Explicit knowledge of gravity and the water-level task

Individual differences in conceptions of physical phenomena are frequently seen among normal adults. This article presents two investigations of the relation between explicit knowledge of gravity and performance on Piaget's Water Level Task. In both studies two groups were compared, one with extensive training in the physical. sciences and one without. In the first study, a strong relation between success on the WLT and gravity-based explanations was found, but only in the High-Science Group. The aim of the second study was to investigate whether failure on the WLT could be due to problems in retrieving the relevant information. Minimum cuing to think about gravity yielded a statistically significant improvement for the High-Science Group only. The results are consistent with the notion that explicit knowledge of gravity can be a source of individual differences on the WLT and perhaps on other physical/spatial tasks as well.