Interventions for Early Science Reasoning: Enhancing Understanding of How Substances Mix through Taste Experience and Analogy

Young children have widespread problems appreciating that mixtures can be diluted, but this study shows that minimal interventions can boost children’s pre-chemistry: 5- and 7-year-olds showed strong dilution effects, maintained over weeks, after making and tasting some sugar-water mixtures, also after seeing dilution effects in analoguous bead mixtures.