ABSTRACT
Explanation improves comprehension and performance, but also leads to overconfidence. Given that explaining has both positive and negative consequences, this chapter examines how it affects students’ testing of scientific claims. It focuses on two: determining whether a relationship exists, and determining why the relationship exists. Existence questions address whether harvesting reliably causes a decline. Mechanism questions focus on how harvesting affects the hawks. Because explanations focus on mechanisms, explaining should increase the number of Mechanism questions. This is a potentially undesirable shift—better to establish that there is a relationship before trying to determine how it works. The design was a 2X2 between-participants factorial, varying Explanation and Alternate. Participants read about 8 ecological problems and saw a primary claim as to the cause of each problem.
