Inhibitory control involvement in overcoming the position-velocity indiscrimination misconception among college physics majors

Students hold a variety of initial (mis)conceptions that are inconsistent with scientific knowledge and hinder their physics learning. The initial (mis)conceptions could coexist with the scientific ones, even after a conceptual change. Inhibitory control may help overcome initial (mis)conceptions. This study investigated if and how inhibitory control can overcome position-velocity indiscrimination (PVI), a common kinematics misconception. We designed a negative priming paradigm with various prime-probe item pairs. College physics majors had to judge if the items describing the instant that two locomotives have the same velocity were correct. When congruent probes (same position-same velocity) were followed by incongruent primes (same position-different velocity), participants performed worse than when neutral primes (i.e., not passing points) were presented beforehand. The result verified a typical negative priming effect, indicating that inhibitory control is involved in overcoming the PVI misconception. Congruent probes preceded by incongruent primes implicitly triggering the PVI misperception had a lower negative priming effect than explicitly activating it. The results indicated that inhibitory control was needed to overcome the PVI misconception, and the explicit activation of the misconception required more inhibitory control.

Figure 1

Item 19 from the 1995 version of FCI. This item was developed to assess students’ ability to discriminate velocity from position. Options B, C, and D are distractors for students because the two blocks are in the same position at instants 2 and 5. Students may not be able to discriminate between the velocity and position of an object, which represents an initial misconception in kinematics, i.e., “position-velocity indiscrimination”.

Figure 2

Examples of the stimuli congruent and incongruent with the misconception “the shape with a larger area has a larger perimeter (larger area–larger perimeter)” in Babai et al.’s study [11]. (a) Congruent: the correct response is in line with the misconception “larger area—larger perimeter” and (b) Incongruent: the correct response runs counter to the misconception “larger area—larger perimeter”.

Figure 3

Examples of the neutral (a), incongruent-E (b), incongruent-I (c), and congruent (d) items used in the negative priming paradigm.

Figure 4

Examples of the prime-probe pairs in the control and test conditions. In the neutral item, the empty speech bubble indicated that the initial misconception is not represented because the two locomotives did not have a passing point. In the incongruent items, the crossed speech bubble indicated that the misconception may be activated by the passing points (instant 1 or 3), and it should be inhibited to respond correctly. Moreover, it is assumed that the misconception is inhibited to a lesser extent in the incongruent-I items than in incongruent-E items (depicted by a cross in a dotted line and a solid line, respectively). Finally, in the congruent item, the tick indicates that the initial misconception is automatically triggered but it can also lead to the correct answer. Note that the boxes were only used to make it easier for the reader to distinguish the instants in the same position (depicted by yellow) from the instants having the same velocity (depicted by green).

Figure 5

The experimental procedure for the control (neutral as prime-congruent as probe) and test conditions (incongruent-E or incongruent-I as prime-congruent as probe).

Figure 6

Reaction times (RTs) for the neutral, incongruent-I, and incongruent-E priming items.

Figure 7

Reaction times (RTs) for the congruent items (probe) preceded by neutral, incongruent-I, and incongruent-E items.