Cognitive Task Analysis for Implicit Knowledge About Visual Representations With Similarity Learning Methods

Visual representations are prevalent in STEM instruction. To benefit from visuals, students need representational competencies that enable them to see meaningful information. Most research has focused on explicit conceptual representational competencies, but implicit perceptual competencies might also allow students to efficiently see meaningful information in visuals. Most common methods to assess students’ representational competencies rely on verbal explanations or assume explicit attention. However, because perceptual competencies are implicit and not necessarily verbally accessible, these methods are ill‐equipped to assess them. We address these shortcomings with a method that draws on similarity learning, a machine learning technique that detects visual features that account for participants’ responses to triplet comparisons of visuals. In Experiment 1, 614 chemistry students judged the similarity of Lewis structures and in Experiment 2, 489 students judged the similarity of ball‐and‐stick models. Our results showed that our method can detect visual features that drive students’ perception and suggested that students’ conceptual knowledge about molecules informed perceptual competencies through top‐down processes. Furthermore, Experiment 2 tested whether we can improve the efficiency of the method with active sampling. Results showed that random sampling yielded higher accuracy than active sampling for small sample sizes. Together, the experiments provide the first method to assess students’ perceptual competencies implicitly, without requiring verbalization or assuming explicit visual attention. These findings have implications for the design of instructional interventions that help students acquire perceptual representational competencies.     

The transition form theory to therapy: Test of two instructional methods

This study compared college students' understanding of the role of three language learning theories (operant, sociolinguistic, cognitive) in language theory through two instructional methods: video-based anchored instruction and traditional classroom instruction. Results indi-cated no significant difference between the performance of students in the two instructional groups on the post-test while students who received anchored instruction scored significantly higher on two transfer tests than students who received the traditional instruction. Video-based anchored instruction was found to be a valuable instructional tool which increased students' understanding of theoretical principles; through observations they experienced abstract theoretical principles as the foundation for clinicians' actions and interactions with language-impaired children.     

Instruction,Understanding, and Skill in Multidigit Addition and Subtraction

We traced the emerging relations between children's understanding of multidigit numbers and their computational skill and investigated how instruction influenced these relations. We followed about 70 children over the first 3 years of school while they were learning about place value and multidigit addition and subtraction in 2 different instructional environments. By interviewing the students several times each year, we found that understanding and skill were closely related on tasks for which students had not yet received instruction as well as on more difficult tasks even after instruction. Students appeared to apply specific understandings to invent new procedures and modify old ones. The alternative instruction, which encouraged students to develop their own procedures and to make sense of procedures presented by others, appeared to facilitate higher levels of understanding and closer connections between understanding and skill.     

Mapping Students' Perceptions of Interesting Class Lessons

Students' perspectives about their experiences as students are potentially valuable resources for teachers and researchers. In this study middle-school students were asked, ‘What are the features of interesting class lessons?’ Students' responses were allocated to categories of similar semantic meaning and representative statements were selected from each category. The students then sorted and ranked the representative statements, generating numerical data suitable for cluster anal-ysis and multidimensional scaling. The cluster analysis generated three main clusters: (a) teachers, (b) individual learning, and (c) social learning. Each main cluster contained smaller clusters that indicated students' concern with issues such as the personal qualities of teachers and self-efficacy. The multidimensional scaling analysis generated a perceptual map that was interpreted to contain two dimensions: (d) student-teacher and (e) individual-social learning. The structure of the perceptual map stimulates questions about the connections that students might make between students' learning and teachers' teaching strategies, as well as students' understandings about the learning opportunities provided by social learning activities.     

Representational Translation With Concrete Models in Organic Chemistry

In representation-rich domains such as organic chemistry, students must be facile and accurate when translating between different 2D representations, such as diagrams. We hypothesized that translating between organic chemistry diagrams would be more accurate when concrete models were used because difficult mental processes could be augmented by external actions on the models. In three studies, the task was to translate between different diagrams of molecules with or without a model. The model groups outperformed control groups, and students who received and used models outperformed those who received but did not use models. Uses of the model suggested that participants were performing external actions to support or replace difficult mental spatial processes. Spatial ability was a much weaker predictor of performance than model use. Results suggest that concrete molecular models can be an effective learning tool but some students need direct instruction to be able to take advantage of models.     

Linguistic Intuitions are the Result of Interactions Between Perceptual Processes and Linguistic Universals

We found a direct relationship between variation in informants' grammaticality intuitions about pronoun coreference and variation in the same informants' use of a clause segmentation strategy during sentence perception. It has been proproposed that ‘c-command’, a structural principle defined in terms of constituent dominance relations, constrains within-sentence coreference between pronouns and noun antecedents. The relative height of the pronoun and the noun in the phrase structure hierarchy determines whether the c-command constraint blocks coreference: Coreference is allowed only when the complement structure containing the noun is attached higher than the pronoun. We collected informants' judgments on pronoun-noun coreference in which the noun antecedent was contained in a complement structure dominated by either the Sentence-node (S-node) (higher than the pronoun) or the Verb-phrase-node (VP-node) (not higher than the pronoun). We also assessed each informant's perceptual clause-closure tendency using an auditory word-monitor paradigm. Informants who strongly segmented clauses in the perceptual task did not differentiate between an S- and VP-attachment of sentence complements, as revealed in their coreference judgments, but rather appeared to attach all sentence complements to the S-node. Informants with relatively weak perceptual segmentation differentiated their coreference judgments according to the node attachment of the complement structure. These results indicate that the linguistic universal controlling within-sentence coreference applies to the perceptually available structure for a sequence, not to its pure linguistic structure. Hence, linguistic intuitions result from the interaction of three independent faculties: language-specific knowledge, perceptual processes, and linguistic universals.     

Sharing and Confronting Propositions in Collaborative Inquiry Learning

This study investigates how collaborative knowledge construction within an inquiry learning environment can be assisted with scaffolds that aim to support students' hypothesis generation process. Sixty-six students on a university preparatory track worked collaboratively on a kinematics task. The instructional goal was to develop students' understanding of one-dimensional kinematics. All students completed a proposition test in which they indicated their individual opinions about the truth-value of specific propositions. Subsequently, students were coupled into dyads and assigned to one of three conditions: (a) a shared proposition scratchpad (expression builder), (b) a shared proposition table, and (c) a control condition. Students in the scratchpad condition were given an expression builder consisting of dropdown menus with pre-defined variables and relations. Students in the shared proposition table condition could combine individual opinions about the truth-value of a proposition into one shared proposition table that highlighted differences in opinion. Students in the control condition received no extra support related to propositions. Learning outcomes were assessed using a variety of pre- and posttests. The findings indicate that students supported with the shared proposition table showed significant gains for qualitative knowledge about relations. The number of unique propositions students discussed during the learning session was a significant predictor of learning gains. A more detailed analysis of students' interaction protocols suggests that students differed in their task perceptions, their interaction patterns, and their use of prior knowledge.     

The Temporal and Dynamic Nature of Self-Regulatory Processes During Independent and Externally Assisted Hypermedia Learning

This study examined the temporal and dynamic nature of students’ self-regulatory processes while learning about the circulatory system with hypermedia. A total of 74 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions: independent learning or externally assisted learning. Participants in the independent learning condition used a hypermedia environment to learn about the circulatory system on their own, while participants in the externally assisted condition used the same hypermedia environment, but were given prompts and feedback from a human tutor during the session to facilitate their self-regulatory behavior. Previously published pretest–posttest shifts toward more mature understanding of the circulatory system indicate that the externally assisted condition leads to greater learning. The present article uses think-aloud data during learning to explore process issues in light of models of self-regulated learning and conditions of engagement that may affect those processes. Results indicate that access to a human tutor influences the deployment of regulatory processes, intervals of use, and temporal dependencies. For example, there is significantly more planning during the final time interval of the learning session in the externally assisted condition; students in both conditions deploy more learning strategies in the first and second time intervals, compared to the last two time intervals. Additionally, in the externally assisted condition participants were more likely to shift from planning to monitoring and less likely to shift from learning strategies to planning. We discuss theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues pertaining to these results, as well as implications for future research and the design of adaptive hypermedia systems.     

The knowledge-learning-instruction framework: bridging the science-practice chasm to enhance robust student learning

Despite the accumulation of substantial cognitive science research relevant to education, there remains confusion and controversy in the application of research to educational practice. In support of a more systematic approach, we describe the Knowledge-Learning-Instruction (KLI) framework. KLI promotes the emergence of instructional principles of high potential for generality, while explicitly identifying constraints of and opportunities for detailed analysis of the knowledge students may acquire in courses. Drawing on research across domains of science, math, and language learning, we illustrate the analyses of knowledge, learning, and instructional events that the KLI framework affords. We present a set of three coordinated taxonomies of knowledge, learning, and instruction. For example, we identify three broad classes of learning events (LEs): (a) memory and fluency processes, (b) induction and refinement processes, and (c) understanding and sense-making processes, and we show how these can lead to different knowledge changes and constraints on optimal instructional choices.     

A Note from the Editor

In this article I detail the conceptual trajectory of a classroom of 2nd- and 3rd-grade students as they reinvent topographical lines to represent height in a map within the constraints of an overhead perspective. In my analysis I pay special attention to the role of social interaction—and in particular the role of the teacher—in the process of knowledge production. First, I demonstrate how the invention of representational forms by individuals occur as part of a larger social process of creating cultural conventions and negotiating a taken-as-shared understanding of these new tools. Second, I show how gesture, as a part of the larger semiotic ecology for meaning making around representations, contributes to creation of understanding. Third, I make some preliminary proposals regarding the process of transforming personal inventions into cultural conventions. The analyses are intended to contribute to our field's growing understanding of young children's activity when inventing representations (i.e., metarepresentational competence), the mechanisms for learning within instructional activities based on the iterative refinement of these representations (i.e., progressive symbolization), and a rejection of the dichotomy between an individual's cognition and her participation within a cultural community.     

Fostering Analytic Metacognitive Processes and Reducing Overconfidence by Disfluency: The Role of Contrast Effects

Overconfidence leads to premature termination of study and, thus, to decreased performance. The aim of the present study is to improve students' monitoring and control. We assume that disfluency fosters analytic metacognitive processes and thus reduces overconfidence. However, we expect that contrast effects moderate the fluency effects on metacognitive processes because disfluency activates analytic metacognitive processes not only for disfluent but also for succeeding fluent learning material. To test our hypotheses, university students (N = 75) learned either with a fluent text first and afterward a disfluent text or with a disfluent text first and afterward a fluent text. The results show fluency effects on control, monitoring, and monitoring accuracy only when students learned with a fluent and afterward a disfluent text. Performance was worse for disfluent than for fluent texts in both conditions. Therefore, instructional settings that help students to implement accurate monitoring into better control and better performance are required. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Global and Functional: Mandler's Perceptual and Conceptual Processes in Infancy

Mandler's distinction between perceptual categorization and conceptual categorization in infancy provides an important reconciliation of the conflicting data and contributes to our theoretical understanding of the development of thought in the early years of life. It is argued, however, that subsequent processes during the word learning period that follows reflect functional differentiations and slot-filler hierarchical organization.     

Making Their Own Connections: Students' Understanding of Multiple Models in Basic Electricity

In this study we explore the educational impact of teaching high school students several models of the same phenomenon. In particular, we create different sets of models of static electricity (each set containing 1 model of particles and 1 model of aggregates of particles) that are connected in specific ways and measure the effects of these links on further learning of circuit behavior. Four groups were run through a 2-week curriculum on direct current electricity. One group received "coordinated" models that are connected together by their mechanisms and representations. Another group received "noncoordinated" models that do not connect via mechanisms and representations. The other two groups served as control groups for the Coordinated and Noncoordinated conditions. Contrary to the hypothesis that Coordinated models would be easier to learn and apply, posttest results show that students in the Noncoordinated condition outperformed those in their control group; meanwhile, the Coordinated group did not outperform its control group on these tests. An analysis of process data gathered while students were working through the curriculum suggests that students in the Noncoordinated group were actively combining the different models presented in that treatment condition. We conjecture that the effort of trying to achieve coherence among models may have led to a better understanding as measured by the posttests.     

Creative Cognitive Processes in Higher Education

This paper explores whether or not students in higher education settings are using creative cognitive processes, how these processes are related to deep approaches to learning, and in what types of settings and students these processes are most prevalent. Data collected from 8,724 students at 17 institutions participating in the 2010 National Survey of Student Engagement suggests that first‐year and senior students employ several different creative cognitive processes in their everyday activities. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggest two distinct types of processes: deliberate creative processes and intuitive cognitive processes. Additional analyses indicate significant positive relationships between both types of creative processes and deep approaches to learning, as well as statistically significant differences in the use of creative processes based on gender, enrollment type, and type of institution. Potential reasons for and implications of these findings are discussed.     

The dynamics of perceptual learning: an incremental reweighting model

The mechanisms of perceptual learning are analyzed theoretically, probed in an orientation-discrimination experiment involving a novel nonstationary context manipulation, and instantiated in a detailed computational model. Two hypotheses are examined: modification of early cortical representations versus task-specific selective reweighting. Representation modification seems neither functionally necessary nor implied by the available psychophysical and physiological evidence. Computer simulations and mathematical analyses demonstrate the functional and empirical adequacy of selective reweighting as a perceptual learning mechanism. The stimulus images are processed by standard orientation- and frequency-tuned representational units, divisively normalized. Learning occurs only in the "read-out" connections to a decision unit; the stimulus representations never change. An incremental Hebbian rule tracks the task-dependent predictive value of each unit, thereby improving the signal-to-noise ratio of their weighted combination. Each abrupt change in the environmental statistics induces a switch cost in the learning curves as the system temporarily works with suboptimal weights.     

Sensibility and understanding in perceptual judgments

The main aim of this paper is to work towards an account of how sensibility and understanding combine in perceptual judgments, with the emphasis on the role of sensibility in both the justification of such judgments and the explanation of how it is possible for them to apply to an objective world. I argue that in the normal course of events sensory intuitions function as (animal-level) beliefs about the objective world; and that these in turn acquire the status of perceptual judgments to the extent that they are imbedded in and engaged with the high-level patterns of consciousness and reasoning characteristic of full-blown human judgment. In terms of this account sensibility is seamlessly integrated with understanding in perceptual judgments. This does not, however, imply that its contribution to perceptual judgments cannot be separated analytically, for in my terms the basic justification and objective reference of perceptual judgments are directly inherited from the sensory intuitions (functioning as sensory beliefs) which constitute those judgments. I conclude by showing how this account can be used to undermine John McDowell's claim that any attempt to assign a separable contribution to sensibility cannot avoid a commitment to the Myth of the Given.     

Seventh Graders' Academic Achievement,Creativity, and Ability to Construct a Cross‐domain Concept Map — A Brain Function Perspective

This study proposes an interactive model of cross‐domain concept mapping with an emphasis on brain functions, and it further investigates the relationships between academic achievement, creative thinking, and cross‐domain concept mapping. Sixty‐nine seventh graders participated in this study which employed two 50–minute instructional sessions. The findings suggest that (a) the seventh graders may lack the awareness or ability to integrate knowledge and make connections between their learning and life experiences; (b) creative thinking, academic learning and concept mapping share similar capacities; and (c) cross‐domain concept mapping, which fosters cross‐domain information integration and connections between learning and life experiences, can be an efficient mental tool in understanding a student's creative thinking and academic learning.     

Seeing the Problem: An Explanation From Pólya

In this article, we focus on the instructional explanation of guessing as a heuristic for solving the Five Planes Problem (FPP), given in a lesson by George Pólya. We use the analysis of the lesson to test the applicability of what is known about instructional explanations in elementary mathematics to higher mathematics. The most salient characteristic of Pólya's lesson is the profusion of models and representations used to develop a sense of the problem and to support the instructional explanation. Pólya used analogical models to transform the complex FFT to a simpler one, and he used representations to extend the perspective on the problem. Introducing such models and representations requires keeping track of the links between them and the original problem. Pólya excelled in this endeavor, and his passage to each new representation or model was generally justified in terms of the goals of the explanation. Another very important feature of an instructional explanation is problem identification, a fragile goal state that needs to be constantly maintained when the problem being explained is complex. For this lesson, we examine how Pólya established and maintained that goal. Finally, we offer some insight on instructional explanations in a situation in which the teacher needs to fulfill two goals at the same time. Here, the first goal was to teach students both how to solve FPP and how to use guessing as a problem-solving heuristic or strategy; the second goal was to show us how to teach guessing. Keeping these goals in mind, we offer some suggestions on how to teach metaskills through mathematical problems in accordance with the current understanding of constructivist approaches to learning.     

教学控制策略对小学儿童多媒体情境下英语学习效果的影响

该研究以103名二年级小学生为被试,运用教育实验方法探讨了在多媒体情境下,不同认知风格、英语水平的儿童在不同教学控制策略下的英语学习效果。结果发现:(1)英语水平较低的学生,无论其认知风格是场独立性还是场依存性,都是在教师控制策略下的学习效果好于教师指导下的学生控制策略;(2)英语水平较高且认知风格为场依存性的学生,在教师指导的学生控制策略下的学习效果显著好于在教师控制策略下的学习效果,而认知风格为场独立性的学生在两种策略下的学习效果没有显著差异。