Secondary Science - Responding to the Environment

SEEING

Ramadas and Drver report that many children do not recognize the necessity of light for vision and thought it was possible to see in the dark.
Fetherston haugh and Treagust suggest about 75% of their sample used a visual ray idea assuming that we see, not by light being reflected to our eyes, but by looking .
Osborne et al. found that 35% of their sample gave no explanation for vision, suggesting that “seeing with our eyes” was sufficient to account for sight.
More than half the children indicated a link between the eye and the object and often there was a direction to the link.
A large number of these responses suggested that vision was an active process. Some children drew the line from the light source to the eye and then to the obect. (4.2) • Most responses showed both links pointed at the object. (4.3) *Anderson & Smith showed only about 6% of children held a scientific view, 10 percent of 11 and 12 years olds and 33% of over 14s indicated that the eye is a receptor of light reflected from a non-luminous object.
Some children doubted the necessity of light for vision.
The idea of the eye sending sending out a ray to the object was indicated by nearly 1/3 of the pupils.
Most of these pupils took the lamp to be the origin of the light, even whe viewing a luminous object, such as a TV set.

Older children associated sound reception with the ear; younger children frequently did not.
Some children believed that the most important factor in hearing was listening intently to the sound.
Older children has a more sophisticated concept of how the ear worked, including ideas such as the ear drum, vibrations, and sound transmission. Few children accepted a similarity between light and sound.

Many children (age 4 & 5) knew of the mind and regarded it as an internal organ, additional to the brain. They did not think that the brain was needed for such behavior as physical actions, or that it was concerned with feelings or emotions.
Older children associate the brain with the senses.
Carey states that, “coming to see neural processes as part of a system of biological functions is a late achievement."