In pursuit of knowledge: comparing self-explanations, concepts, and procedures as pedagogical tools

Explaining new ideas to oneself can promote learning and transfer, but questions remain about how to maximize the pedagogical value of self-explanations. This study investigated how type of instruction affected self-explanation quality and subsequent learning outcomes for second- through fifth-grade children learning to solve mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 7 + 3 + 9 = 7 + _). Experiment 1 varied whether instruction was conceptual or procedural in nature (n = 40), and Experiment 2 varied whether children were prompted to self-explain after conceptual instruction (n = 48). Conceptual instruction led to higher quality explanations, greater conceptual knowledge, and similar procedural knowledge compared with procedural instruction. No effect was found for self-explanation prompts. Conceptual instruction can be more efficient than procedural instruction and may make self-explanation prompts unnecessary.     

Eliciting Self-Explanations Improves Understanding

Learning involves the integration of new information into existing knowledge. Generating 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 passage 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 a 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 analysis 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.     

iSTART 2: Improvements for efficiency and effectiveness

iSTART (interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking) is a Web-based reading strategy trainer that develops students’ ability to self-explain difficult text as a means to improving reading comprehension. Its curriculum consists of modules presented interactively by pedagogical agents: an introduction to the basics of using reading strategies in the context of self-explanation, a demonstration of self-explanation, and a practice module in which the trainee generates self-explanations with feedback on the quality of reading strategies contained in the self-explanations. We discuss the objectives that guided the development of the second version of iSTART toward the goals of increased efficiency for the experimenters and effectiveness in the training. The more pedagogically challenging high school audience is accommodated by (1) a new introduction that increases interactivity, (2) a new demonstration with more and better focused scaffolding, and (3) a new practice module that provides improved feedback and includes a less intense but more extended regimen. Version 2 also benefits experimenters, who can set up and evaluate experiments with less time and effort, because pre- and posttesting has been fully computerized and the process of preparing a text for the practice module has been reduced from more than 1 person-week to about an hour’s time.     

Individual differences,rereading, and self-explanation: Concurrent processing and cue validity as constraints on metacomprehension accuracy

The typical finding of metacomprehension studies is that accuracy in monitoring one's own level of understanding is quite poor. In the present experiments, monitoring accuracy was constrained by individual differences in both reading comprehension ability and working memory capacity (WMC), but rereading particularly benefited low-ability and low-WMC readers, effectively eliminating the relationship between monitoring accuracy and these reader characteristics. In addition, introducing a self-explanation reading strategy improved the accuracy of all the readers above mere rereading. The observed interaction between individual differences and rereading is interpreted in terms of concurrent-processing constraints involved in monitoring while text is processed, whereas the more general self-explanation effect is interpreted in terms of accessibility of valid, performance-predicting cues.     

Learning to Solve Compare Word Problems: The Effect of Example Format and Generating Self-Explanations

A series of 3 experiments was conducted to examine factors that influence learning to solve 2-step arithmetic word problems by studying worked examples. Experiment 1 compared studying worked examples with conventional problem solving. Third graders presented with worked examples showed superior test performance to those required to solve conventional problems. Experiments 2 and 3 contrasted split-attention and integrated worked examples and investigated the influence of generating self-explanations. Significant split-attention effects were observed. Children presented with integrated worked examples outperformed those presented with split-source examples. Self-explanations further elucidated the distinction between integrated and split-source worked examples, but there was no significant effect of asking learners to generate self-explanations. Implications for word-problem-solving instruction are discussed.     

Eliciting explanations: Constraints on when self-explanation aids learning

Generating explanations for oneself in an attempt to make sense of new information (i.e., self-explanation) is often a powerful learning technique. Despite its general effectiveness, in a growing number of studies, prompting for self-explanation improved some aspects of learning, but reduced learning of other aspects. Drawing on this recent research, as well as on research comparing self-explanation under different conditions, we propose four constraints on the effectiveness of self-explanation. First, self-explanation promotes attention to particular types of information, so it is better suited to promote particular learning outcomes in particular types of domains, such as transfer in domains guided by general principles or heuristics. Second, self-explaining a variety of types of information can improve learning, but explaining one’s own solution methods or choices may reduce learning under certain conditions. Third, explanation prompts focus effort on particular aspects of the to-be-learned material, potentially drawing effort away from other important information. Explanation prompts must be carefully designed to align with target learning outcomes. Fourth, prompted self-explanation often promotes learning better than unguided studying, but alternative instructional techniques may be more effective under some conditions. Attention to these constraints should optimize the effectiveness of self-explanation as an instructional technique in future research and practice.     

样例类型与解释方式对初中生数学概率问题解决的效果

为考察样例类型与解释方式对初中生数学概率问题解决的促进作用,实验1随机选取初中生90名,比较正确样例组、正误样例组、对照组的学习效果,实验2随机选取另外90名初中生,比较有教学解释、有自我解释与无解释的正误样例组的即时与延时测试学习效果,研究发现:(1)正误样例学习效果显著好于正确样例;(2)有解释的正误样例学习效果显著好于无解释的正误样例;(3)与有教学解释的正误样例学习效果相比,有自我解释的正误样例学习效果显著且更持久。     

A shift in task routines during the learning of a motor skill: group-averaged data may mask critical phases in the individuals' acquisition of skilled performance

The authors describe a transient phase during training on a movement sequence wherein, after an initial improvement in speed and decrease in variability, individual participants' performance showed a significant increase in variability without change in mean performance speed. Subsequent to this phase, as practice continued, variability again decreased, performance significantly exceeded the gains predicted by extrapolation of the initial learning curve, the type of errors committed changed, and performance became more coherent. The transient phase of increased variability may reflect a mixture of 2 (or more) performance routines before the more effective one is set and mastered, presumably the setting up of a sequence-specific representation. Both group and individual analyses indicated a departure from the single process (e.g., power-law) model of learning. However, although similar phases appeared in the mean group data, there was little correspondence to individual participants' time courses, and the individuals' gains in the second low-variability phase were masked.     

Using latent semantic analysis to assess reader strategies

We tested a computer-based procedure for assessing reader strategies that was based on verbal protocols that utilized latent semantic analysis (LSA). Students were given self-explanation—reading training (SERT), which teaches strategies that facilitate self-explanation during reading, such as elaboration based on world knowledge and bridging between text sentences. During a computerized version of SERT practice, students read texts and typed self-explanations into a computer after each sentence. The use of SERT strategies during this practice was assessed by determining the extent to which students used the information in the current sentence versus the prior text or world knowledge in their self-explanations. This assessment was made on the basis of human judgments and LSA. Both human judgments and LSA were remarkably similar and indicated that students who were not complying with SERT tended to paraphrase the text sentences, whereas students who were compliant with SERT tended to explain the sentences in terms of what they knew about the world and of information provided in the prior text context. The similarity between human judgments and LSA indicates that LSA will be useful in accounting for reading strategies in a Web-based version of SERT.     

Perceptual selectivity and information processing by fast and slow learners in paired-associate learning

Utilizing a design requiring perceptual rather than verbal discrimination in a compound-stimulus, P-A learning task, two hypotheses related to individual differences in perceptual selection of a functional stimulus cue and the processing of information were explored. The hypothesis that fast learners (determined by pretest) would “process” more information than slow learners in P-A learning was supported. Slow learners consistently ignored the random shape to which instructions specifically directed them and selected instead the context color as the functional cue. A second hypothesis that negative transfer due to proactive inhibition would be greater for slow learners was also supported.     

Training in Self-Explanation and Self-Regulation Strategies: Investigating the Effects of Knowledge Acquisition Activities on Problem Solving

Previous research has found positive correlations between particular strategies students use while studying to explain instructional materials to themselves and student performance on associated problem-solving tasks (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser, 1989; Pirolli & Bielaczyc, 1989; Pirolli & Recker, 1994). In the study reported here, we investigate the causal nature of this relation. This was accomplished by identifying a set of self-explanation and self-regulation strategies used by high-performance students in our earlier studies. We used strategy training to manipulate students' application of these strategies and examined the impact of their use on student explanations and performance. Twenty-four university students with no prior programming experience worked through a sequence of programming lessons. Following introductory lessons, participants received interventions involving explicit training in the strategies (instructional group) or received a similar set of interventions but no explicit training (control group). The instructional group showed significantly greater gains than the control group in the use of self-explanation and self-regulation strategies from the pre- to postinterventions lessons. Increased strategy application was accompanied by significantly greater performance gains. The results indicate that the particular self-explanation and self-regulation strategies used in training contribute to learning and problem-solving performance.     

Examination of relationships among trait-like individual differences, state-like individual differences, and learning performance

Several authors (e.g., J.T. Austin & H.J. Klein, 1996; R. Kanfer, 1990b, 1992) have urged researchers to examine comprehensive models of distal individual differences as predictors of proximal motivational processes and performance. Two field studies in an academic setting tested a model of relationships among trait-like individual differences (cognitive ability, general self-efficacy, and goal orientation), state-like individual differences (state anxiety, task-specific self-efficacy, and goals), and learning performance. Most hypothesized relationships among these constructs received support when tested on 2 samples, when examining different performance episodes, and when using different goal orientation and state-anxiety measures. In general, state-like individual differences were found to mediate the relationships between trait-like individual differences and learning performance. Implications of these results are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Cross‐Situational Learning of Minimal Word Pairs

Cross‐situational statistical learning of words involves tracking co‐occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word‐referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words (e.g., WUG, DAX), but it remains unknown whether learners can encode fine phonological differences during cross‐situational statistical learning. This study examined learners’ cross‐situational statistical learning of minimal pairs that differed on one consonant segment (e.g., BON–TON), minimal pairs that differed on one vowel segment (e.g., DEET–DIT), and non‐minimal pairs that differed on two or three segments (e.g., BON–DEET). Learners performed above chance for all pairs, but performed worse on vowel minimal pairs than on consonant minimal pairs or non‐minimal pairs. These findings demonstrate that learners can encode fine phonetic detail while tracking word‐referent co‐occurrence probabilities, but they suggest that phonological encoding may be weaker for vowels than for consonants.     

越老越风险规避吗？——年龄对冲动性预测决策行为的调节效应

年老化伴随着风险承担倾向的改变,而决策行为受冲动性的影响是否受到年龄的调节尚不清楚。研究采用两种不同类型的决策任务以及Barratt冲动性量表,考察老年人风险承担在自我报告和决策行为上的改变。结果显示老年人在剑桥博弈任务中更加风险寻求而在模拟充气球任务中更加风险规避。同时冲动性可以显著预测模拟充气球的行为,且该预测受到年龄的调节。研究结果提示,老年人并不是单一的更加风险规避或者风险寻求,而是与任务特异性相关。同时,冲动性可以较好的预测年轻人的决策行为,而对老年人的决策行为没有预测作用。     

生成性绘图与合作对高中生科学知识学习的影响

生成性绘图是学习心理学中一种有效的学习策略,能够促进学习者对科学文本知识的表征和深层理解。目前关于学习者生成性绘图的研究主要集中在个体学习领域,很少有研究探讨合作学习中生成性绘图的作用。本研究将合作学习与学习者生成性绘图相结合,探讨生成性绘图和合作对高中生科学知识学习的影响。实验1采用单因素(绘图、阅读)被试间设计来验证生成性绘图对学习效果以及认知负荷等主观体验的影响;实验2采用2(合作、个体)×2(绘图、阅读)被试间设计来探讨合作与生成性绘图对学习效果和学习者主观体验的影响。研究表明,生成性绘图和合作都可以有效促进高中生科学知识的学习效果;生成性绘图能够降低学习者的内在认知负荷;合作能够降低学习者的内在和外在认知负荷,提高学习者的相关认知负荷和学习兴趣。     

情感代理能否提高多媒体学习的效果?

近年来,情感代理如何影响学习受到了研究者们的高度重视。情感代理是可以通过面部表情、声音、肢体动作和言语信息等影响学习者情感体验的教学代理。以往研究主要关注两种类型的情感代理：表达型情感代理和移情型情感代理。表达型情感代理是仅通过自身的情绪表达(如：使用微笑的面部表情和热情的声音)以影响学习者情绪体验的代理。移情型情感代理则是能根据学习者的学习表现或情绪状态给予情感反馈(如;点头、鼓励和共情)的代理,其目的是为了调节学习者的情绪、激励其继续努力。虽然不同的研究者对情感代理的具体操作有所不同,但无论哪种类型的情感代理均是为了增加学习者的积极情绪,提高内部动机,最终促进学习。关于情感代理的潜在作用,研究者基于不同的理论观点给出了不同的解释。情绪感染理论认为一个人的情绪状态容易受到另一个人情绪表达的影响,因此界面代理的情绪会直接影响学习者的情绪和动机。情绪反应理论认为如果教师的言语和非言语线索诱发了积极的情绪,学习者就会产生趋近学习的行为(例如,制定相应的学习计划)。多媒体学习认知情感理论强调了学习过程中情感和动机的重要性。基于多媒体学习认知情感理论,情感代理能唤起学习者的积极情绪,增加学习动机,进而提高学习成绩。而认知负荷理论和干扰理论却认为情感代理丰富的面部表情和手势动作可能会增加学习者的外部认知负荷,吸引学习者的注意力,减少对关键信息的注意,因此干扰学习效果。在上述理论的指导下,研究者们对情感代理的效果进行了探究,结果发现,情感代理可以有效地唤起学习者的积极情绪(d_积极情绪= 0.45),提高学习动机(d_内部动机= 0.52)。但不一定能影响认知负荷（d_{内部认知负荷} = -0.01;d_{外部认知负荷} = 0.09;d_{相关认知负荷} = 0.08）,并且在学习效果上的作用也比较微弱(d_保持 = 0.18;d_理解 = 0.32;d_迁移 = 0.14;d_联合 = 0.32)。情感代理在学习效果上的作用不稳健的原因可能是受到了潜在调节因素的影响。例如,学习者的个体特征（如,工作记忆能力和年级水平）、情感代理的类型、任务特征和测验时间等。总之,尽管目前关于情感代理的研究结果存在不一致,但整体而言,在积极情感代理条件下,学习者更加快乐,更有动力。因此,在教育实践中,教学设计者可以考虑为学习者呈现一个积极的教学代理以帮助他们更加快乐地学习。未来关于情感代理的研究需要继续关注情感代理的操纵和评定方法;探究影响情感代理效果的边界条件;考察情感代理影响学习背后的神经机制;提高情感代理研究的生态效度等。     

Individual Differences in Training Gains and Transfer Measures: An Investigation of Training Curves in Children with Attention‐Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Currently, evidence for the beneficial effects of working memory (WM) training on transfer measures in children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is inconsistent. Although there is accumulating evidence for the role of individual differences in training and transfer gains of cognitive training, this area has been left unexplored for children with ADHD. In the current study, an advanced latent growth curve model analysis was used to investigate the individual differences in learning curves (training gains) of WM training tasks within a new cognitive intervention ‘Paying Attention in Class’. It was investigated whether certain baseline variables (age, intelligence quotient, externalizing behaviour problems and presence of learning disability) predicted the learning curves and how these individual learning curves influenced near‐transfer and far‐transfer measures. A total of 164 children diagnosed with ADHD, between the age of 8 and 12 years old, followed this new Paying Attention in Class intervention. WM (near‐transfer) and academic performance (far‐transfer) measures were assessed before treatment and directly after treatment. Results showed that individual differences at the start of training were predicted by age and intelligence quotient, but the individual differences in learning curves were not predicted by any of the baseline variables. Both for the verbal and the visuospatial WM training, children with larger training gains (i.e. steeper training curves) showed larger benefits on the near untrained transfer measures. These effects were absent for the far‐transfer measures. Current study shows that training WM is quite complex and has its limitations for children with ADHD. Nonetheless, it highlights that training and transfer gains are affected by many different factors and warrants the need of a more in‐depth investigation of individual differences in future studies.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Statistical learning in a serial reaction time task: access to separable statistical cues by individual learners.

The ability of adult learners to exploit the joint and conditional probabilities in a serial reaction time task containing both deterministic and probabilistic information was investigated. Learners used the statistical information embedded in a continuous input stream to improve their performance for certain transitions by simultaneously exploiting differences in the predictability of 2 or more underlying statistics. Analysis of individual learners revealed that although most acquired the underlying statistical structure veridically, others used an alternate strategy that was partially predictive of the sequences. The findings show that learners possess a robust learning device well suited to exploiting the relative predictability of more than I source of statistical information at the same time. This work expands on previous studies of statistical learning, as well as studies of artificial grammar learning and implicit sequence learning.     

Teaching cognates in isolation and context: a practical note on Montelongo, et al. (2009)

The use of cognates in teaching word identification and vocabulary meaning is an underused resource in the teaching of English-language learners, especially for learners whose language is similar to English, e.g., Spanish. A recent study by Montelongo, Hernandez, Herter, and Hernandez reported that the effect of initial consonants was strong for recognizing words in isolation. In addition, they pointed out that cognates containing suffixes identical between English and Spanish were more quickly recognized than cognates containing similar but not identical suffixes. Further, they stated teachers would do well to take these differences into account when employing a cognate strategy with their Latino English-language learners. The purpose of this response is to discuss how different types of cognates and their various meanings may be examined by educators and students when employing cognates as a strategy in learning English.     

English- and Chinese-learning infants map novel labels to objects and actions differently

Research based on naturalistic and checklist methods has revealed differences between English and Chinese monolingual children in their trajectories of learning nouns and verbs. However, studies based on controlled laboratory designs (e.g., Imai et al., 2008) have yielded a more mixed picture. Guided by a multidimensional view of word learning (in which different mechanisms are weighted and recruited to different extents over development), we examined English- and Mandarin-learning infants' (n = 128) ability to map novel labels to unfamiliar actions and objects. Findings reveal cross-linguistic variations in the mapping of words to actions versus objects that are consistent with those found previously with naturalistic and checklist methods. Specifically, English learners were able to map novel labels to both actions and objects at 18 months but to neither actions nor objects at 14 months. In an identical experimental paradigm, Mandarin learners at both 14 and 18 months of age were able to map novel labels to actions but not to objects. Similar patterns were found when infants were grouped based on their vocabulary size. Combined results lend support for a dynamic view of word learning that take into account multiple mechanisms interacting across developmental time with important cultural constraints.