Experimental identification of social learning in wild animals

Field experiments can provide compelling demonstrations of social learning in wild populations. Social learning has been experimentally demonstrated in at least 23 field experiments, in 20 species, covering a range of contexts, such as foraging preferences and techniques, habitat choice, and predator avoidance. We review experimental approaches taken in the field and with wild animals brought into captivity and note how these approaches can be extended. Relocating individuals, introducing trained individual demonstrators or novel behaviors into a population, or providing demonstrator-manipulated artifacts can establish whether and how a particular act can be socially transmitted in the wild and can help elucidate the benefits of social learning. The type, strength, and consistency of presented social information can be varied, and the provision of conditions favoring the performance of an act can both establish individual discovery rates and help determine whether social information is needed for acquisition. By blocking particular avenues of social transmission or removing key individuals, routes of transmission in wild populations can be investigated. Manipulation of conditions proposed to favor social learning can test mathematical models of the evolution of social learning. We illustrate how field experiments are a viable, vital, and informative approach to the study of social learning.     

Associations of Number Line Estimation With Mathematical Competence: A Meta‐analysis

The number line estimation task is widely used to investigate mathematical learning and development. The present meta‐analysis statistically synthesized the extensive evidence on the correlation between number line estimation and broader mathematical competence. Averaged over 263 effect sizes with 10,576 participants with sample mean ages from 4 to 14 years, this correlation was r = .443. The correlation increased with age, mainly because it was higher for fractions than for whole numbers. The correlation remained stable across a wide range of task variants and mathematical competence measures (i.e., counting, arithmetic, school achievement). These findings demonstrate that the task is a robust tool for diagnosing and predicting broader mathematical competence and should be further investigated in developmental and experimental training studies.     

Using causal models to bridge the divide between big data and educational theory

An extraordinary amount of data is becoming available in educational settings, collected from a wide range of Educational Technology tools and services. This creates opportunities for using methods from Artificial Intelligence and Learning Analytics (LA) to improve learning and the environments in which it occurs. And yet, analytics results produced using these methods often fail to link to theoretical concepts from the learning sciences, making them difficult for educators to trust, interpret and act upon. At the same time, many of our educational theories are difficult to formalise into testable models that link to educational data. New methodologies are required to formalise the bridge between big data and educational theory. This paper demonstrates how causal modelling can help to close this gap. It introduces the apparatus of causal modelling, and shows how it can be applied to well-known problems in LA to yield new insights. We conclude with a consideration of what causal modelling adds to the theory-versus-data debate in education, and extend an invitation to other investigators to join this exciting programme of research.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• ‘Correlation does not equal causation’ is a familiar claim in many fields of research but increasingly we see the need for a causal understanding of our educational systems.
• Big data bring many opportunities for analysis in education, but also a risk that results will fail to replicate in new contexts.
• Causal inference is a well-developed approach for extracting causal relationships from data, but is yet to become widely used in the learning sciences.

What this paper adds

• An overview of causal modelling to support educational data scientists interested in adopting this promising approach.
• A demonstration of how constructing causal models forces us to more explicitly specify the claims of educational theories.
• An understanding of how we can link educational datasets to theoretical constructs represented as causal models so formulating empirical tests of the educational theories that they represent.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• Causal models can help us to explicitly specify educational theories in a testable format.
• It is sometimes possible to make causal inferences from educational data if we understand our system well enough to construct a sufficiently explicit theoretical model.
• Learning Analysts should work to specify more causal models and test their predictions, as this would advance our theoretical understanding of many educational systems.

     

Does speed-reading training work,and if so,why? Effects of speed-reading training and metacognitive training on reading speed,comprehension and eye movements

Background

Commercial speed-reading training programs are typically marketed with the promise to dramatically increase reading speed without impairing comprehension. From the perspective of reading psychology, it seems quite unlikely that speed-reading training can indeed have such effects. However, research on the effectiveness of modern speed-reading training programs on reading performance in typical readers is sparse. The present study had two goals. First, we sought to extend prior research on speed-reading by assessing the effects of a speed-reading application on reading performance in a pre-training and post-training design with a control group. Second, we aimed to identify the mechanism underlying speed-reading training programs.

Methods

We assessed reading speed, comprehension and eye movements of 30 German-speaking undergraduates (M_age = 22.77 years, SD_age = 3.41 years) before and after they received a commercial, app-based speed-reading training, a metacognitive training or no training.

Results

Results revealed higher reading speed in the speed-reading condition and metacognitive condition compared with the control condition, although not to the extent claimed in the application. Eye-movement data indicated that the increase in reading speed was due to fewer and shorter fixations in measures reflecting late but not early lexical processing. No differences in comprehension performance were observed between the three conditions.

Conclusions

We discuss our findings in support of the idea that the increase in reading speed was not caused by a change in basic characteristics of participants' reading behaviour, but rather by an increase in their awareness of their own reading process. Further research is needed to investigate whether the observed effects are maintained over time.