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237
Eliciting self-explanations improves understanding
- Cognitive Science
, 1994
"... Learning involves the integration of new information into existing knowledge. Generoting explanations to oneself (self-explaining) facilitates that integration process. Previously, self-explanation has been shown to improve the acquisition of problem-solving skills when studying worked-out examples. ..."
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Learning involves the integration of new information into existing knowledge. Generoting explanations to oneself (self-explaining) facilitates that integration process. Previously, self-explanation has been shown to improve the acquisition of problem-solving skills when studying worked-out examples. This study extends that finding, showing that self-explanation can also be facilitative when it is explicitly promoted, in the context of learning declarative knowledge from an expository text. Without any extensive training, 14 eighth-grade students were merely asked to self-explain after reading each line of a possage on the human circulatory system. Ten students in the control group read the same text twice, but were not prompted to self-explain. All of the students were tested for their circulatory system knowledge before and after reading the text. The prompted group had a greater gain from the pretest to the posttest. Moreover, prompted students who generated o large number of self-explanations (the high explainers) learned with greater understanding than low explainers. Understanding was assessed by answering very complex questions and inducing the function of a component when it was only implicitly stated. Understanding was further captured by a mental model onolysis of the self-explanation protocols. High explainers all achieved the correct mental model of the circulatory system, whereas many of the unprompted students as well as the low explainers did not. Three processing characteristics of self-explaining are considered as reasons for the gains in deeper understanding. Preparation of this article was supported in part by an Office of Educational Research and
The Totalitarian Ego -- Fabrication and Revision of Personal History
, 1980
"... This article argues that (a) ego, or self, is an organization of knowledge, (b) ego is characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies, and (c) these totalitarian-ego biases junction to preserve organization in cognitive structures. Ego's c ..."
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Cited by 270 (8 self)
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This article argues that (a) ego, or self, is an organization of knowledge, (b) ego is characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies, and (c) these totalitarian-ego biases junction to preserve organization in cognitive structures. Ego's cognitive biases are egocentricity (self as the focus of knowledge), "beneffectance" (perception of responsibility for desired, but not undesired, outcomes), and cognitive conservatism (resistance to cognitive change). In addition to being pervasively evident in recent studies of normal human cognition, these three biases are found in actively functioning, higher level organizations of knowledge, perhaps best exemplified by theoretical paradigms in science. The thesis that egocentricity, beneffectance, and
Self-generated Validity and Other Effects of Measurement on Belief, Attitude, . . .
- BELIEF, ATTITUDE, INTENTION, AND BEHAVIOR,” JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
, 1988
"... Drawing from recent developments in ocial cognition, cognitive psychology, and behavioral decision theory, we analyzed when and how the act of measuring beliefs, attitudes, intentions, a d behaviors affects observed correlations among them. Belief, attitude, or intention can be created by measure-me ..."
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Cited by 238 (3 self)
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Drawing from recent developments in ocial cognition, cognitive psychology, and behavioral decision theory, we analyzed when and how the act of measuring beliefs, attitudes, intentions, a d behaviors affects observed correlations among them. Belief, attitude, or intention can be created by measure-ment if the measured constructs do not already exist in long-term memory. The responses thus created can have directive effects on answers to other questions that follow in the survey. But even when counterparts to the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions measured already exist in memory, the structure of the survey researcher's questionnaire can affect observed correlations among them. The respondent may use retrieved answers to earlier survey questions as inputs to response generation to later questions. We present a simple theory predicting that an earlier response will be used as a basis for another, subsequent response if the former is accessible and if it is perceived to be more diagnostic than other accessible inputs. We outline the factors that determine both the perceived diagnosticity of a potential input, the likelihood that it will be retrieved, and the likelihood that some alternative (and potentially more diagnostic) inputs will be retrieved. This article examines the effects of measurement operations on revealed correlations among survey measures of belief, atti-
Attitude change: Multiple roles for persuasion variables. In
- Handbook of social psychology (4th ed.,
, 1998
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The Power of Testing Memory -- Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice
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, 2006
"... A powerful way of improving one’s memory for material is to be tested on that material. Tests enhance later retention more than additional study of the material, even when tests are given without feedback. This surprising phenomenon is called the testing effect, and although it has been studied by c ..."
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Cited by 183 (28 self)
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A powerful way of improving one’s memory for material is to be tested on that material. Tests enhance later retention more than additional study of the material, even when tests are given without feedback. This surprising phenomenon is called the testing effect, and although it has been studied by cognitive psychologists sporadically over the years, today there is a renewed effort to learn why testing is effective and to apply testing in educational settings. In this article, we selectively review laboratory studies that reveal the power of testing in improving retention and then turn to studies that demonstrate the basic effects in educational settings. We also consider the related concepts of dynamic testing and formative assessment as other means of using tests to improve learning. Finally, we consider some negative consequences of testing that may occur in certain circumstances, though these negative effects are often small and do not cancel out the large positive effects of testing. Frequent testing in the classroom may boost educational achievement at all levels of education.
A time for telling
- Cognition & Instruction
, 1998
"... JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JS ..."
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Cited by 166 (25 self)
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JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Are good texts always better? Interactions of text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning from tex
- Institute of Cognitive Science
, 1993
"... Two experiments, theoretically motivated by the construction-integration model of
text comprehension ( W. Kintsch, 1988), investigated the role of text coherence in
the comprehension of science texts. In Experiment 1, junior high school students'
comprehension of one of three versions of a biol ..."
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Cited by 157 (13 self)
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Two experiments, theoretically motivated by the construction-integration model of
text comprehension ( W. Kintsch, 1988), investigated the role of text coherence in
the comprehension of science texts. In Experiment 1, junior high school students'
comprehension of one of three versions of a biology text was examined via free
recall, written questions, and a key-word sorting task. This study demonstrates
advantages for globally coherent text and for more explanatory text. In Experiment
2, interactions among local and global text coherence, readers' background
knowledge, and levels of understanding were examined. Using the same methods
as in Experiment 1, we examined students' comprehension of one of four versions
of a text, orthogonally varying local and global coherence. We found that readers
who know little about the domain of the text benefit from a coherent text, whereas
high-knowledge readers benefit from a minimally coherent text. We argue that the
poorly written text forces the knowledgeable readers to engage in compensatory
processing to infer unstated relations in the text. These findings, however, depended
on the level of understanding, text base or situational, being measured by the three
comprehension tasks. Whereas the free-recall measure and text-based questions
primarily tapped readers' superficial understanding of the text, the inference
questions, problem-solving questions, and sorting task relied on a situational
understanding of the text. This study provides evidence that the rewards to be
gained from active processing are primarily at the level of the situation model
rather than at the superficial level of text-base understanding.
The effects of vocabulary instruction: A modelbased meta-analysis
- Review of Educational Research
, 1986
"... ABSTRACT. This paper reports a meta-analysis of studies concerned with the effects of vocabulary instruction on the learning of word meanings and on comprehension. This analysis was used to examine two questions: Does vocabulary instruction have a significant effect on children's com-prehension ..."
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Cited by 149 (2 self)
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ABSTRACT. This paper reports a meta-analysis of studies concerned with the effects of vocabulary instruction on the learning of word meanings and on comprehension. This analysis was used to examine two questions: Does vocabulary instruction have a significant effect on children's com-prehension of text? What types of vocabulary instruction are most effec-tive? In response to the first question, a mean effect size of.97 could be attributed to vocabulary instruction for comprehension of passages con-taining taught words and of.30 for global measures of comprehension, both of which are significantly different from zero. For the second ques-tion, it was suggested that the most effective vocabulary teaching methods included both definitional and contextual information in their programs, involved the students in deeper processing, and gave the students more than one or two exposures to the to-be-learned words. In addition, the mnemonic keyword method was found to have reliable effects on recall of definitions and sentence comprehension.
Separating conscious and unconscious influences of memory: Measuring recollection
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
, 1993
"... How can conscious and unconscious influences of memory be measured? In this article, a process-dissociation procedure (L. L. Jacoby, 1991) was used to separate automatic (unconscious) and consciously controlled influences within a task. For recall cued with word stems, automatic influences of memory ..."
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Cited by 147 (7 self)
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How can conscious and unconscious influences of memory be measured? In this article, a process-dissociation procedure (L. L. Jacoby, 1991) was used to separate automatic (unconscious) and consciously controlled influences within a task. For recall cued with word stems, automatic influences of memory (a) remained invariant across manipulations of attention that substantially reduced conscious recollection and (b) were highly dependent on perceptual similarity from study to test. Comparisons with results obtained through an indirect test show the advantages of the process-dissociation procedure as a means of measuring unconscious influences. The measure of recollection derived from this procedure is superior to measures gained from classic test theory and signal-detection theory. The process-dissociation procedure combines assumptions from these 2 traditional approaches to measuring memory. Dissociations between performance on direct and indirect tests of memory supply examples of effects of the past in the absence of remembering (for reviews, see Hintzman, 1990; Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988). In an indirect test, sub-jects are not asked to report on memory for an event as they
Remembering and knowing: Two means of access to the personal past
- Memory & Cognition
, 1993
"... The nature of recollective experience was examined in a recognition memory task. Subjects gave “remember ” judgments to recognized items that were accompanied by conscious recollec-tion and “know ” judgments to items that were recognizedon some other basis. Although a levels-of-processing effect (Ex ..."
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Cited by 146 (4 self)
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The nature of recollective experience was examined in a recognition memory task. Subjects gave “remember ” judgments to recognized items that were accompanied by conscious recollec-tion and “know ” judgments to items that were recognizedon some other basis. Although a levels-of-processing effect (Experiment 1) and a picture-superiority effect (Experiment 2) were obtained for overall recognition, these effects occurred only for “remember ” judgments, and were reversed for “know ” judgments. In Experiment 3, targets and lures were either preceded by a masked repetition of their own presentation (thought to increase perceptual fluency) or of an unrelated word. The effectof perceptual fluencywas obtained for overall recogrntion and “know ” judgments but not for “remember ” judgments. The data obtained for confidence judgments using the same design (Experiment4) indicated that “remember”/”know ” judgments are not made solely on the basis ofconfidence. Thesedata support the two-factor theories ofrecognition memory by dissociat-ing two forms of recognition, and shed light on the nature of conscious recollection. Consciousness permeates mental activity and yet, with
