Physics students’ views about what kinds of learning and knowledge-generating activities are expected in class, their epistemological framing, influences their reasoning and what they learn. [1,2] In previous work, we observed that students’ likelihood of correctly answering a kinematics question easily solved through common sense depended on whether preceding questions on the survey were designed to prime “sense-making” or schoolish “answer-making”. [3] To get insight into students’ reasoning we collected 24 think-alouds. [4] The think-aloud data indicate that some participants who incorrectly answered the question misinterpreted the physical situation it describes. On its face this observation might be seen as evidence that inferring answer-making from an incorrect answer lacks validity. However, analysis indicates that students misinterpret the question because of how they frame their approach to answering it. So, misinterpretation of the kinematics question is a signal of epistemological framing, not an impediment to seeing it.

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