A model‐based approach to science exhibition evaluation: A case study in a Brazilian astronomy museum

A models and modelling approach was adopted to investigate the educational potential of a science museum exhibition. It focused on patterns of relationship between the teaching models proposed by designers and students models in regard to four exhibits concerning astronomical cycles. Student’s models were elicited by interviewing 21 pupils selected from among those who showed a change of their models between pre‐visit and post‐visit questionnaires. Four patterns of relationship were identified, ranging from low to high degrees of convergence between designers and students. Exhibits designed by fragmenting the phenomena (analytical approach) tend to promote less convergent patterns than exhibits that maintain the complexity of the phenomena (synthetic approach). We argue that the two approaches are complementary: without synthetic models visitors find it difficult to identify the phenomenon addressed by analytical models, while the latter may bring to visitors’ attention aspects that otherwise might be hidden by the complexity of synthetic models.     

Establishing a forget cue in pigeons using the intratrial interference procedure

Pigeons were trained in an intratrial interference preparation in which a horizontal or vertical line was presented for 1 sec immediately following termination of a sample (red or green). Two samples were presented successively on interference trials. Choice of the comparison corresponding to the second (target) sample was designated correct and was reinforced, and choice of the comparison corresponding to the first (interfering) sample was designated incorrect and was not reinforced. Control trials involved the presentation of a single, target sample. A horizontal line was presented upon termination of an interfering sample, and a vertical line was presented upon termination of a target sample. The results of three experiments led to the conclusion that the horizontal line acquired and capacity to reduce postperceptual processing (rehearsal) of information derived from an immediately preceding sample stimulus. These findings include (1) convergence of accuracy on control and interference trials as training progressed, (2) a reduction in accuracy on control and especially on interference trials when the correlation between sample type (interfering or target) and cue type (horizontal or vertical) was reduced to zero, (3) higher accuracy (i.e., less interference) when the horizontal rather than the vertical line followed the interfering sample, and (4) higher accuracy on single-sample trials when the vertical rather than the horizontal line followed sample presentation.