Role of concept definition, teaching examples, and practice on concept learning from prose

Two experiments were performed to evaluate the effects of definition adjunct questions on concept learning. Each experiment included 132 undergraduates at a large midwestern university. In both experiments, subjects studied a passage containing matched or unmatched application questions only, matched or unmatched application questions preceded by a definition question, definition questions only, or no questions at all. The critical attributes of the to-be-learned concepts were more salient in the sets of examples and nonexamples presented in the matched application questions than in the unmatched application questions. Subjects took a criterion test which consisted of novel matched and unmatched application questions. In both experiments, only unmatched application adjunct questions preceded by a definition question produced significantly higher performance on the criterion questions than definition questions only. The discussion focused on the importance of definition questions for effective use of different types of application questions.     

Detrimental effects of immediate explanation feedback

Adjunct questions are a common means to foster learning from instructional explanations. As the benefit of adjunct questions is mitigated if learner performance on them is low, it is also common to provide feedback as an add-on if learners fail to correctly respond to them. However, if adjunct questions are highly demanding, feedback might not only beneficially affect learning because it helps learners revise their comprehension difficulties; at the same time, it could also detrimentally affect learning by causing learners to invest less time in responding to subsequent adjunct questions, which lowers learner performance on these questions. This, in turn, could reduce learning outcomes. To address these potential detrimental effects of feedback, we experimentally varied whether N?=?59 students received immediate feedback after they responded to highly demanding adjunct questions. We found that the feedback did indeed have detrimental effects: At least for the learners who perceived the task of responding to the adjunct questions as highly demanding, the feedback decreased both the time the learners invested in responding to the adjunct questions and their performance on them. This detrimental effect on the performance on the adjunct questions, in turn, entailed a detrimental effect on learning outcomes. We conclude that immediate feedback is not necessarily a beneficial add-on to adjunct questions in all situations.     

How can comprehension adjunct questions focus students' attention and enhance concept learning of a computer-animated science lesson?

Two focusing hypotheses were evaluated. First, do adjunct questions, focusing on science concepts and inserted after computer-animated sequences, selectively alter students' attentional or practice processing and thus produce differential learning effects? Theoretically, such questions selectively focus students' attention and enhance concept learning of focused concepts. Second, do these questions still provide enough metacognitive scaffolding to produce differential learning effects when only the first 8 out of 12 sequences are followed by focusing questions? Eighth-grade students (n = 160) were randomly assigned to a control group (lesson alone) or one of four treatment groups (lesson plus 12 questions focusing either on heat or on temperature, or lesson plus the same first 8 questions on heat or temperature followed by 4 placebo questions). Two significant two-way interactions with widely varying F ratios supported the differential focusing hypotheses (12 questions—more robust interaction, 8—less robust interaction).     

The Study Habits of Failing and Successful Students in the First Two Years of College

This research evaluated the effects of asking subjects to create personal examples of target concepts on their ability to recall, classify, and apply their conceptual knowledge. Subjects were 48 undergraduates at a large midwestern university. All subjects studied a passage on four psychological principles that contained application adjunct questions preceded by definition adjunct questions inserted after selected paragraphs. Application questions asked subjects to identify novel examples of target concepts, and definition questions asked subjects to identify appropriate definitions. One-half of the subjects also received instructions after each set of adjunct questions to write down two personal examples of the target concept (i.e., elaborate their conceptual knowledge). Subjects were also separated into high and low ability groups based on their performance on a series of ability tests. The results indicated that elaboration produced a significant main effect and ability by treatment interaction only on the application of the target concepts to problemsolving scenarios. An ability main effect was found for number of teaching examples recalled, number of novel examples correctly classified, and for number of concepts correctly applied to problem-solving scenarios.     

The Effects of Adjunct Questions and Feedback on Improving the Reading Comprehension Skills of Learning-Disabled Adolescents

Adjunct question research has typically focused on the effects of adjunct questions on improving the learning of college students. This study investigated the effects of inserted and massed postquestions (inference, main idea, and detail), with and without feedback, on improving the comprehension skills of adolescents labeled as reading disabled. Students practiced using adjunct questions for 6 weeks. The results suggested that inserted questions (and to a lesser extent massed postquestions) were beneficial in improving the comprehension of texts that did not contain adjunct questions. Specifically, the results indicated that (a) inserted questions were more effective than massed postquestions or no questions, (b) massed postquestions were more effective than no questions, and (c) the effects of inserted questions on comprehension increased over the time of treatment. The beneficial effects of feedback were limited to inference and main idea questions. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Constructing Equivalent Salary Schedules

College students (N = 160) read two 1-½ page passages on the concepts of autism and trochaic meter. After reading, four independent groups answered questions requiring either a summary, the generation of a new example of the concept, a listing of the critical attributes of the concept, or the identification of a new example. All groups received feedback, and a control group received feedback but no post-question. Alternate forms of a test of concept classification were given one day and one week after reading. The identify post-question group showed greater accuracy in the classification of new examples of the concepts studied when compared to the other post-question groups, yet required no greater amount of study time than the no-question control group.     

Effects of incorporating retrieval into learning tasks: The complexity of the tasks matters

In an experiment with N = 192 university students, we examined whether the effects of incorporating retrieval into learning tasks depend on the learning tasks' complexity. The learning tasks consisted of adjunct questions that were provided together with expository texts relating to the domain of chemistry. We varied (a) whether the adjunct questions required the learners to summarize (low complexity) or generate inferences on the basis of provided information (high complexity) and (b) whether the adjunct questions were implemented in a closed-book style that required learners to engage in retrieval or in an open-book style that did not require learners to engage in retrieval while responding to the questions. Afterwards, all learners took either an immediate or a delayed criterion test. We found that the effect of incorporating retrieval depended on the complexity of the adjunct questions; the net benefit of incorporating retrieval was higher for the low complexity ones.     

The role of paraphrased adjunct questions in facilitating learning from prose

Twenty-six college student read a 5000-word prose passage and answered either verbatim or paraphrased inserted questions while reading about international communication. Students either were or were not permitted to review the text while answering the inserted questions. On a subsequent post-test containing new paraphrases of the adjunct questions, students who received paraphrased adjunct questions outperformed students who received verbatim adjunct questions. This result supported the contention that paraphrased adjunct questions could facilitate meaningful learning from prose.     

Role of adjunct questions and reading ability levels on rote and conceptual learning from prose

This research evaluated the effect of question type (rote, conceptual) and adjunct question response mode (multiple choice, short answer) on rote and conceptual learning outcomes of high and low ability readers. Subjects were 98 freshman students of a small, historically black, undergraduate institution. Students studied a passage containing either rote- or conceptual-level adjunct questions or no questions. They were then administered a rote and a conceptual post-test over the presented concepts. A 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design was used. The results indicated, contrary to most other research, that rote adjunct questions were more helpful to readers than conceptual adjunct questions on both rote and conceptual post-tests. As expected, high reading ability students performed better than low reading ability students within treatments. There were no significant aptitude-treatment interactions.     

Post-questioning, concept mapping and feedback: a distance education field experiment

This study was designed to assess the instructional potential of two learning strategies—post-questioning and concept mapping—in the presence and absence of systematic instructional feedback. It is a first attempt to test combinations of these treatments experimentally in the context of a course in distance education. Five research questions, drawn from the literature of post-questioning, concept mapping and feedback, were formulated to guide the design and analysis. Substantial differences in achievement outcomes were found for four of the five questions. These results are discussed in relation to the existing literature on outcomes of learning strategies and their implication for practice in distance education.     

Book Reviews

This study investigated the effects of a visual advance organizer on a biology concept learning task among fifth graders. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) a visual advance organizer will facilitate the acquisition of concepts, especially when the material to be learned has visual components; (2) the organizer will be more effective in enhancing transfer than facilitating acquisition of verbal information; and (3) the organizer will produce greater benefits over long‐term retention of content. Three treatments were administered to 48 fifth graders, ranging from 10 to 11 years. In two of the treatments, subjects were exposed to a visual organizer either before or after the completion of a self‐instructional unit on ‘Fungi’. In the third treatment (control group), students were not given any organizer. Two parallel‐form post‐tests‐‐immediate and delayed‐‐were administered, consisting of three levels of learning outcomes: knowledge, comprehension and application. Results of MANCOVA on performance showed a slight but non‐significant difference in delayed post‐test scores. An interaction between the levels of learning and time of test factor also emerged. Findings of the study are discussed in terms of the assimilation theory, and aptitude‐treatment interactions observed between prior knowledge and level of instructional support.     

Which Technique is most Effective for Learning Declarative Concepts—Provided Examples,Generated Examples,or Both?

Students in many courses are commonly expected to learn declarative concepts, which are abstract concepts denoted by key terms with short definitions that can be applied to a variety of scenarios as reported by Rawson et al. (Educational Psychology Review 27:483–504, 2015). Given that declarative concepts are common and foundational in many courses, an important question arises: What are the most effective techniques for learning declarative concepts? The current research competitively evaluated the effectiveness of various example-based learning techniques for learning declarative concepts, with respect to both long-term learning and efficiency during study. In experiment 1, students at a large, Midwestern university were asked to learn 10 declarative concepts in social psychology by studying provided examples (instances of concepts that are provided to students illustrate how the concept can be applied), generating examples (instances of concepts that the student generates on his or her own to practice applying the concept), or by receiving a combination of alternating provided examples and generated examples. Two days later, students completed final tests (an example classification test and a definition cued recall test). Experiment 2 replicated and extended findings from experiment 1. The extension group was a variation of the combination group, in which participants were simultaneously presented with a provided example while generating an example. In both experiments, long-term learning and study efficiency were greater following the study of provided examples relative to the other example-based learning techniques.     

Effects of In-video Questions and Feedback on Learning Performance

The eye-tracking technology was used in this study to investigate the effects of embedded questions and feedback in instructional videos on learning performance and attention allocation and whether an expertise reversal effect existed. The experiment involved 49 learners with high-level prior knowledge and 45 ones with low-level prior knowledge from a university. Meanwhile, they learned instructional videos with no embedded feedback, embedded questions without feedback and embedded questions with feedback. Findings from the experiment showed that the instructional videos with embedded questions but without feedback not only improved the participants’ attention but also enhanced their learning performance. Furthermore, there was an expertise reversal effect on the learning performance whereby instructional videos with embedded questions but without feedback improved the learning performance of learners with low-level prior knowledge, but not those with high-level prior knowledge.     

Refutations in science texts lead to hypercorrection of misconceptions held with high confidence

Misconceptions about science are often not corrected during study when they are held with high confidence. However, when corrective feedback co-activates a misconception together with the correct conception, this feedback may surprise the learner and draw attention, especially when the misconceptions are held with high confidence. Therefore, high-confidence misconceptions might be more likely to be corrected than low-confidence misconceptions. The present study investigates whether this hypercorrection effect occurs when students read science texts. Effects of two text formats were compared: Standard texts that presented factual information, and refutation texts that explicitly addressed misconceptions and refuted them before presenting factual information. Eighth grade adolescents (N = 114) took a pre-reading test that included 16 common misconceptions about science concepts, rated their confidence in correctness of their response to the pre-reading questions, read 16 texts about the science concepts, and finally took a post-test which included both true/false and open-ended test questions. Analyses of post-test responses show that reading refutation texts causes hypercorrection: Learners more often corrected high-confidence misconceptions after reading refutation texts than after reading standard texts, whereas low-confidence misconceptions did not benefit from reading refutation texts. These outcomes suggest that people are more surprised when they find out a confidently held misconception is incorrect, which may encourage them to pay more attention to the feedback and the refutation. Moreover, correction of high-confidence misconceptions was more apparent on the true/false test responses than on the open-ended test, suggesting that additional interventions may be needed to improve learners' accommodation of the correct information.     

Concept map structure,gender and teaching methods: an investigation of students' science learning

Background: This study deals with the application of concept mapping to the teaching and learning of a science topic with secondary school students in Germany.

Purpose: The main research questions were: (1) Do different teaching approaches affect concept map structure or students' learning success? (2) Is the structure of concept maps influenced by gender? (3) Is the concept map structure a reliable indicator of students' learning success?

Sample: One hundred and forty-nine high-achieving 5th-grade students from four German secondary schools participated in the study. The average age of participants was 10½ years. Gender distribution was balanced. Students produced concept maps working in small, single-sex groups.

Design and methods: There were two teaching approaches used: one based upon teacher-centred instruction and one consisting of student-centred learning. Both were followed by a concept-mapping phase. Student groups experienced either one or the other teaching approach. Concept map structures were analysed using of the method of Kinchin, Hay and Adams. We defined three different possible types of concept map structure: spokes, chains and nets. Furthermore, for assessing a student's short- and longer-term learning success, we constructed a multiple-choice knowledge test applied in a pre-, post-, retention-test design. Parametric tests, such as MANOVA, one-way ANOVA and t-tests were used to identify any differences in gender, teaching approach, number of nets per concept map and their interactions.

Results: Type of teaching approach had an effect on concept map structure but not on students' longer-term learning success. Students of the teacher-centred approach produced more net structures than those students who participated in the hands-on instruction. Subsequent analyses showed in total more net structures for female groups. The interaction of gender and number of nets per concept map showed a significant effect on students' longer-term learning success.

Conclusion: The study suggests that Kinchin's classification scheme for assessing concept map quality may be a good indicator of students' learning success when applied in combination with a knowledge test.     

Cognitive Load and Learner Expertise: Split-Attention and Redundancy Effects in Reading with Explanatory Notes

Five experiments were conducted to examine the effects of cognitive load management using explanatory notes in reading passages for readers with different levels of expertise. Experiment 1 found that explanatory notes improved 5th-grade, first-language learners' comprehension (high-level processing) but not vocabulary learning (low-level processing). Experiment 2 found that vocabulary definitions integrated within a passage (integrated format) enhanced 5th graders' comprehension compared to a separate vocabulary list (separated format) but reduced vocabulary learning. Experiment 3, using adult readers, found that an integrated format reduced comprehension but enhanced vocabulary learning. Experiment 4 used low-ability 8th-grade learners of English as a second language (ESL) and found an effect similar to the 5th graders in Experiment 2. Experiment 5 showed that the effect for high-ability ESL learners was similar to the adults in Experiment 3. We argue that the efficiency of instruction depends on the extent to which it imposes an extraneous cognitive load. The same presentation format may facilitate performance or interfere with performance either through split-attention or redundancy effects, depending on learners' expertise.     

Contextual Variation and Memory Retrieval at Six Months

In 2 experiments we asked whether training in multiple contexts could eliminate context-dependent memory retrieval at 6 months as it does for adults. We found that 24-hour retention was disrupted when infants were trained in one context and tested in another but not when they were trained in multiple contexts prior to testing in a novel context (Experiment 1). After a long delay, however, training in multiple contexts did not facilitate memory retrieval in a novel context: An otherwise effective retrieval cue (the training mobile) did not alleviate forgetting 3 weeks later when it was presented in a novel context (Experiment 2). These findings demonstrate that multiple learning contexts can override the debilitating effects of an altered context on memory retrieval at 6 months, but only over the short term. The resistance of older memories to retrieval in novel contexts after long periods of disuse may be adaptive, insuring that potentially inappropriate or irrelevant memories will not be expressed.     

The Assessment and Modification of Concept Interrelationships

The purposes of the present experiments were to assess the structure of a set of conceptual interrelationships in a group of college students and design and implement an intervention technique to change the conceptual structure. The assessment was performed by having subjects make a comparative rating of each pair of a set of concepts taken from the basic learning section of the introductory psychology course (e.g., reinforcement, unconditioned stimulus). The ratings were treated by multidimensional scaling to reveal aspects of the concept interrelationships. The intervention technique in Experiment 1 was a special lecture designed by noting the major discrepancies between the concept structure of the students and that of the authors of the present study (the reference structure). The special lecture of Experiment 1 failed to significantly alter the conceptual structure of the students. In Experiment 2 another intervention technique was designed which reduced the number of concepts singled out for alteration and required the students to make active comparisons of the concepts. In this instance the intervention produced a substantial shift in the students’ concept structure in the direction of the reference structure.     

Effects of duration of feedback on signaled avoidance

Two experiments were carried out to study vertical jumping avoidance learning in rats. In particular, we examined the effects of the duration of a feedback stimulus and of the interval between the end of the feedback stimulus and the start of the next trial on acquisition and extinction of avoidance. In Experiment 1, the duration of feedback was manipulated while intertriai interval (feedback plus no-feedback) was held constant. Animals with feedback lasting more than 1 sec needed fewer trials to reach the acquisition criteria than did animals with no feedback or with 1-sec feedback. No differences were observed in extinction. In Experiment 2, the durations of both feedback and no-feedback were manipulated. Animals without feedback needed more trials to reach the acquisition criterion than did animals with feedback, but the performance of the feedback animals did not differ as a function of feedback duration, no-feedback duration, or total intertrial interval. Again, no differences were observed in extinction. These results indicate that the presentation of feedback improves the acquisition of vertical jumping avoidance, but that this effect is independent of the temporal characteristics of feedback.