Scientific reasoning in a real‐world context: The effect of prior belief and outcome on children's hypothesis‐testing strategies

The impact of event outcome and prior belief on scientific reasoning was investigated within a real-world oral health context. Participants (N= 144; ranging from 3 to 11 years) were given hypothesis-testing tasks and asked to explain their answers. Participants were presented with information that was either consistent or inconsistent with their own beliefs. Each task consisted of scenarios in which the outcome was either good or bad oral...