhibit misconceptions about density.
Preschoolers sometimes demonstrate an understanding of density, creating conflicting observations.

Purpose of the Study:

To reconcile conflicting findings on children's understanding of density.
To investigate how experimental constraints influence children's performance on density tasks.

Main Methods:

Experiments manipulated the salience of object density, mass, and volume.
Children (2–9 years) and adults predicted if objects would sink or float.

Main Results:

Children's performance varied based on the salience of density cues.
Stimulus arrangements highlighting density improved performance compared to those emphasizing mass/volume.

Conclusions:

Children's performance on density tasks is driven by experimental constraints, not necessarily stable knowledge.
Teaching non-obvious concepts like density requires careful consideration of how information is presented.