Developmental PsychologyScientific Thinking in Elementary School: Children’sSocial Cognition and Their EpistemologicalUnderstanding Promote Experimentation SkillsChristopher Osterhaus, Susanne Koerber, and Beate SodianOnline First Publication, December 15, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000260

CITATIONOsterhaus, C., Koerber, S., & Sodian, B. (2016, December 15). Scientific Thinking in ElementarySchool: Children’s Social Cognition and Their Epistemological Understanding PromoteExperimentation Skills. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000260

Scientific Thinking in Elementary School: Children’s Social Cognition andTheir Epistemological Understanding Promote Experimentation Skills

Christopher OsterhausFreiburg University of Education and University of

Wisconsin—Madison

Susanne KoerberFreiburg University of Education

Beate SodianLudwig-Maximilians-University of Munich

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children’s experi-mentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gradeswere assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]),epistemological understanding (understanding the nature of science), and general information-processingskills (inhibition, intelligence, and language abilities) in a whole-class testing procedure. A multipleindicators multiple causes model revealed a significant influence of social cognition (AToM) onepistemological understanding, and a McNemar test suggested that children’s development of AToM isan important precursor for the emergence of an advanced, mature epistemological understanding.Children’s epistemological understanding, in turn, predicted their experimentation skills. Importantly,this relation was independent of the common influences of general information processing. Significantrelations between experimentation skills and inhibition, and between epistemological understanding,intelligence, and language abilities emerged, suggesting that general information processing contributesto the conceptual development that is involved in scientific thinking. The model of scientific thinking thatwas tested in this study (social cognition and epistemological understanding promote experimentationskills) fitted the data significantly better than 2 alternative models, which assumed nonspecific, equallystrong relations between all constructs under investigation. Our results support the conclusion that socialcognition plays a foundational role in the emergence of children’s epistemological understanding, whichin turn is closely related to the development of experimentation skills. Our findings have significantimplications for the teaching of scientific thinking in elementary school and they stress the importanceof children’s epistemological understanding in scientific-thinking processes.

Keywords: scientific thinking (scientific reasoning), social cognition, epistemological understanding,nature of science (NOS), elementary school

Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000260.supp

To understand the difference between a conclusive and aninconclusive experiment, to be able to interpret complex patternsof data, or to understand that science is a quest for knowledge arejust few of the important scientific-thinking skills that enable us tointentionally seek an understanding of our environment (Kuhn,

2011). Although an increasing body of research suggests thatrelevant precursors of scientific thinking already emerge in infancy(see, e.g., Gopnik et al., 2004; Sobel, Tenenbaum, & Gopnik,2004), significant advances in children’s scientific-thinking skillsoccur in and around elementary school age (Koerber, Mayer,Osterhaus, Schwippert, & Sodian, 2015; Piekny & Maehler, 2013),where a broad range of advanced, more mature abilities firstemerges (for a review, see Zimmerman, 2007).

Experimentation skills have traditionally been the hallmark ofresearch on scientific thinking (e.g., Bullock & Ziegler, 1999;Case, 1974; Chen & Klahr, 1999; Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Kuhnet al., 1995). Using diverse tasks—ranging from hands-on overchoice and selection tasks to interviews, researchers have assessedchildren’s ability to design controlled experiments across a widerange of domains (e.g., physics, mechanics, earth science, psychol-ogy, etc.). In these tasks, children need to demonstrate that theymaster the so-called control of variables strategy, which demandsthat controlled experiments only vary the focal variable whileholding constant all nonfocal variables (see, e.g., Kuhn et al.,

Christopher Osterhaus, Department of Psychology, Freiburg Universityof Education, and Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School ofEducation, University of Wisconsin—Madison; Susanne Koerber, Depart-ment of Psychology, Freiburg University of Education; Beate Sodian,Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.

We are grateful to all research assistants for their help in the datacollection, as well as to all teachers, children, and parents for their friendlycollaboration and support of this research.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christo-pher Osterhaus, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School ofEducation, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1025 West Johnson Street,Madison, WI 53706. E-mail: costerhaus@wisc.edu

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Developmental Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association2016, Vol. 52, No. 11, 000 0012-1649/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000260

1

1995). Whereas studies indicate that usually only few youngelementary school children solve these tasks correctly (see, e.g.,Bullock & Ziegler, 1999), around 65% of fourth-graders (10-year-olds) prefer controlled over confounded experiments when theyare allowed to choose an experiment that can be used to test aspecific hypothesis (Bullock, Sodian, & Koerber, 2009).

Influences of Scientific Thinking: General InformationProcessing and Epistemological Understanding

Advances in experimentation skills in particular, and in scien-tific thinking in general, have been attributed to influences on twobroad levels, which are (a) children’s development of increasedgeneral information-processing skills (e.g., Klahr, 2000) and (b)their development of a conceptual understanding of the construc-tive nature of the knowing process (e.g., Carey & Smith, 1993;Kuhn, 2011). Evidence that supports the hypothesis that increasedgeneral information-processing skills promote scientific thinkingcomes from a growing number of research studies that reveal closerelations between interindividual differences in scientific thinkingand children’s general cognitive abilities, such as their inhibition,intelligence, or language skills (e.g., Bullock et al., 2009; Koerberet al., 2015; Kwon & Lawson, 2000; Mayer, Sodian, Koerber, &Schwippert, 2014; van der Graaf, Segers, & Verhoeven, 2016).

For instance, a recent large-scale study by Koerber et al. (2015)showed that elementary school children’s scientific thinking wassignificantly related to their intelligence and language abilities,which together explained a considerable amount of the variancethat was found in a comprehensive measure of elementary schoolscientific thinking in Grades 2 to 4. Findings from Kwon andLawson (2000) in adolescence, in addition, suggest a firm associ-ation between inhibition and experimentation skills, supporting thehypothesis that the use of adequate experimentation strategies mayrequire reasoners to inhibit their spontaneous desire to produce apositive outcome in favor of a thorough test of the given hypoth-esis (Amsel et al., 2008; Kuhn & Franklin, 2006; Kuhn & Pease,2006). Although the evidence from both the Koerber et al. (2015)and the Kwon and Lawson (2000) study, as well as from severalother studies (e.g., Bullock et al., 2009; Mayer et al., 2014; van derGraaf et al., 2016), highlights the importance of increased generalinformation-processing skills in children’s development of scien-tific thinking, studies of interindividual differences in scientificthinking often leave a considerable amount of variance unex-plained when only predictors on the level of general informationprocessing are included.

Social Cognition and Scientific Thinking

Many theorists have argued that a reference to general informa-tion processing alone does not allow to fully explain advances inchildren’s scientific thinking (e.g., Kuhn, Cheney, & Weinstock,2000; Sodian & Bullock, 2008). Rather, they suggest, childrenneed to develop an epistemological understanding and an appre-ciation of the constructive nature of knowledge acquisition. Thisunderstanding entails an appreciation of the nature of science(NOS), which involves a conceptual understanding of the nature ofknowledge (conditions of knowing), as well as an appreciation ofthe broad epistemic concepts that are relevant in science, such asfor instance theory, hypothesis, evidence, or falsification (see, e.g.,

Koerber, Osterhaus, & Sodian, 2015). All these aspects of NOSrequire that children understand the distinction between ideas andstates of the world (Carey, Evans, Honda, Jay, & Unger, 1989),that is, they have to understand that hypothesis and evidence aretwo epistemologically distinct categories that inform each other,but which do not need to coincide (Kuhn, 2011).

Children acquire the most fundamental prerequisite for theemergence of this understanding already before they enter elemen-tary school, around the age 4, when they develop an initial theoryof mind, which allows them to understand that mental states areconstructed by an active subject (Carpendale & Chandler, 1996;Kuhn, 2000). From this point on, children understand that beliefsmay differ in content from reality. Once they are able to make thisdistinction (between beliefs and reality), they are also able tounderstand how empirical evidence can be brought to bear onhypothetical beliefs. Studies of false belief understanding in selfand others indicate that a conceptual grasp of one’s own epistemicstates develops around the same time as the ability to infer others’epistemic states, and is supported by a common conceptual system(Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001).

There is reason to assume that later developing social cognitionand advanced theory of mind (AToM), which fully emerges inelementary school age (Osterhaus, Koerber, & Sodian, 2016; for areview, see Miller, 2009), are conceptually closely related to theepistemological understanding involved in NOS. Specifically, ithas been suggested that children need to acquire an AToM beforethey can understand that hypotheses (beliefs) are informed notdirectly by evidence but rather are supported by a number ofreasons (our interpretation of evidence or other beliefs, which, e.g.,may be drawn from the specific cultural background; see Asting-ton, Pelletier, & Homer, 2002). This understanding requires therepresentation of higher order beliefs and an appreciation of therecursive nature of mental states (Perner, 1988), which are twoaspects that are crucially involved in AToM cognition (Miller,2009). It thus seems likely that these abilities are foundational forthe emergence of children’s epistemological understanding andtheir grasp of the hypothesis–evidence relation, which is criticallyinvolved in NOS (see, e.g., Carey & Smith, 1993).

According to this hypothesis, children who have not acquiredthe ability to represent higher order beliefs and who do not under-stand the recursive nature of mental states will be less likely toreveal a mature epistemological understanding: Specifically, theywill be less likely to recognize that the truthfulness of a hypothesisdepends on the collection of individual beliefs that support it; theywill not appreciate that these beliefs need not exclusively be basedon evidence, but that they can also be drawn from a frameworktheory or be grounded in the specific sociocultural context; andfinally, they will not immediately understand falsification, whichrequires understanding that hypotheses are disconfirmed by truebeliefs that state the opposite of the initial belief.

Evidence that supports the hypothesis that children’s AToM isrelated to their development of an epistemological understandingcomes from a study by Astington et al. (2002), who investigatedthe relation between children’s performance on two second-orderfalse-belief tasks (AToM) and two evidence tests (epistemologicalunderstanding) in a sample of 5- to 7-year-olds. In one of thesecond-order false-belief tasks, for instance, Astington and col-leagues presented children with a story about a Protagonist A whosecretly displaces an object, an action that is observed by a second

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2 OSTERHAUS, KOERBER, AND SODIAN

Protagonist B (Protagonist A does not want Protagonist B to knowabout the displacement of the object, and Protagonist A does notknow that Protagonist B observes her while she displaces theobject). The test question asked children where Protagonist Athinks that Protagonist B will look for the object. The evidencetasks tested children for their ability to reason about evidence, andspecifically, children were asked about the physical cause of anevent and about a person’s evidence for it (e.g., someone spillingwater and the floor being wet). To solve the evidence taskscorrectly, children needed to successfully distinguish betweencause and evidence, revealing an understanding of the differenti-ation between these two epistemologically distinct entities. Asting-ton et al.’s results indicated that AToM (here second-order false-belief understanding) was indeed significantly related to children’sepistemological understanding (here performance on the evidencetest). This was true even when the influences of general languageand nonverbal abilities were accounted for. Whereas the study byAstington et al. (2002) thus shows that children’s AToM is sig-nificantly related to their understanding of evidence, which is arelevant aspect of children’s epistemological understanding, thereis hitherto no study that investigated whether children’s generalAToM is related to their broader epistemological understandingand their general views on NOS, which involve broader epistemicconcepts such as theory, inference, or falsification.

Epistemological Understanding and Scientific Thinking

Several theorists have suggested that children’s epistemologicalunderstanding is closely related to their experimentation skills(e.g., Kuhn, 2011). Evidence in favor of this hypothesis comesfrom a number of training studies on children’s experimentationskills (e.g., Strand-Cary & Klahr, 2008) that revealed the impor-tance of including instruction strategies targeted at children’sconceptual understanding of experimentation, analysis, or infer-ence. Further evidence that points to the importance of children’sepistemological understanding for their experimentation skillscomes from a study by Sodian, Thoermer, Kircher, Grygier, andGünther (2002) who, in accordance with this hypothesis, observedmore adequate experimentation strategies in fourth-graders afterchildren had received an intervention that promoted their episte-mological understanding. Specifically, the curricular interventionthat Sodian and her colleagues used addressed children’s views onNOS, and it sought to foster their understanding of the relationbetween hypotheses and evidence. Children were instructed aboutthe goals of science, and they learned that the purpose of scienceis to construct knowledge, and that scientists conduct experimentsto find deeper explanations for observed phenomena (see alsoCarey et al., 1989). Interestingly, and despite the fact that exper-imentation strategies were not explicitly addressed in the interven-tion, the increase in adequate, systematic experimentation thatSodian and her colleagues observed from pre- to posttest wassignificant: While only 35% of all children in the treatment groupchose an adequate experiment prior to the intervention, this per-centage increased to 65% on posttest, clearly supporting the hy-pothesis that promoting children’s understanding of the NOS is notonly reflected by more mature views on NOS, but also thatbeneficial effects emerge for experimentation skills. Whereas theliterature on training studies on experimentation thus highlights theimportance of a mature epistemological understanding for promot-

ing children’s experimentation skills, little is hitherto known aboutthe relation between interindividual differences in these two con-structs across different age groups in elementary school.

The Present Study

The present study, therefore, investigates whether AToM andNOS promote children experimentation skills in a broad range ofage groups in elementary school. Specifically, we investigate (a)whether AToM is, as hypothesized, an important precursor ofchildren’s broad epistemological understanding (NOS); (b)whether interindividual differences in NOS relate to children’sexperimentation skills; and (c) whether the potentially emergingrelations between AToM, NOS, and experimentation skills areindependent of the influences of general information processing. Inline with findings from Sodian et al. (2002), who showed asignificant influence of NOS on experimentation skills in fourth-graders, we expect to find a substantial relation between these twoaspects of scientific thinking (see Figure 1 for a summary of thehypotheses of this study). In addition, we expect that AToM willbe related to NOS, and that AToM will be a significant precursorof children’s epistemological understanding (NOS). In accordancewith findings from Kwon and Lawson (2000) in adolescence, weexpect to find a significant relation between experimentation andinhibition, but not between inhibition and NOS (see Mayer et al.,2014, for a finding of nonsignificant relation between inhibitionand a scientific-thinking measure that included many items onNOS). Finally, we expect the data to reveal significant relationsbetween intelligence, language abilities, and NOS. We expectthese general information-processing variables to have a strongerinfluence on NOS than on experimentation skills because NOS notonly requires the acquisition of conceptual knowledge but, unlikeexperimentation strategies, it also involves knowledge about spe-cific terminology, which may be easier to acquire for children withhigh general abilities. We tested these hypotheses in a sample of402 elementary school children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (8-, 9-, and

Figure 1. Theoretical model of elementary school scientific thinking, andinfluences of social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), episte-mological understanding (nature of science), and general information pro-cessing (inhibition, intelligence, and language abilities). See the onlinearticle for the color version of this figure.

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3SOCIAL COGNITION AND NOS PROMOTE EXPERIMENTATION

10-year-olds) who were tested for their experimentation skills,their social cognition (AToM), epistemological understanding(NOS), and their general information-processing skills (inhibition,intelligence, and language abilities) in a whole-class testing pro-cedure.

Method

Participants

Participants were 402 second-, third-, and fourth-graders (203girls). There were 124 second-graders (M � 8 years 3 months,SD � 9 months; 64 girls), 135 third-graders (M � 9 years 4months, SD � 7 months; 62 girls), and 143 fourth-graders (M � 10years 2 months, SD � 9 months, 77 girls). We recruited thechildren from 25 classrooms from mostly middle-class schools inGermany. These schools participated in a larger project on cogni-tive development in elementary school (Osterhaus, Koerber, &Sodian, 2015, 2016). Twenty-eight percent of all children spoke atleast one language other than German at home. Parents’ writtenconsent was obtained for all children. Data were collected fromJune 2013 to July 2013.

Materials and Procedure

The children were tested in a whole-class testing procedure fortheir experimentation skills, their epistemological understanding(NOS), their social cognition (AToM), and their generalinformation-processing skills (inhibition, intelligence, and lan-guage skills).

Experimentation skills. Children’s experimentation skillswere assessed with an inventory that comprises 11 fictitious ex-periments in artificial contexts, each containing a design error that

violates the demands of experimental contrast or experimentalcontrol (e.g., lack of a control group, no premeasure in apre–post design, or a missing control of nonfocal variables; foran example, see Figure 2; for the full item set, see the onlinesupplement; see also Bullock et al., 2009; Osterhaus, Koerber,& Sodian, 2015). On each of the items, children have to indicatewhether they agree with each of three statements: two of themgive a justification of why the experiment described in the itemis good, one of them explains why it is not, indicating thedesign error in question.

Items were coded dichotomously, and children only obtained acorrect score for the entire item when they selected the correctanswer option and rejected the two incorrect ones. The instrumenthas been shown to be a valid indicator of children’s experimenta-tion skills (as compared to an interview measure and several otherwidely used experimentation tasks), and a Rasch analysis indicatedgood item fit indices for all 11 items and a good reliability(Cronbach’s � � .72; Osterhaus et al., 2015).

Epistemological understanding (NOS). Children’s episte-mological understanding and their views on NOS were assessedusing five items that tapped children’s understanding of thenature of (a) theories (Items 1 and 2), (b) the influences ofcultural framework theories (Item 3), (c) the role of basicassumptions in science (Item 4), and (c) falsification (Item 5).All five items address children’s understanding of the relationbetween hypotheses or theories and evidence (see Kuhn, 2011),and each item contains three answers that children have to agreeor disagree with. These answers correspond to three compe-tence levels, which are defined as naïve, intermediate, andadvanced (see Koerber et al., 2015).

Item 1 (nature of theories) asks children to indicate whether threestatements are each a good example of a theory (see Figure 3). Only

Figure 2. Sample item for the assessment of experimentation strategies. Adapted with permission from“Children’s Understanding of Experimental Contrast and Experimental Control: An Inventory for PrimarySchool” by C. Osterhaus, S. Koerber, & B. Sodian, 2015, Frontline Learning Research, 3, p. 60. Copyright,2015, by the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. See the online article for the colorversion of this figure.

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4 OSTERHAUS, KOERBER, AND SODIAN

the advanced level (“Simon believes that children get bad gradesbecause they do not do their homework”) presents children with atheory that allows for a full evaluation of the supporting belief.While being true statements, the naïve and intermediate level(“Lucas believes that 1 � 1 � 2 because every little child knowsthis,” and “Marc believes that the earth rotates because he has aglobe at home,” respectively) are not testable beliefs.

Item 2 (nature of theories) tests whether children understand thattheories are not immediately given up when evidence is presentedthat may contradict the initial theory, but that rather reasoners willtry to find an explanation that can justify the occurrence of thecounterevidence, allowing them to maintain the initial theory. Totest for this understanding, the item asks children to evaluate threepossibilities of how a girl with a given theory (“If you study hard,you get good grades”) will react to counterevidence (“This boy,Paul, says he does not study hard, but nonetheless he gets goodgrades”). Only the advanced answer comprises an explanation thatallows the protagonist to fully maintain her initial theory (“Paulsecretly does study”). The other two answers options (“Paul issuper smart, he does not need to study” and “The exam was tooeasy”) reflect answers that are not fully theory-conform but ratherdescribe exceptions to the initial theory. Note that all three answeroptions were equally likely (i.e., no information was given aboutwhether or not Paul is smart or lying, or whether the exam waseasy or difficult). Thus all three answer options differ substantiallyin the degree to which they allow the story protagonist to maintainher initial theory.

Item 3 (frameworks theories) presents children with a fictitiousencounter between a medieval and a modern-day scientist. Thisitem is based on work by Sodian, Carey, Grosslight, and Smith

(1992), and it was drawn from a study by Koerber et al. (2015).Specifically, the item tests whether children understand that hy-potheses are not only supported by evidence, but that they can alsoobtain support from cultural beliefs, which, in addition, may in-fluence the interpretation of evidence (see Figure 4).

Item 4 (role of basic assumptions) probes children’s understand-ing of the potential influences of scientists’ basic assumptions ontheir interpretation of evidence. Children are asked to indicatewhether scientists can make mistakes (naïve answer: “Scientistsknow a lot; therefore, they do not make mistakes”; intermediateanswer: “Sometimes they use instruments that do not work; thenthey make mistakes,” and advanced answer: “Their basic assump-tions can be wrong”).

Item 5 (falsification) tests whether children understand the su-periority of falsification over verification and over strategies aimedat the production of an effect (see Figure 5).

Items were coded as naïve (0), intermediate (1), or advanced (2);decisive for the final item score was the lowest level accepted. Thereliability for the five items was low (Cronbach’s � � .45). Priorstudies in which these items were used, however, revealed thatthese items adequately tap children’s scientific-thinking skills, asrevealed by several Rasch analyses (see Koerber, Mayer, et al.,2015; Mayer et al., 2014). In addition, Items 3 and 5 were vali-dated in a study which revealed a good convergence betweenchildren’s performance on the paper-and-pencil version and theirunderstanding as revealed in an interview (see Koerber et al.,2015).

Social cognition (AToM). Children’s AToM was measuredwith seven items that assess their “social reasoning” (see Oster-haus et al., 2016). These items tap children’s understanding of therecursive nature of mental states, and they include various, meth-odologically distinct task. Specifically, we used three items onsecond- and higher order false belief understanding (Astington etal., 2002; Liddle & Nettle, 2006), one item from Happé’s (1994)Strange Stories, and four items from the Reading the Mind in theEyes Test (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb,2001).

The second-order false-belief item is based on a task designedby Astington et al. (2002), which is described in the introduction.In this task, children are presented with a cover story about aprotagonist who displaces an object, an action that is observed bya second protagonist (this is, however, unknown to the first pro-tagonist). The target question asks children where they believe thefirst protagonist thinks the second protagonist will look for theobject. To assess children’s understanding of more complex,higher order false-belief reasoning we used two tasks that wereadapted from Liddle and Nettle (2006). These tasks are presentedin Figure 6.

In addition to children’s higher order false-belief understanding,we assessed their understanding of intentional, nonliteral speech,using one task from the Strange Stories (Happé, 1994). In thisstory problem, children are presented with a story about a soldierwho uses a double bluff as not to reveal the true location of anarsenal. The test questions asks children whether it is true what theprotagonist says, and why he says that. Children were presentedwith two answer options, which are (a) a mental-state justification(correct) and (b) a physical-state justification (incorrect).

Also, we assessed children’s ability to read nonaffective mentalstates from the eyes. Specifically, we used four items from the

Figure 3. Sample item for the assessment of nature of science (Item 1).See the online article for the color version of this figure.

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5SOCIAL COGNITION AND NOS PROMOTE EXPERIMENTATION

German version (Bölte, 2005) of the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen,Wheelwright, Hill, et al., 2001). Each of these four items presentsthe children with a photograph of an either male or female faceshowing only the eyes. Four answer options (mental states) arepresented for each item, and the children have to select the appro-priate one. The mental states that were used in this study wereserious, interested, uneasy, and assertive.

Items were scored dichotomously, and the reliability was mod-erate (Cronbach’s � � .51). All items have, in prior studies, beenshown to be valid assessments of children’s AToM, all loading ona single factor. In addition, a latent class analysis revealed thatchildren’s performance on these items depends, despite their meth-odological differences, on a common underlying conceptual un-derstanding (see Osterhaus et al., 2016).

Inhibition. Children’s inhibition was measured with anadapted and shortened version of the Stroop test (Stroop, 1935; 36inferential test items; speeded test of 30 s; Cronbach’s � � .89).

Intelligence. Intelligence was measured with Subtests 1(“Progressive Series,” 15 items) and 4 (“Topological Relation-ships,” 10 items) of the German version of the Culture FairIntelligence Test (Wei�, 2006; Cronbach’s � � .68).

Language abilities. Language skills were assessed by mea-suring children’s text comprehension with a 20 multiple-choicespeeded test (Lenhard & Schneider, 2006; Cronbach’s � � .90).

Procedure. All tests were administered in a whole-class test-ing procedure. Tasks were read out to the children, and they werealso presented in a PowerPoint presentation. Test assistants madesure that the children remained quiet and worked on their ownbooklet. On Day 1, children were tested for their experimentationskills, inhibition, and AToM. On Day 2, NOS, intelligence, andlanguage skills were assessed. Each of the two sessions took about80 min, and their order was counterbalanced between classrooms.

Results

Core Performance

A multivariate analysis of children’s core performance (seeFigure 7) revealed a significant main effect for grade (Pillai’strace � .46), F(12, 790) � 19.86, p � .001, �p

2 � .23. Univariatetesting indicated that main effects were significant on all sixmeasures: experimentation skills, F(2, 399) � 20.66, p � .001,�p

2 � .09, NOS, F(2, 399) � 5.49, p � .004, �p2 � .03, intelligence,

F(2, 399) � 38.48, p � .001, �p2 � .16, inhibition, F(2, 399) �

97.02, p � .001, �p2 � .33, language skills, F(2, 399) � 86.81, p �

.001, �p2 � .30, and AToM, F(2, 399) � 19.40, p � .001, �p

2 � .09.Planned contrasts indicated a significant difference in experimen-tation skills between Grades 3 and 4, t(276) � 4.65, p � .001,Cohen’s d � .56 but not between Grades 2 and 3, t(257) � 1.21,p � .23. NOS and AToM, in turn, differed significantly betweenGrades 2 and 3, t(257) � 2.12, p � .04, Cohen’s d � .26; and

Figure 4. Sample item for the assessment of nature of science (Item 3).Adapted with permission from “Testing Primary-School Children’s Un-derstanding of the Nature of Science” by S. Koerber, C. Osterhaus, & B.Sodian, 2015, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 33, p. 60.Copyright, 2015, by John Wiley and Sons. See the online article for thecolor version of this figure.

Figure 5. Sample item for the assessment of nature of science (Item 5).Adapted with permission from “Testing Primary-School Children’s Un-derstanding of the Nature of Science” by S. Koerber, C. Osterhaus, & B.Sodian, 2015, British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 33, p. 71.Copyright, 2015, by John Wiley and Sons. See the online article for thecolor version of this figure.

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6 OSTERHAUS, KOERBER, AND SODIAN

t(257 � 5.02, p � .001, Cohen’s d � .63) but not between Grades3 and 4, t(278) � 1.34, p � .18; and t(278 � 0.46, p � .64,respectively). Inhibition, intelligence, and language skills wereeach significantly higher in Grade 3 than in Grade 2, inhibition:t(257) � 7.72, p � .001, Cohen’s d � .96; intelligence: t(257) �5.86, p � .001, Cohen’s d � .73; language skills: t(257) � 5.64,p � .001, Cohen’s d � .70; the same was true for the comparisonbetween Grades 3 and 4, inhibition: t(278) � 6.64, p � .001,Cohen’s d � .80; intelligence: t(278) � 2.67, p � .008, Cohen’sd � .32; language skills: t(278) � 5.08, p � .001, Cohen’s d �.61.

Testing the Postulated Model of Scientific Thinking

To test the assumption that experimentation skills and NOScomprise two separable aspects of scientific thinking on whichmany of our hypotheses under investigation in this study are builton, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis of all itemsassessing experimentation and NOS in Mplus 7 (Muthén &Muthén, 2012), using a mean- and variance-adjusted weightedleast-squares estimator and oblique geomin rotation, which al-

lowed factors to correlate. The results indicated a poor fit of aone-factor model: Although some fit indices pointed toward anadequate fit of this one-dimensional model (comparative fit index[CFI] � .99, Tucker–Lewis index [TLI] � .98, and root-mean-square error of approximation [RMSEA] � .03 [.02, .04]), the �2

statistic indicated a significant deviation of the model from thedata, with �2(104) � 143.88, p � .01. In contrast, the two-factormodel revealed a good fit to the data according to all fit indices,with �2(89) � 89.00, p � .48, CFI � 1.00, TLI � 1.00, andRMSEA � .00 [.00, .03]. With the exception of a single cross-loading, all experimentation and NOS items loaded exclusively ontheir respective factor (see Table 1). The factor correlation was .54.The two-factor model was also supported by parallel analysis(Dinno, 2009), which gives a more conservative estimate of thenumber of factors by correcting for the effects of sampling error oneigenvalues. This analysis revealed two corrected eigenvalueslarger than the retention criterion of 0.

To test whether children’s experimentation skills and their NOSare interrelated, as well as to test whether AToM predicts chil-dren’s NOS, we fitted a multiple indicators multiple causes

Figure 6. Example of third- (left) and fourth-order (right) false belief task. Reprinted with permission from“Scaling of Advanced Theory-of-Mind Tasks,” by C. Osterhaus, S. Koerber, & B. Sodian, 2016, ChildDevelopment. Copyright, 2016, by John Wiley and Sons.

Figure 7. Percent correct per grade in experimentation, nature of science (NOS), intelligence, inhibition,language skills, and advanced theory of mind (AToM). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.

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7SOCIAL COGNITION AND NOS PROMOTE EXPERIMENTATION

(MIMIC) model (Jöreskog & Goldberger, 1975) to the data (seeTable 2 for the sample correlation matrix). The MIMIC approachcan be compared to multivariate multivariate analysis of variancein that these models evaluate the effect of the covariates (hereinhibition, AToM, intelligence, and language) on the latent meansof the dependent variables (Elosua & Muñiz, 2010). The MIMICmodel (see Table 3, unconstrained model, and Figure 8) includ-ed—next to a path from NOS to experimentation—paths from allindependent variables to NOS and experimentation, as well ascorrelations between all independent variables, so that commonmutual influences were controlled for. The results revealed a goodfit of the model, with �2(159) � 167.35, p � .31, and CFI � 1.00,TLI � 1.00, and RMSEA � .01 [.00, .03]. As predicted, there wasa significant relation between NOS and experimentation (.57), andbetween inhibition and experimentation (.22), resulting in an ex-plained variance of 39% in experimentation. The path from inhi-bition to NOS (.00) was not significant, indicating that the ob-served sample correlation between these two constructs mostprobably resulted from the influence of inhibition on AToM.

The hypothesis that children’s acquisition of AToM is an im-portant precursor for the development of their epistemologicalunderstanding was supported by a significant path (.20) betweenAToM and NOS. Additional support came from a McNemar test,which showed that the two proportions of children with no masteryin AToM but mastery in NOS (5%) and of those with mastery inAToM but no mastery of NOS (52%) were different (p � .001, seeTable 3). These proportions were similar within each grade level:they were 6 and 46% in Grade 2, 4 and 59% in Grade 3, and 4 and49% in Grade 4 (all ps � .001).

Finally, we predicted that children’s general information pro-cessing is more closely related to the development of NOS than toexperimentation strategies. This hypothesis was supported by sig-nificant paths from intelligence (.19) and language skills (.26) onNOS, which were nonsignificant for experimentation skills (.01and .05, respectively). Together with the influence of AToM, theamount of explained variance in NOS was 21%.

Because the NOS items included in our study revealed a lowinternal consistency and prior research suggested that children’s

development of an epistemological understanding may follow dis-tinct pathways (Koerber et al., 2015), we inspected whether therelation between NOS, AToM, and experimentation skills differedbetween the two distinct types of NOS items included in this study.Specifically, we investigated whether the correlation between ex-perimentation skills, AToM, and NOS Items 2 and 3 differed fromthe correlation with NOS Items 1, 4, and 5. NOS Items 2 and 3 tapchildren’s knowledge about knowledge in a more direct way thanNOS Items 1, 4, and 5 which assess children’s epistemologicalunderstanding of a scientific principle. The correlation betweenexperimentation skills and NOS was .20 [.11, .29] for Items 2 and3, and .31 [.21, .40] for Items 1, 4, and 5 (95% confidence intervalin square brackets). The correlation between AToM the two as-pects of NOS was .15 [.05, .25] and .13 [.03, .22], respectively,indicating that the strength of the association did not differ forthese two types of items.

To test whether our model of scientific thinking with its specifichypotheses (see Figure 1) fitted the data better than any othertheoretically motivated model, we compared our account of theinfluences of interindividual differences in scientific thinking totwo competing models. These models predicted relations betweenscientific thinking and all cognitive variables included in this study(AToM, inhibition, intelligence, and language) that differed fromthe predictions of our model: The first model defines scientific-thinking skills as a unitary construct, thereby positing equal cog-nitive influences of inhibition, intelligence, and language on ex-perimentation skills and NOS (equal-influences model; see Mayeret al., 2014). The second model that we compared to our accountof scientific thinking assumes that the hypothesized correlationbetween NOS and AToM merely is a product of the common taskdemand of constructing multiple mental representations, whichunderlies three of the six constructs that we address in this study(NOS, experimentation, and AToM). Specifically, we reasonedthat, if this competing model holds and the postulated relationbetween NOS and AToM is a spurious one, a significant relationshould not only emerge between AToM and NOS but also betweenAToM and experimentation skills, which—just like NOS—areabilities that require that children entertain multiple mental repre-sentations simultaneously (common task-demands model).

We estimated and compared these two models (the equal-influences and common task-demands models) to the uncon-strained model, which included paths from all covariates to bothNOS and experimentation (as reported above). Chi-square differ-ence testing for these two models and the unconstrained, fullmodel (see Table 3) revealed that both the equal-influences and thecommon task-demands model fitted significantly worse than the

Table 1Factor Loadings for the Two-Factor Solution

Items Experimentation NOS

Exp. 1 .66� .02Exp. 2 .71� .01Exp. 3 .73� –.08Exp. 4 .68� .12Exp. 5 .81� .06Exp. 6 .66� .25�

Exp. 7 .76� .02Exp. 8 .91� .00Exp. 9 .72� .16Exp. 10 .84� .00Exp. 11 .85� .03NOS 1 .00 .48�

NOS 2 –.12 .46�

NOS 3 .01 .39�

NOS 4 .05 .49�

NOS 5 .01 .40�

Note. Exp. � experimentation; NOS � nature of science.� p � .05.

Table 2Correlations Between All Assessed Variables

Variables NOS AToM Inhibition Intelligence Language

Experimentation .33��� .07 .29��� .20��� .25���

NOS .17�� .17��� .23��� .26���

AToM .37��� .36��� .43���

Inhibition .41��� .54���

Intelligence .50���

Note. NOS � nature of science; AToM � advanced theory of mind.�� p � .01. ��� p � .001.

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8 OSTERHAUS, KOERBER, AND SODIAN

unconstrained model. Compared to the unconstrained model, onlyour hypothesized model revealed no significant difference in fit.This model included, next to all postulated paths (see Figure 1),paths from inhibition to NOS, and from AToM, language, andintelligence to experimentation skills that were all constrained tobe equal to 0. The nonsignificant difference in fit from the uncon-strained model hereby supports the hypothesis that the influencesof the cognitive covariates indeed are, as hypothesized specific andof different magnitudes for NOS and experimentation skills.

Discussion

Do children’s social cognition and their epistemological under-standing promote experimentation skills in elementary school?The findings of the present study revealed that (a) social cognition(AToM) is an important precursor of children’s broad epistemo-logical understanding (NOS), which (b) in turn explains a largeamount of interindividual differences in elementary school chil-dren’s experimentation skills. Importantly, the relation betweenepistemological understanding and experimentation was (c) inde-pendent of the influences of children’s general information pro-cessing. This finding gives support to the hypothesis that chil-dren’s development of an epistemological understanding isfoundational for the emergence of scientific thinking.

Social Cognition as a Precursor of Children’sEpistemological Understanding

Children’s epistemological understanding, we suggested, buildson their social cognition, and specifically, on their development ofan AToM, which enables children to represent higher order beliefsand to understand that mental states are of a recursive nature

(Perner, 1988). Indeed, our results showed that AToM is an im-portant precursor of NOS: Only 5% of all children who did notmaster ATOM mastered NOS. Being able to understand thatbeliefs are informed by reasons (supporting beliefs), seems toenable children to develop an evaluative epistemology (see Kuhnet al., 2000), which allows them to acknowledge that hypothesesand evidence do not necessarily need to coincide, but that theyrather are two distinct epistemological categories. Having acquiredthis understanding, children begin to appreciate that hypothesesneed to build on testable beliefs, that they gain their support notonly from evidence but also from theoretical considerations (Ko-slowski, 1996), and that informative experiments should not givesupport to multiple beliefs with conflicting content. Further sup-port for the hypothesis that AToM is indeed an important precursorof children’s epistemological understanding comes from recentresults from longitudinal study (see Sodian, Kristen-Antonow, &Koerber, 2016) that revealed that first- and second-order false-belief understanding at age 5 predict scientific reasoning at 8 yearsindependently of intelligence and executive functions.

AToM has been associated in a prior study with children’sunderstanding of evidence (Astington et al., 2002), which is oneaspect of epistemological understanding, and researchers are in-

Table 3Model Comparisons Between the Full, Unconstrained Model; the Equal-Influences Model; theCommon-Task Demands Model; and Our Hypothesized Model

Comparison

Model �2 df p CFI TLI RMSEA �2 df p

Full, unconstrained model 167.35 159 .31 1.00 1.00 .01 [.00, .03]Equal-influences model 197.84 163 .03 .99 .98 .02 [.01, .03] 20.19 4 .001Common task-demands model 179.10 160 .14 .99 .99 .02 [.01, .03] 8.40 1 .01Hypothesized model 172.57 163 .29 1.00 1.00 .01 [.00, .03] 5.11 4 .28

Note. CFI � comparative fit index; TLI � Tucker–Lewis index; RMSEA � root-mean-square error ofapproximation.

Table 4Cross Tabulation for Mastery of Advanced Theory of Mind(AToM) and Nature of Science (NOS)

NOS

AToMNo mastery

(�50% correct)Mastery

(�50% correct) Total

No mastery (�50%correct) 77 (19) 20 (5) 97 (24)

Mastery (�50%correct) 207 (52) 98 (24) 305 (76)

Total 284 (71) 118 (29) 402 (100%)

Figure 8. Multiple indicators multiple causes model of elementary schoolscientific thinking and its cognitive influences. Indictors of nature ofscience (NOS) and of experimentation strategies (Exp.) are not included inthe figure. Nonsignificant paths are printed in gray. AToM � advancedtheory of mind. �� p � .01. ��� p � .001.

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9SOCIAL COGNITION AND NOS PROMOTE EXPERIMENTATION

vestigating how children’s growing understanding of the interpre-tative nature of the mind influences their understanding of NOS(Weinstock, Danay, & Harari, 2016). Our study however is thefirst to relate children’s AToM to diverse aspects of NOS, whichinclude epistemic concepts as broad as theory, inference, or falsi-fication. It is important to note that our study used thoroughlyinvestigated measures of AToM, which all tap a common concep-tual understanding (see Osterhaus et al., 2016). Having usedAToM measures that were methodologically distinct (e.g., somemeasures were story problems, others required children to read ofmental states from the eyes), but that all require a commonunderlying ability (understanding the recursive nature of mentalstates), makes it unlikely that relations between AToM and NOSarose from possible common task demands that were not con-trolled for by the model (as inhibition, intelligence, or languageabilities).

The finding that AToM is an important precursor for NOS is aninteresting finding that will contribute to our understanding of theemergence of children’s epistemological understanding. In addi-tion, it may explain some of the empirical findings regarding thedevelopmental influences of NOS. For instance, Koerber et al.(2015) found a significant influence of parents’ education onchildren’s NOS. Influences of parents’ education on children’ssocial cognition have widely been reported in the literature (e.g.,Cutting & Dunn, 1999), and indeed this relation may explain whyparental education effects merge for NOS, which may be mediatedby their influences on social cognition. Specifically, there is reasonto assume that parents with a higher education may engage withtheir children in different kinds of talk and interaction, which mayinvolve more ascriptions of and reflections on complex mentalstates, potentially leading to children’s increased ability to engagein “transactive” discussions. In transactive discussions, children’sreasoning operates on their partner’s reasoning, which is an activ-ity that requires AToM and that research has related to advances inscientific thinking (Azmitia & Montgomery, 1993). Although fur-ther research is needed, it is conceivable that social cognition andtransactive discussions are the potential mechanisms that linkparents’ education and children’s epistemological understanding.

Scientific Thinking and Children’sEpistemological Understanding

Children’s epistemological understanding has been attributed animportant role in scientific thinking by multiple authors (Kuhn,2011; Sodian & Bullock, 2008). Research has shown that promot-ing children’s understanding of the hypothesis–evidence relationindeed not only increases their understanding of NOS, but alsoleads to better experimentation strategies (Sodian et al., 2002). Arecent study on the development of scientific thinking in elemen-tary school (Koerber, Mayer, et al., 2015), in addition, suggeststhat children’s understanding of the hypothesis–evidence relationmay underlie performance gains not only in experimentation but ina wide range of tasks, including data interpretation. The substantialcorrelation that we identified between NOS and experimentationskills supports this conclusion.

There has been a debate in the literature as to whether NOS andinquiry skills, such as experimentation skills, indeed form twoseparable aspects of scientific thinking (see Lederman, 2006; Neu-mann, Neumann, & Nehm, 2011). The results of our exploratory

factor analysis, which revealed a superior fit of a two-factor modelto the data, suggest indeed a separation of these two components,which is a finding that is in line earlier findings for adults (Neu-mann et al., 2011). However, the substantial correlation that weobserved between NOS and experimentation skills clearly showsthat children’s epistemological understanding is closely related totheir abilities in experimentation, suggesting that NOS may be afoundational skill that helps to guide children’s inquiry. Althougha separation of NOS and inquiry skills may thus not seem entirelywarranted on a theoretical level, our results do however show thatthe empirical distinction is useful: The MIMIC model revealeddifferential cognitive influences on NOS and experimentation,suggesting that a separate assessment of these constructs may leadto more robust results. Indeed, the differential cognitive influencesmay explain why a recent study by Mayer et al. (2014) did not finda significant relation between scientific thinking and inhibition,when NOS and inquiry skilled were not modeled separately.

Whereas experimentation skills were found to be a relativelyhomogeneous construct in the present study (as revealed by highfactor loadings for all items and a good reliability), and no sub-stantially different results emerged for specific subgroups of ex-perimentation items (e.g., contrastive vs. controlled-contrastiveexperiments), our results again pointed to the broad nature of NOS,as revealed by the low internal consistency that we found for ourfive NOS items. Indeed, researchers have suggested that there maybe different pathways along which children acquire NOS. Thuswhile some children may for instance first acquire an understand-ing of the epistemic concept theory, others’ epistemological un-derstanding may emerge with a nascent understanding of falsifi-cation (see Koerber et al., 2015). Whereas this may be one possibleexplanation for the low internal consistency that we found for ourNOS measure, this lack of reliability does not question our find-ings at large: First, our exploratory factor analysis revealed that allNOS items were indicators of the latent construct NOS. Second,we used a latent variable model to estimate the relation betweenNOS and experimentation skills, as well as their cognitive influ-ences, which is less sensitive to possibly distorting influences ofthe low reliability of a measure. And third, neither the associationbetween NOS and experimentation nor between NOS and AToMdiverged for different subgroups of NOS items.

General Information Processing and InterindividualDifferences in Scientific Thinking

In addition to the influence of AToM on NOS, and of NOS onexperimentation skills, our study revealed significant influences ofchildren’s general cognitive development (inhibition, intelligence,and language skills) on their scientific thinking. Inhibition hasbeen associated in prior studies with adolescents’ scientific think-ing (Kwon & Lawson, 2000). The current study, however, is thefirst to identify a positive relation between inhibition and experi-mentation skills in elementary school. It is hereby important tonote that our experimentation task required children to evaluateexperimental designs rather than to produce or choose an adequatestrategy. Production and choice tasks are often overly biased bynonessential, task-related influences, such as the specific hypoth-eses presented in the task or by children’s prior knowledge (Croker& Buchanan, 2011; Tschirgi, 1980), which are two factors thatstrongly influence their desire to produce a certain outcome.

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10 OSTERHAUS, KOERBER, AND SODIAN

Therefore, it is likely that our study would have identified an evenhigher influence of inhibition if we had not chosen for a justifica-tion task, which may trigger less effect-production strategies.

Although our analyses revealed an observed correlation betweeninhibition and NOS, the MIMIC model indicated that this relationwas not significant, suggesting that the observed associationemerged from the influence of inhibition on AToM. This findingis in line with results from Mayer et al. (2014) who did not find arelation between inhibition and a scientific-thinking assessmentthat included a wide range of NOS tasks, suggesting that inhibitionis indeed more closely linked to experimentation strategies than tothe conceptual knowledge about the nature of knowing involved inNOS.

Inhibitory processes have, however, been related to tests ofconceptual knowledge, which are hypothesized to require an inhi-bition of intuitive or naïve conceptions (Vosniadou, 2014). Fol-lowing this line of reasoning, one may connect NOS and itsconceptual-development account to inhibition on a theoreticallevel. Because influences of executive control on conceptualknowledge, however, typically emerge when speeded tests areused (Vosniadou et al., 2015), our finding that inhibition andchildren’s conceptions of NOS are not significantly associateddoes not contradict a conceptual-development account of NOS(Carey et al., 1989). Rather, it reveals that an inhibition of naïveepistemological beliefs may not be necessary when children solvetasks that explicitly address different conceptions, offering suffi-cient time for the evaluation of each single statement.

Implications and Future Directions

Implications for research concern first and foremost the devel-opment of tasks designed to assess scientific thinking. Children’spoor performance in experimentation tasks is often attributed totheir immature epistemological understanding and their inability todifferentiate hypotheses from evidence. Indeed, our results regard-ing the close relation between our NOS and experimentation taskssupport this interpretation. However, our results also show thatexperimentation skills are not only influenced by children’s epis-temological understanding, but also by their inhibition. And be-cause research has shown that inhibition on a given task can beobtained when children for instance are presented with a hypoth-esis that contradicts their intuitive beliefs (Klaczynski, 2000),researchers need to carefully develop and thoroughly test theirtasks so that performance is not overly influenced by nonessentialtask characteristics (such as the intuitive or contraintuitive natureof the hypotheses presented). Only tasks that take these effects intoconsideration will result in valid estimates of children’s scientific-thinking skills in general and their understanding of thehypothesis–evidence relation in particular.

Implications for the teaching of scientific thinking in elementaryschool, on the contrary, include the make use of this effect, whichis undesired in research. Specifically, children’s scientific-thinkingskills may particularly benefit from classroom experimentationwhen teachers instruct children to test hypotheses that contradicttheir initial beliefs. Although this may not always lead to a revisionof conceptual knowledge within the domain within which theexperiment is carried out (see, e.g., Chinn & Malhotra, 2002),children may gain insights about how to design informative ex-periments when they are instructed to conduct experiments that

test hypotheses in which they do not initially believe. This maylead to an inhibition of children’s desire to produce a certainoutcome in favor of a more analytical processing, thereby servingas a form of scaffolding, which may lead to better strategy use thanthe use of illustrative experiments (i.e., experiments that teachersuse to illustrate a given scientific law or principle). It seemsreasonable to assume that this approach, which calls for testingcounterintuitive hypotheses, may initiate the learning of adequateexperimentation strategies. Meanwhile, our results suggest that anactive engagement in complex scientific-thinking activities in el-ementary school may only be useful once children acquire anAToM, which allows them to fully appreciate the differentiationbetween hypothesis and evidence and to build a constructivistunderstanding of NOS.

Future directions include two main lines of research. First, thepresent study suggests that social cognition is an important pre-requisite for the development of NOS and experimentation skills.Therefore, future work should investigate whether a training ofAToM in elementary school may help to increase children’s epis-temological understanding and their experimentation skills. Sec-ond, future research needs to disentangle the precise nature of therelation between children’s epistemological understanding andtheir experimentation skills. While we were primarily interested inthe influence of epistemological understanding on experimenta-tion, future research needs to investigate whether this relation mayindeed be bidirectional (i.e., does children’s experience with ex-perimentation aid the emergence of NOS?). Microgenetic studiesof experimentation strategies (e.g., Schauble, 1996) typically findthat children begin their exploration of a causal domain withunguided experiments, and that systematic and adequate experi-mentation strategies are more often used once children discoverthat their (wrong) hypotheses do not permit a successful predictionof the outcome. It is conceivable that this feedback fosters anadequate NOS understanding, especially so when children possessthe necessary general cognitive abilities that are relevant to ab-stract conclusions and conceptual knowledge from this learningexperience. While being an important precursor, AToM develop-ment alone does not fully explain the emergence of NOS inelementary school, making necessary future research on additionaldevelopmental mechanisms that together with AToM bring aboutthe emergence of NOS.

Conclusion

Our results relate elementary school children’s scientific think-ing to their epistemological understanding and their social cogni-tion. AToM seems to play a crucial role in the development ofchildren’s epistemological understanding, which is critically in-volved in scientific-thinking skills in elementary school.

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Received January 29, 2016Revision received October 20, 2016

Accepted October 21, 2016 �

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13SOCIAL COGNITION AND NOS PROMOTE EXPERIMENTATION

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