Adaptive control of learning time and content sequence in concept learning using computer-based instruction.

Investigated 2 independent variables associated with the design of instruction for coordinate concept learning to clarify the transition in memory between conceptual knowledge formation and procedural knowledge development. The 1st variable, display time interval, controlled the amount of instructional display time of each interrogatory example; the 2nd variable, content sequence, sequenced examples according to response-sensitive decision strategies effecting incorrect solutions. 72 11th graders who were randomly assigned to 1 of 6 instructional treatment conditions served as Ss in a 2?×?3 experimental design. Data analysis showed that adaptive-controlled display time groups needed fewer examples and less instructional time and performed better on the posttest and retention test than did the learner-controlled groups. For the 2nd variable, the combined generalization–discrimination strategy resulted in better on-task learning efficiency and test performances than each of these strategies separately. Findings are discussed in reference to concept teaching using a 2-phase concept-learning theory. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pretask and on-task adaptive design strategies for selecting number of instances in concept acquisition.

A study with 67 undergraduates investigated design strategies for selecting number of instances needed in a concept learning task. Two strategies used adaptive procedures for the selection process, while a nonadaptive strategy selected instances by number of associated attributes. The data analysis showed that the full adaptive strategy (using pretask and on-task response data) required 25% less learning time and resulted in better posttest performance than the partial adaptive strategy (pretask data only). The partial adaptive strategy was 16% more efficient and demonstrated better performance than the nonadaptive strategy. An effectiveness ratio of 2 to 1 in favor of the full adaptive over the partial and nonadaptive strategies was obtained and illustrates the effect of using on-task data sources for instance selection. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructional control strategies and content structure as design variables in concept acquisition using computer-based instruction.

Studied 135 undergraduates to investigate 2 instructional design variables directly related to concept learning. The 1st variable, management strategy, tested the hypothesis that advising Ss of their learning need in relationship to acquisition of a task at a given criterion would be more effective than adaptive control or learner control strategies. Data analysis showed that the advisement condition resulted in better performance than the learner control condition and needed less instructional time and fewer instructional instances than the adaptive control condition. The 2nd variable contrasted 2 forms of content structure used in learning coordinate concepts. Ss given concepts simultaneously performed better on the posttest and needed less instruction than those who received concepts successively. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computer-based response-sensitive design strategies for selecting presentation form and sequence of examples in learning of coordinate concepts.

Research has shown that concept learning is a 2-phase process: formation of conceptual knowledge (FCK) and development of procedural knowledge (DPK). Two computer-based instructional design strategies were investigated to improve the 2-phase process by being response sensitive to error patterns. The 1st strategy, presentation form of examples, determined the format of examples (i.e., expository or interrogatory) by either adaptive selection (for both FCK and DPK) or fixed selection (for DPK only). The 2nd strategy, sequence of concepts, adjusted the selection of examples according to 2 rules: generalization (for both FCK and DPK) and discrimination (for DPK only). Ss were 72 11th graders. Results show an interaction effect in which Ss receiving the adaptive selection and generalization rule had the highest performance, whereas Ss receiving the fixed selection and generalization rule had the lowest performance. The main effect of presentation form was significant for both posttest and retention test for the adaptive selection; and there was no main effect difference for sequence. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Process learning time as an adaptive design variable in concept learning using computer-based instruction.

Investigated the effects of manipulating the display time of interrogatory examples in a concept-learning experiment according to individual processing needs. Extending the (see PA, Vols 66:6674 and 70:6652), 2-stage concept-learning theory by R. D. Tennyson et al it was hypothesized that prototype formation (Stage 1) requires an increase in the amount of information in the initial instructional period, whereas classification skill development (Stage 2) requires an increase in "reasonable" processing time in the latter instructional period. Data analyses using posttest and retention test scores showed that, for 96 9th-grade students studying 3 biological concepts via computer-based instruction, decreasing display time of interrogatory examples for incorrect answers (thereby increasing the amount of information) and increasing display time for correct answers (thereby increasing processing time) was better than several alternative procedures. These alternatives are (1) decreasing display time for correct answers and increasing it for incorrect answers (reversal of hypothesis), (2) controlling display time but without adjustment for responses, and (3) allowing for learner control of display time. Findings are discussed in reference to information processing theory and use of instructional display time as an adaptive design variable. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Content structure and instructional control strategies as design variables in concept acquisition.

Two instructional design variables were investigated that relate directly to the learning of coordinate concepts. The 1st variable, content structure, tested the hypothesis that simultaneous presentation of coordinate concepts enhances concept learning more than successive or collective presentation. In this study, the data analysis showed that 90 high school students who were given concepts simultaneously performed significantly better on the posttest than those who received concepts successively or collectively. The 2nd variable, instructional control strategy, contrasted an adaptive control strategy with a learner control strategy. Posttest performance was above the criterion level for the adaptive condition, but it was below the criterion level for the learner control condition. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using worked examples as an instructional support in the algebra classroom.

In 2 experiments, high school students studied worked examples while learning how to translate English expressions into algebraic equations. In Exp 1, worked examples were used as part of the regular classroom instruction and as a support for homework. In Exp 2, students in a remedial mathematics class received individual instruction. Students using worked examples outperformed the control group on posttests after completing fewer practice problems; they also made fewer errors per problem and fewer types of errors during acquisition time, completed the work more rapidly, and required less assistance from the teacher. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A multimethod comparison of popular and unpopular children.

Differences between 101 popular and unpopular 3rd and 4th graders were assessed by teacher reports, classroom observations, the Peabody Individual Achievement Test, the Children's Depression Inventory, ratings on role-play situations, interviews that elicited information on Ss' knowledge of social skills, and responses to hypothetical situations. Unpopular Ss were perceived as being more depressed and deviant by teachers than were popular Ss. Classroom observations indicated that unpopular Ss spent significantly less time on-task than popular Ss and engaged in significantly more negative interactions. There was a trend for popular Ss to perform at a higher academic level than unpopular Ss, and the latter Ss were more depressed than Ss in the former group. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing goals, task interest, and the mood–performance relationship: A mediational analysis.

The authors examined the role of intrinsic interest in mediating the relationship among mood, processing goals, and task performance. Participants in induced happy, neutral, or sad moods generated similarities and differences between TV shows using performance-based, enjoyment-based, or no stop rule (cf. L. L. Martin, D. W. Ward, J. W. Achee, & R. S. Wyer, 1993). Pretask interest and both quantitative (time spent, number generated) and qualitative (creativity) performance were assessed. Happy participants spent more time and generated more items than other participants when using an enjoyment-based stop rule but spent less time and generated fewer items when using a performance-based stop rule. Happy participants also expressed greater pretask interest and were more creative than other participants regardless of stop rule. Regression-based path analyses indicated that pretask interest partially mediated the effects of mood on quantitative performance but not on creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitions of test-anxious children.

Compared the cognitions of 294 low, moderate, and high test-anxious (the Test Anxiety Scale for Children) 5th and 6th graders in an analog test situation. High test-anxious Ss reported significantly more task-debilitating cognitions than either moderate- or low-anxious Ss, including negative evaluations and off-task thoughts. High test-anxious Ss also reported fewer positive evaluations than low test-anxious Ss, whereas moderately anxious Ss did not differ significantly from either extreme group. It was unexpected that the moderate- and high-anxious groups reported significantly more on-task thoughts than the low-anxious group and did not significantly differ from each other. Both test anxiety and cognitions showed significant although modest relations with actual task performance after the effects of ability were partialled out. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ingredients for a theory of instruction.

Analyzes the steps involved in deriving an optimal teaching strategy for instructional situations where a model-theoretic account of the learning process can be given. 2 examples derived from the author's research are considered: optimizing primary-grade instruction in initial reading, and optimizing 2nd-language learning by college students. In both cases, the optimal model-theoretic strategy yields large gains when compared with other strategies in widespread use in the schools. It is stated that these examples illustrate the relationship between a theory of learning and its corresponding theory of instruction. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning and understanding science instructional material.

Learning and understanding of science instructional material was examined from a cognitive load perspective. It was suggested that instructions can be difficult to learn if multiple elements of information need to be simultaneously processed through limited working memory. Diagrams were expected to reduce cognitive load by allowing students to process information using fewer elements in working memory than an equivalent text-based format. However, if instructional information could be processed serially, then working-memory load should be light, and both diagrammatic and text-based instructions were hypothesized to be equally effective. Two experiments using different chemistry instructions confirmed these hypotheses and so highlight the role of cognitive load factors in instructional design. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructional adaptation for self-managed learning systems.

Strategies for adapting instructional support and learning incentives were applied separately and in combination to a lesson on mathematical rules. Adaptations were based on individual students' pretest scores such that the lower the score, the greater the rule support and incentive value. 105 undergraduates participated, and an additional 41 from the same course served as a norming group for the validation of measures. On dependent measures of retention and learning efficiency (posttest/time), adaptation of support improved performance significantly when compared with standard support. Incentive effects, however, were not reliable. An additional comparison strategy, which intentionally mismatched allocations of incentives and instructional support, yielded the lowest performances of all treatments. The results, overall, provide support for the "achievement–treatment interaction" hypothesis and suggest the practical advantages for adapting instructional support to students in self-managed learning systems. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perspectives of probabilistic inferences: Reinforcement learning and an adaptive network compared.

The assumption that people possess a strategy repertoire for inferences has been raised repeatedly. The strategy selection learning theory specifies how people select strategies from this repertoire. The theory assumes that individuals select strategies proportional to their subjective expectations of how well the strategies solve particular problems; such expectations are assumed to be updated by reinforcement learning. The theory is compared with an adaptive network model that assumes people make inferences by integrating information according to a connectionist network. The network's weights are modified by error correction learning. The theories were tested against each other in 2 experimental studies. Study 1 showed that people substantially improved their inferences through feedback, which was appropriately predicted by the strategy selection learning theory. Study 2 examined a dynamic environment in which the strategies' performances changed. In this situation a quick adaptation to the new situation was not observed; rather, individuals got stuck on the strategy they had successfully applied previously. This "inertia effect" was most strongly predicted by the strategy selection learning theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extended mnemonic instruction with learning disabled students.

Divided 64 learning disabled (LD) 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade students into 24 instructional groups that were assigned at random to mnemonic and control conditions. Instructional groups were administered 3 daily lessons on dinosaurs in counterbalanced order. The lessons involved vocabulary on dinosaurs, attributes of dinosaurs, and reasons for dinosaur extinction. Mnemonic groups were taught the information using keyword and pegword techniques. Control instructional groups were taught the same information using the principles of direct instruction, including teacher-directed questioning, choral group responding, fast instructional pacing, and cumulative review. A test was given after each lesson on that lesson's content. On the 4th day, all Ss were given production and identification tests on the content of all 3 lessons. Results indicate that mnemonic groups outperformed control groups on the immediate and delayed tests. In addition, control Ss' responses revealed significantly more intralist intrusions than did those of mnemonic Ss. No meaningful trend across days of instruction was observed for either condition. Findings suggest that mnemonic instruction is a versatile and effective instructional technique for LD students. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Academic task persistence of normally achieving ADHD and control boys: Self-evaluations, and attributions.

The authors examined academic task persistence, pretask expectancies, self-evaluations, and attributions of boys with attention-dcficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as compared with control boys. Participants were 83 ADHD boys and 66 control boys, all normally achieving. Prior to the task, performance expectancies were assessed. After a success-failure manipulation with find-a-word puzzles, performance on subsequent trials, self-evaluations, and attributions were evaluated. Compared with controls, ADHD boys solved fewer test puzzles, quit working more often, and found fewer words on a generalization task. Consistent with these behavioral findings, research assistants rated ADHD boys as less effortful and less cooperative than control boys. Although ADHD boys did not differ significantly from controls in their posttask self-evaluations, they did differ significantly from controls in some aspects of their attributions. Attributional data indicated that ADHD boys endorsed luck as a reason for success more strongly and lack of effort as a reason for failure less strongly than controls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in the use of selective attention by more successful and less successful tenth-grade readers.

Both more successful and less successful readers appear to use the selective attention strategy (SAS) to learn important text information; however, more successful readers tend to learn and recall considerably more important, as well as unimportant, information. The 2 studies reported here investigated the reason(s) for the more successful readers' learning and recall advantage. In Exp 1, 10th graders were asked to read, learn, and recall information from a text on marine biology. Questions were inserted every 4 pages to manipulate text item importance. The results showed that more successful readers learned and recalled more important information than less successful readers because they were more metacognitively aware of how and when to use the SAS. In Exp 2, perceptual and conceptual attention were measured for both more and less successful readers. More successful readers used significantly more conceptual attention while reading than did less successful readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An empirical investigation of individual differences in time to learn.

Studied the magnitude and stability of individual differences in the amount of time required to achieve a criterion level of performance (time-to-criterion). Time-to-criterion was defined by (a) the amount of elapsed time and (b) the amount of on-task time required to attain the criterion. 90 8th graders were randomly assigned either to a mastery learning class in which all Ss were helped to attain an 85% mastery standard or to 1 of 2 nonmastery classes. Ss learned a 3-unit sequence of programmed material in matrix arithmetic. Results from the 82 Ss who completed the study indicate that time-to-criterion (defined in both manners) was an alterable human characteristic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When does cooperative learning increase student achievement?

Reviews research on the achievement effects of cooperative learning instructional methods, in which students work in small groups to learn academic materials. Methodologically adequate field experiments of at least 2 wks' duration in regular elementary and secondary schools indicate that among cooperative learning methods in which students study the same material together, only methods that provide group rewards based on group members' individual learning consistently increase student achievement more than control methods. Cooperative learning methods in which each group member has a unique subtask have positive achievement effects only if group rewards are provided. Group rewards and individual accountability are held to be essential to the instructional effectiveness of cooperative learning methods. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships between instructional language and primary students' learning.

Causal modeling was used to examine how primary students' language ability interacted with pace and redundancy of instructional language during an expository science lesson to explain students' attention and learning. Language ability and pace of the instructional language, mediated by students' attention to the lesson, accounted for significant variance in learning outcomes. Higher language ability related to greater learning. Overall, slow-paced instructional language was positively related to learning, but students attended less to it than to fast-paced talk. Students with special needs attended significantly less and learned less, whereas students not so identified attended slightly less but learned more. Teachers' talk matters, but because instructional language impacts differentially on students, heuristics for modifying it are not straightforward. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)