The expertise reversal effect: Cognitive load and motivational explanations.

The expertise reversal effect occurs when a learner's expertise moderates design principles such as the redundancy principle (i.e., redundant information should be excluded rather than included) derived from the cognitive load theory. Although this effect is supported by numerous experiments, indicating an overall large effect size, a variety of explanations have been proposed. The present experiment tested a cognitive load and a motivational explanation with 104 students, who reported a lack of experience in the presented instructional contents. They spent about 30 min with the instructional material to learn fundamental concepts about the gradient descent (a mathematical optimization algorithm), and with a retention and transfer test used as dependent measures. Each learner was randomly assigned to one cell of a 2 (either novices or experts introduced to through the instructional design presented previously) × 2 (either with or without additional text explaining the animations) between-subjects factorial design. The expertise reversal effect concerning the redundancy principle was replicated. Novices receiving additional text scored higher on retention and transfer than did novices without additional text, while this result was reversed for experts. Results suggest that this effect can be explained by the learner's cognitive load differences rather than overall motivation differences. Furthermore, a partial overlap was found between the motivational subdimension, “probability of success,” and a cognitive load measure. On the practical side, instructional designers should consider the learner's level of expertise and their cognitive load when applying design principles. Further implications for adaptive learning environments are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Better revision in eight minutes? Prompting first-year college writers to revise globally.

Two experiments examined the relation between revision and task definition among college students in writing courses. In Experiment 1, students prompted to make global revisions to their drafts of college application letters improved their drafts more than students not prompted to make global revisions. Results of Experiment 1 extended results of D. L. Wallace and J. R. Hayes (1991), who found the same effect for students revising text they had not written. In Experiment 2, the treatment did not improve revisions by college students (identified as measured by low SAT verbal scores) who completed the same writing task. Together, results of these 2 experiments suggest that the prompt to revise globally may be effective in helping entry-level college writing students improve their texts (the prompt seems to have encouraged them to make better revisions) but that it is not effective in helping basic-level college writing students revise. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual Differences in Absolute and Relative Metacomprehension Accuracy.

The authors investigated absolute and relative metacomprehension accuracy as a function of verbal ability in college students. Students read hard texts, revised texts, or a mixed set of texts. They then predicted their performance, took a multiple-choice test on the texts, and made posttest judgments about their performance. With hard texts, students with lower verbal abilities were overconfident in predictions of future performance, and students with higher verbal abilities were underconfident in judging past performance. Revised texts produced overconfidence for predictions. Thus, absolute accuracy of predictions and confidence judgments depended on students' abilities and text difficulty. In contrast, relative metacomprehension accuracy as measured by gamma correlations did not depend on verbal ability or on text difficulty. Absolute metacomprehension accuracy was much more dependent on types of materials and verbal skills than was relative accuracy, suggesting that they may tap different aspects of metacomprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why are some texts good and others not? Relationship between text quality and management of the writing processes.

Two experiments examined whether text quality is related to online management of the writing processes. Experiment 1 focused on the relationship between online management and text quality in narrative and argumentative texts. Experiment 2 investigated how this relationship might be affected by a goal emphasizing text quality. In both experiments, psychology students were instructed to think aloud while composing their texts. Reaction times to auditory probes were also collected to reflect writers' cognitive effort. Two sets of variables were measured: general temporal indicators (fluency, prewriting pause) and online management of writing processes (number, mean length of episodes). Finally, text quality was assessed. As expected, results confirmed that narrative and argumentative texts are composed using different strategies. Students also composed better texts when a quality-based goal had been set. The main reliable indicator of text quality was an increase of the prewriting pause and of planning processes. These findings indicate that writers tailor their writing behavior to match the type and quality of the text they are asked to produce. These results are discussed in the light of interventions and recommendations in the classroom. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The basis of test predictions for text material.

Investigated the relationship between test predictions and test performance for text material. Ss predicted test performance or made judgments about ease of comprehension both before and after reading short expository texts. As Ss gained more information about texts, the correlations between predictions and performance increased. Generally, test predictions were better predictors of test performance than were ease of comprehension ratings. Exps 2 and 3 showed that Ss use domain familiarity in their test predictions, but this declines from before to after reading. Increased accuracy of test predictions from before to after reading was interpreted as indicating that Ss use specific information gained from reading texts to make accurate predictions about their future test performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word learning in predictable text.

Predictable text has become widely used for beginning readers but has not been the subject of much research. This study used predictable books to compare 3 reading treatments reflecting different components of a whole-to-part instructional model. In 3 first-grade classrooms, beginning readers working with isolated words in a modified word bank activity learned more words than when they worked with sentence strips. They also learned more words using sentence strips than when they simply read and reread the books. There was a significant treatment effect, justifying the theoretical position that beginning readers learn more words when those words are removed from the supportive context offered by predictable text. Students with higher levels of literacy skill learned 5 times as many words as those with lower levels. The overall number of words learned in these predictable books appears limited. These findings have important implications for the use of texts in beginning reading programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning from text with diagrams: Promoting mental model development and inference generation.

Two experiments investigated learning outcomes and comprehension processes when students learned about the heart and circulatory system using (a) text only, (b) text with simplified diagrams designed to highlight important structural relations, or (c) text with more detailed diagrams reflecting a more accurate representation. Experiment 1 found that both types of diagrams supported mental model development, but simplified diagrams best supported factual learning. Experiment 2 replicated learning effects from Experiment 1 and tested the influence of diagrams on novices' comprehension processes. Protocol analyses indicated that both types of diagrams supported inference generation and reduced comprehension errors, but simplified diagrams most strongly supported information integration during learning. Visual representations appear to be most effective when they are designed to support the cognitive processes necessary for deep comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Colorless Colors?

Comments are made on how much instructors in introductory psychology courses are dependent upon the textbook writers for the selection and integration of a vast amount of material. Specifically, providing a firm definition of the words color and achromatic. The commentator discusses all of the different ways that the word color can be conceived. Likewise, he discusses the same for the word achromatic. The commentator singles out various texts to provide criticism of debatable word usages, but he states that those texts are excellent. However, the commentator suggests that these texts may be made more helpful if some of the minor flaws, which detract from their teachability, are eliminated in future revisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic associations and elaborative inference.

In this article, a theoretical framework is proposed for the inference processes that occur during reading. According to the framework, inferences can vary in the degree to which they are encoded. This notion is supported by three experiments in this article that show that degree of encoding can depend on the amount of semantic-associative information available to support the inference processes. In the experiments, test words that express possible inferences from texts are presented for recognition. When testing is delayed, with other texts and test items intervening between a text and its test word, performance depends on the amount of semantic-associative information in the text. If the inferences represented by the test words are not supported by semantic associates in the text, they appear to be only minimally encoded (replicating McKoon & Ratcliff, 1986), but if they are supported by semantic associates, they are strongly encoded. With immediate testing, only 250 ms after the text, performance is shown to depend on semantic-associative information, not on textual information. This suggests that it is the fast availability of semantic information that allows it to support inference processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences for self-regulating task-oriented reading activities.

The goal of this study is to analyze the self-regulation processes present in task-oriented reading activities. In the 1st experiment, we examined the following self-regulation processes in the context of answering questions about an available text: (a) monitoring the comprehension of the question, (b) self-regulating the search process, and (c) monitoring the decision to search. Skilled and less skilled comprehenders from 7th and 8th grades read 2 texts and answered 16 questions while all their actions were recorded on a computer. We hypothesized that skilled comprehenders would differ from less skilled comprehenders on the 1st 2 processes on the basis of their general comprehension skills but that their superiority in the 3rd process would be based on specific characteristics of the interaction between the reader and the text. The results support our hypotheses. In the 2nd experiment, we hypothesized that monitoring the decision to search would be equivalent to judgments of learning (JOLs). Eighth graders made JOLs before answering every question, and then they decided whether to search the text. Our hypothesis was confirmed. Our study reveals that task-oriented reading places specific demands on readers related to metacognitive monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fostering children's revision skills through training in comprehension monitoring.

Elementary school children generally do not revise frequently or skillfully in the classroom. Two studies were conducted to learn if children's ability to revise problematic texts could be facilitated through training in a comprehension monitoring strategy. In the first study, third- and sixth-grade children who were trained on a self-questioning text-evaluation strategy located and revised significantly more target text problems than did control children. The goal of the second study was to compare the effects of prior exposure to problematic texts and self-questioning strategy training. The results showed that a combination of the two approaches was most effective in increasing third graders' revision scores. The results from both studies show that acquiring a strategy for evaluating the comprehensibility of a text can help children make appropriate revisions to improve that text's communicative quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instructional treatments, presenter types, and learner characteristics as significant variants in instructional television for adults.

Assessed the effectiveness for adults of several instructional TV segments. Treatments included (a) active and passive learner participation, (b) a presenter acting in an instructional vignette, and (c) content structure explicitly and implicitly displayed. The 3 treatments were replicated by professional actors, and in each treatment a 2 * 3 factorial design was employed to assess treatment effects and interaction effects between talents and instructional formats. A multivariate analysis was made of data from 334 Ss obtained by a consumer research firm. Results support the following research hypotheses: (a) Some instructional techniques would be more effective than others; (b) learners would react differently to different talent types; and (c) learner characteristics are related to attitudinal and achievement outcomes. Implications for planners of open-learning TV lessons for adults are discussed. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of genre expectations on text comprehension.

This article investigates whether expectations about discourse genre influence the process and products of text comprehension. Ss read texts either with a literary story or with a news story as the purported genre. Subsequently, they verified statements pertaining to the texts. Two experiments demonstrated that Ss reading under a literary perspective had longer reading times, better memory for surface information, and a poorer memory for situational information than those reading under a news perspective. Regression analyses of reading times produced findings that were consistent with the memory data. The results support the notion that readers differentially allocate their processing resources according to their expectations about the genre of a text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Keyword and context instruction of new vocabulary meanings: Effects on text comprehension and memory.

New vocabulary was taught by one of three methods: keyword, semantic context, and no-strategy control. The semantic context method involved presenting subjects verbal contexts from which they might infer the meanings of the words, followed by explicit provision of the definitions. After a vocabulary definition acquisition phase, subjects in all conditions read a text in which some of the newly acquired vocabulary was embedded, with half of the texts providing richer contextual clues to the meaning of the target items (embellished text) than the other texts (unembellished text). Reading times did not differ as a function of acquisition condition, nor did one acquisition condition consistently elicit better performance than the others across text comprehension/memory measures. The one significant difference in comprehension favored the keyword method. The usual superiority of the keyword method for recall of definitions given vocabulary items was also replicated. Despite theoretically motivated concerns that keyword-method acquisition of definitions might inhibit comprehension of vocabulary in discourse relative to a semantic context method, none of the reaction time (RT) or performance analyses reported here supported those hypotheses. A subsidiary finding was that test text embellishments increased comprehension (as indexed by recall measures), a result suggesting that certain kinds of contextual support can enhance comprehension of "new" vocabulary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's elicited imitations of controlled and rewritten reading texts.

Elicited imitation was used to investigate suspected conflicts between the controlled language of beginning reading texts and the natural linguistic expectations of young children. Two stories from basal readers were presented orally, in either the controlled original versions or more natural rewritten versions, for 26 first graders to imitate, one segment at a time, in a between-groups design. Children who heard the rewritten versions received significantly higher ratings on reproduction of content in their imitations. The imitations from both groups were also analyzed with respect to reproduction of specific linguistic features on which the original and rewritten versions differed. These analyses showed that, consistent with the rewriting, children were significantly more inclined to delete unmotivated repetitions than to add them, and to consolidate or conjoin simple sentences than to break up more complex ones. Additional data on story recall and on responses to comprehension questions provide further support for the conclusion that the unnatural language used in controlled reading texts contribute to the difficulties young children have in reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of organizational signals on text-processing strategies.

Two hypotheses about how organizational signals influence text recal1 were tested: (a) that signals cause readers to change their text-processing strategies and (b) that signals facilitate readers' attempts to encode topic structure information but do not cause a shift in strategies. College students read and recalled a text that contained either no signals or contained headings, overviews, or summaries emphasizing the text's topic structure. At recall, students either received no cues or were reminded of the text's topics. Providing cues facilitated recall much more in the 3 conditions involving signaling than in the no-signals condition. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that organizational signals induce readers to change their text-processing strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information About a Layperson's Knowledge Supports Experts in Giving Effective and Efficient Online Advice to Laypersons.

To give effective and efficient advice to laypersons, experts should adapt their explanations to the layperson's knowledge. However, experts often fail to consider the limited domain knowledge of laypersons. To support adaptation in asynchronous helpdesk communication, researchers provided computer experts with information about a layperson's knowledge. A dialogue experiment (N = 80 dyads of experts and laypersons) was conducted that varied the displayed information. Rather than sensitizing the experts to generally improve the intelligibility of their explanations, the individuating information about the layperson enabled them to make specific partner adjustments that increased the effectiveness and efficiency of the communication. The results are suggestive of ways in which the provision of instructional explanations could be enhanced in Internet-based communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of orbital frontal cortex damage on the modulation of defensive responses by rats in playful and nonplayful social contexts.

In a series of 3 experiments on rats, 2 hypotheses were tested: (a) that damage to the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) would alter the socially relevant context for executing defensive responses but not their performance and (b) that damage done to the OFC in early infancy would produce more deficits in social behavior than similar damage occurring in adulthood. Bilateral or unilateral OFC damage in adult males did not impair their ability to defend themselves during play fighting and when protecting their food but did impair their ability to modify the pattern of defense in response to different partners. Rats that sustained bilateral damage at 3 days of age not only had deficits in partner-related modulation of defense but also exhibited hyperactivity in their play. The findings thus supported the proposed hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expository Text Comprehension in the Primary Grade Classroom.

This study investigates the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach 2nd graders how to comprehend compare-contrast expository text. Along with introducing new content (animal classification), the program emphasizes text structure via clue words, a sequence of questions, and a graphic organizer, and via the close analysis of specially constructed exemplar paragraphs. The authors compared the program with (a) more traditional instruction that focused only on the new content and (b) a no instruction control; 128 7- and 8-year-olds participated. Classroom teachers provided the instruction. The program improved students' ability to comprehend compare-contrast texts. Students were able to demonstrate transfer to uninstructed compare-contrast texts though not to text structures other than compare-contrast. Moreover, the text structure instruction did not detract from their ability to learn new content. The results provide evidence, heretofore lacking, that explicit instruction in comprehension is feasible and effective as early as the 2nd grade. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension calibration and recall prediction accuracy of texts: Reading skill, reading strategies, and effort.

High school students at 3 levels of verbal skill rated their own recall (prediction accuracy) and comprehension (calibration accuracy) of 3 expository texts accompanied by 3 different sets of instructions. All sets of instructions emphasized reading for understanding, and two of them also involved key words (given or personally selected), which were to be used during study. Students assessed which instructions they preferred and estimated their general verbal and memory skills. Three major results were obtained (a) Students seemed to assess their general verbal and memory skills quite well. (b) Acceptable levels of comprehension calibration and recall prediction accuracy were found. Verbal-skill differences were found for recall prediction accuracy but not for comprehension calibration accuracy. (c) students had study preferences—the most preferred way to study increased performance but reduced prediction accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)