Knowledge Acquisition

Question 1

Describe five of Willingham’s principles for learning in education together with what needs to be known about the students, and classroom implications. (4 points)

Answer 1

1 - Knowledge proceeds skill
2 - Memory is the residue of thought
3 - think under certain circumstances
4 - Context of things we already know
5 - practice

Kill
Me
To
Conquer
Penis

Question 2

According to Willingham (2009), why is it a problem to focus education exclusively on analytical skills at the expense of factual knowledge? (1 point)

Answer 2

Willingham argues that acquiring skills like analysis or critical thinking is not possible without the underlying factual knowledge (knowledge proceeds skill)

Question 3

According to Willingham (2009), why is it a problem to talk about teaching either factual knowledge OR analytical skills? (1 point)

Answer 3

You can’t critically think without something to think about. Critical thinking requires the knowledge to be in meaningful chucks, freeing up space for higher order analysis. They are intermittently intertwined

E.g. you cannot solve problems if you don’t know the basic terms of the problem

Question 4

Why might we expect having more background knowledge on a topic would improve memory for that topic? (1 point)

Answer 4

Having more background knowledge allows chunking, which minimises cognitive load when acquiring more knowledge - you have developed a better mental representation of the topic that you can slot new information into

Question 5

What evidence is there that background knowledge aids memory? (1 point)

Answer 5

Experiment that “created” experts to avoid the confound/bias of self selection (e.g. people choose to become experts in a subject because they enjoy it). Participants had to learn about subjects they were unfamiliar with (Van Overschelde & Healy, 2001). These “experts” subsequently learned new facts quicker and more easily than a control group of “novices” who hadn’t learned so much previously.

Question 6

What did Van Overschelde & Healy (2001) find about their “created experts”? (1 point)

Answer 6

Participants had to learn about subjects they were unfamiliar with (Van Overschelde & Healy, 2001). These “experts” subsequently learned new facts quicker and more easily than a control group of “novices” who hadn’t learned so much previously.

Question 7

According to Sweller (1988), what’s the link between learning and cognitive load? (1 point)

Answer 7

According to Cognitive Load Theory, it’s also easier to learn new things when you’re under lower cognitive load (Sweller, 1988).

Question 8

Describe the Wason 4 card problem and its solution. (2 points)

Answer 8

It is a problem that is hard, but becomes easy when you know the background knowledge - as if we are seeing the problem through and experts eyes.

You are shown a set of four cards placed on a table, each of which has a number on one side and letter on the other. Which card or cards must be turned over to test the idea that if a card shows an even number on one face, then its opposite face is a vowel?

Question 9

How we can make the Wason 4 card problem easy without changing the fundamental problem? (1 point)

Answer 9

Each card has an age on one side and a drink on the other. Which card(s) must be turned over to test the idea that if you are drinking alcohol, then you must be over 18?

This is made easier because you have the background knowledge - you know that the person over 18 can have either alcoholic or no alcoholic beverages

Question 10

What is the interaction between background knowledge and ease of reading, according to Willingham (2009)? (2 points)

Answer 10

Writing generally assumes at least some background knowledge - if everything is explained the writing would become unreadable. Problems can arise when the writer assumes the reader has too much background knowledge

Question 11

Describe four reasons why background knowledge helps reading comprehension. (2 points)

Answer 11

1. It provides vocabulary
2. It allows the bridging of logical gaps writers leave
3. It allows chunking – which increases room in working memory – which makes it easier to link ideas.
4. It guides the interpretation of ambiguous sentences.

Question 12

What is the “fourth grade slump” and why might it be linked to background knowledge? (1 point)

Answer 12

Chall & Jacobs (2003) argue that this is a factor in the “4th Grade slump” where children from low Socio-Economic Status (SES) homes are fine until Grade 3 but then start falling behind high SES children.
They argue this is because 4th Grade starts focussing on comprehension over decoding. This requires background knowledge, which low SES children are likely to have less of. (HIGHER SOCIO ECONOMIC FAMILIES TALK MORE AND DICUSS MORE - SEE THE MILLION WORD GAP)

Question 13

What does Ericsson (2016) argue for the relative roles of knowledge and skill in education? (1 point)

Answer 13

Ericsson (2016) argues that education is overly focussed on knowledge (knowing things) rather than skills (doing things). He argues that skills should be the key outcome (and knowledge is just a means to this end).
This is contrary to willingham - Willingham (2009) argues that this doesn’t mean we can therefore neglect knowledge - as acquiring knowledge is always needed for carry out a skill (and in some domains is most of the effort).

Question 14

What does Willingham (2009) argue with regard the role of knowledge in skill acquisition? (1 point)

Answer 14

Ericsson (2016) argues that education is overly focussed on knowledge (knowing things) rather than skills (doing things). He argues that skills should be the key outcome (and knowledge is just a means to this end).
Willingham (2009) argues that this doesn’t mean we can therefore neglect knowledge - as acquiring knowledge is always needed for carry out a skill (and in some domains is most of the effort).

Question 15

What is Willingham’s (2009) argument for why thinking about something is crucial to memorising it? (2 points)

Answer 15

“Memory is the residue of thought” (Willingham 2009).

What students think about is what they will remember - Willingham argues that we tend to remember more “useless” things because we think about them more (e.g. because they’re more immediately appealing).

Thus we need to find a way to think about the things we want to learn

Question 16

What experiment did Hyde & Jenkins (1973) conduct regarding the semantic processing of words (methods, results, conclusions)? (2 points)

Answer 16

Method:) showed participants a list of words (3s intervals) and asked them (amongst other things) if each word contained an E or G (non-semantic processing) OR to rate whether each word was pleasant or unpleasant on a 5 point scale (semantic, meaning-based processing).

Results: The people who were asked to rate the semantic content (meaning) of the words remembered significantly more words.

Conclusions: This is because the rating task MADE THEM THINK about what the word MEANT (unlike, for example, saying what letters are or are not in it).

Question 17

Why is just considering any possible meaning of an item not necessarily helpful in remembering it? (1 point)

Answer 17

To remember something, we need to think about its RELATIVE meaning. The brain assumes that if you think about something then you may well need to think about it again in the future IN THE SAME WAY. -
e.g. the piano experiment (heavy was linked when the sentence was thought of in which the man lifted the piano)

Question 18

Describe Barclay et al.’s (1974) experiment demonstrating how things are linked with their context when encoded in memory (methods, results, conclusion). (3 points)

Answer 18

Method: showed participants a test sentence (e.g. “The man lifted the piano” or “The man tuned the piano”). Then they were given some recall cues to remember the key word (“piano”) in the test sentence (e.g. “Something heavy” or “Something with a nice sound”). The participants were asked to recall the word.
Results: They were better able to remember the word when the recall cue was relevant to the test sentence (“lifted the piano” then “heavy”) than when it was less relevant (“lifted the piano” then “nice sound”).
Conclusion: the word was encoded in memory linked with its specific context in the original sentence.

(how i can remember this is the piano experiment - Barclay college of music - music=piano)

Question 19

What implications does the “relevant meanings” research finding (e.g. Barclay et al., 1974) have for educational design? (1 point)

Answer 19

we should design learning interventions so people MUST think of the relevant meaning of what is to be learned.

This could pose problems for certain “attention grabbers” in class.
For example, the lecturer drags in a grand piano to help you remember the piano experiment. However the result is that while people never forget the piano being dragged into the lecture, they forget what it was dragged in to help them remember (i.e. Barclay’s experiment).

The same might go for attractive but irrelevant slide illustrations.

Question 20

Why don’t students like school, according to Willingham (2009)? (1 point)

Answer 20

Effortful thinking - the type that leads to learning - is hard work

Question 21

Describe three ways the brain minimises how much thinking we have to do (Willingham, 2009). (2 points)

Answer 21

According to Willingham (2009), the brain saves us from having to think by:
(1) making sure important things like vision and movement don’t require thought
(2) biasing us to use memory and other shortcuts where possible (e.g. heuristics)
(3) by allowing us to automate processes that initially require thought so that they only require effortless memory (e.g. expertise development).

(IN SHORT: vision/movement, heuristics, chunking)

Question 22

What happens in the brain when people solve a problem (Willingham, 2009)? (1 point)

Answer 22

When you complete a cognitive task that succeeds, your brain is thought to reward itself with a small hit of dopamine (Willingham, 2009). That is, solving a problem is physiologically pleasurable.

Question 23

What does Willingham (2009) argue is the key factor influencing whether people like thinking? (1 point)

Answer 23

Solving a problem gives a dopamine hit (pleasurable). Working on a problem without progress is frustrating. Also there’s no pleasure in just being told the answer to a problem.
THUS
Too easy is boring; too hard is annoying.
Willingham (2009) argues that people like thinking when the level of difficulty is just right (not too hard, not too easy). He claims that this is more important than the content.

Question 24

Describe six strategies that could be used to foster the circumstances that encourage thinking in education, according to Willingham (2009). (3 points)

Answer 24

1. appropriate difficulty
2. Organise everything around questions - this drives curiosity
3. avoid overloading working memory (as per cognitive load theory)
4. Time the presentation of questions - not too early (before they have the necessary knowledge) and not too late (after they have been told the answer)
5. Accept and act on variation in student ability/preparation/prior knowledge.
6. Use change to regain attention.

Question 25

What does Willingham (2009) argue that all good teachers have in common? (1 point)

Answer 25

they leverage story-telling principles in their teaching.

Question 26

Describe the principles of story-telling (Willingham, 2009). (2 points)

Answer 26

Story-telling principles – four C’s
Causality
(joining elements with causal links instead of an unrelated list)
Conflict
(some element of struggle, between characters or situations)
Complications
(sufficient nuance to avoid boredom)
Character
(could be conceptual, abstract, or inferred)

Question 27

Britton et al. (1983) manipulated the form of text in a written passage and asked participants to rate how interesting the passage was. What did they find? (1 point)

Answer 27

people found stories more interesting than other forms of text (like expository prose). (despite the actual information was matched across text forms)

Question 28

Why are good stories easy to remember (Willingham, 2009)? (1 point)

Answer 28

Willingham (2009) argued that good stories are easy to remember because you must think about the meaning throughout.

Question 29

Kim (1999) manipulated level of inference required when reading some text. What did they find? (1 point)

Answer 29

Kim (1999) found that people rated text, which required medium-difficulty inferences to be made, as more interesting than texts, where a harder or easier level of inference was required.

Speaks to the principle of NOT TOO HARD, NOT TOO EASY cognitive load

Question 30

Why might the causal structure of stories make them easier to remember? (1 point)

Answer 30

if you can remember one bit then you’re more likely to remember a consequential bit.

Question 31

Why might it be the case that students have to learn shallow knowledge before they can grasp deep knowledge (Willingham, 2009)? (2 points)

Answer 31

The shallow knowledge (e.g. lists, definitions) may provide the chunking needed to get to grips with the deep knowledge (e.g. underlying abstract principles).

Question 32

Describe three strategies that may help students understand complex content. (3 points)

Answer 32

1. use an incremental approach, gradually building from easy to harder material
2. provide multiple familiar concrete applications that can be compared to help extract the underlying principles (provide examples)
3. get students to generate questions about content because this has also been found to aid understanding

Question 33

What is the key problem with students’ tendency to use less effortful study strategies? (1 point)

Answer 33

In general, if your study feels easy then you probably taking much longer to learn something than you need to. If it feels effortful then it’s more likely to be valuable (“desirable difficulties”; Bjork & Bjork, 1992). This is consistent with the idea that thinking about something is the route to remembering it (and thinking is effortful).

Question 34

To what does the phrase “desirable difficulties” refer (Bjork & Bjork, 1992)? (1 point)

Answer 34

In general, if your study feels easy then you probably taking much longer to learn something than you need to. If it feels effortful then it’s more likely to be valuable (“desirable difficulties”; Bjork & Bjork, 1992). This is consistent with the idea that thinking about something is the route to remembering it (and thinking is effortful).

Question 35

Describe the three condition testing effect experiment conducted by Roediger & Karpicke (2006) (methods, results, conclusions). (3 points)

Answer 35

Methods: asked participants to memorize a scientific passage by:
1. Repeated study (they read the text four times, no test; labelled SSSS on graph);
2. Single test (they read the text three times, one recall test: SSST); OR
3. Repeated test (they read the text once – then were tested on their recall three times: STTT).

Results: Then they were tested after 5 mins and after 1 week. Repeated study was best after 5 mins; but repeated testing was 50% higher than repeated study after 1 week.

Conclusions: Testing aids memory (the TESTING EFFECT)

Question 36

Give three reasons why students might prefer repeated study strategies over repeated testing strategies. (2 points)

Answer 36

1. It is less effortful
2. They notice the short term benefits (good recall after 5min)
3. They THINK they will remember more long term (even though they won’t)

(In Roediger & Karpicke’s (2006) experiment, participants in the repeated study incorrectly THOUGHT they would remember more after 1 week than those in the repeated test condition.)

Question 37

What did Pashler et al. (2007) find when comparing a test trial with feedback with an extra learning trial? (1 point)

Answer 37

an extra test trial with feedback was better than an extra learning trial for remembering something.

Question 38

Describe the 4 condition experiment by Karpicke & Roediger (2008), comparing testing and presentation methods of learning (methods, results). (2 points)

Answer 38

Methods: compared four combinations of testing and presentation (see figure) for foreign language vocabulary (Swahili)
1, Continue to present and test items, 2. drop correct items and test others, 3. Continue presenting, no testing 4. Drop correct items, no testing

Results: Initially, all groups performed the same.
BUT the groups that involved testing were much better after 1 week (also, no advantage to dropping successfully learned words to allow more time on unlearned words).

Question 39

What is the testing effect? (1 point)

Answer 39

The “testing effect” refers to the general finding that long-term memory is improved when the information is retrieved (e.g. tested in a recall quiz).

Question 40

How is the testing effect thought to work? (1 point)

Answer 40

The testing effect is thought to be because retrieval leads to the development of a better retrieval structure, which improves access to the information in memory.

Question 41

What was the most popular method of study, according to Karpicke et al.’s (2009) study? (1 point)

Answer 41

Karpicke et al. (2009) found that 57% of students preferred the less effective strategy of just re-studying the source. Only 18% said they would try and recall the information (as in a test).

Question 42

What’s the generation effect? (1 point)

Answer 42

information is more likely to be remembered if it’s generated by the learner rather than just presented to the learner (Slamecka & Graf, 1978).

(Similar to the TESTING EFFECT)

Question 43

To what extent does repetitive exposure lead to learning? (1 point)

Answer 43

Simple repetition, assuming the learner makes no effort to structure what they’re learning, is not effective for learning, especially for complex information (Baddeley et al., 2015, page 116).

For example - can’t remember details of coins

Question 44

What did Rubin and Kontis (1983) discover using US coins – and what implications does this have? (2 points)

Answer 44

people couldn’t remember something (the details on coins) that they would have seen thousands of times and would consider a very familiar sight.

Question 45

What was memory champion Feng Wang’s method for learning 300 random digits? (1 point)

Answer 45

Feng Wang was able to remember 300 random digits in 2011 (i.e. better than Steve Faloon’s world record of 82 digits).

He used the METHOD OF LOCI

He did this by associating each number from 00 to 99 with an image.
He then constructed a “memory palace” – an imagined mansion with many locations.
Each set of 4 numbers was therefore encoded as 2 images, which were stored in one location in the memory palace (e.g. 6389 – 63 = banana; 89 = monk. Imagine monk splitting banana in a pot (location along his mental route through his palace).

Question 46

What is the Method of Loci and how do you implement it? (1 point)

Answer 46

associating each number from 00 to 99 with an image.
He then constructed a “memory palace” – an imagined mansion with many locations.
Each set of 4 numbers was therefore encoded as 2 images, which were stored in one location in the memory palace (e.g. 6389 – 63 = banana; 89 = monk. Imagine monk splitting banana in a pot (location along his mental route through his palace).

Massen et al. (2009) found that a route to work was found to be better than locations around the home, perhaps because the order of locations is more defined.

Question 47

What did Massen et al. (2009) find were the best locations to use in the Method of Loci? (1 point)

Answer 47

Massen et al. (2009) found that a route to work was found to be better than locations around the home, perhaps because the order of locations is more defined.

Question 48

What did Bower (1973) find regarding when the Method of Loci was compared to a no-strategy control? (1 point)

Answer 48

Bower (1973, cited in Baddeley et al., 2015) asked participants to remember 100 words. When they used the Method of Loci, they remembered 72% of the words – but only 28% when they didn’t.

Question 49

What did De Beni et al (1997) find when they compared the Method of Loci with rehearsal – for both written and orally-delivered essays? (1 point)

Answer 49

De Beni (1997) showed the Method of Loci was more effective than rehearsal for when a 2000 word passage was read out – but this advantage disappeared if the passage was read (perhaps the visual nature of writing interfered with visual imagery of locations).

Question 50

How does the Pegword system work? (1 point)

Answer 50

Step 1 – memorize the ten pegwords
Step 2 – imagine the first word interacting with “bun”; the second word interacting with “shoe”.

One – bun
Two – shoe
Three – tree
Four – door
Five – hive
Six – sticks
Seven – heaven
Eight – gate
Nine – wine
Ten - hen

Question 51

How does the Pegword system compare with the Method of Loci (Wang & Thomas, 2000)? (1 point)

Answer 51

The Pegword System was found to be just as effective as the Method of Loci (Wang & Thomas, 2000).

Question 52

What are the limitations of the Pegword system? (1 point)

Answer 52

1. You need to put in a lot of work to remember the pegwords reliably enough.
2. it’s harder to use for abstract, hard to visualize words (“morality”) than easy to visualize words (“car”).

Question 53

Describe the method of remembering names (with your own example) that was demonstrated by Morris et al. (1978) to lead to 80% correct recall. (1 point)

Answer 53

Step 1: Search for an imageable substitute for the person’s name. Jo Brown = Joey (baby kangaroo) + Brown (colour).
Step 2: Select some prominent feature of the person’s face – and link that feature with the name substitute (e.g. baby kangaroo or JOEY nestled in my eyebrows, which are BROWN in colour).
This method led to 80% recall (Morris et al., 1978).

Question 54

Under what circumstances did Morris et al. (2005) find that the imagery method of remembering names did not work – and why? (1 point)

Answer 54

Under party conditions (where it was hard to construct these images), Morris et al. (2005) found better memory was found with expanded retrieval (try and recall the name at increasing intervals, without imagery = 24 names) than the imagery method (12 names) (where a no strategy control was 16 names).

Because even those who are aware of the
potential effectiveness of the mnemonic and somewhat familiar with its use often find it
too demanding to put into practice when interacting with a new acquaintance.

Question 55

Give your own example of a verbal mnemonic. (1 point)

Answer 55

COME ON BRUTHA

Question 56

What is the Story Mnemonic method? (1 point)

Answer 56

The Story Mnemonic involves creating a story out of a list of unrelated words that need to be remembered.
Bower and Clark (1969) found this led to 93% of 120 words being remembered (compared with 13% for controls).

Question 57

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Story Mnemonic method? (1 point)

Answer 57

Advantages: doesn’t require previous learning (e.g. of peg words or locations).

Disadvantages: takes time to create the story (e.g. may not work under time constraints).

Question 58

Give three reasons why mnemonic memory methods can be very effective (Ericsson, 1988). (2 points)

Answer 58

1. Meaningful encoding (relating information to pre-existing knowledge)
2. Accessible retrieval structure
3. (Practise) Memory expert achieve their performance via practice of these techniques, which speeds up both encoding and retrieval.

Question 59

Give three reasons why mnemonic memory methods can be very effective (Ericsson, 1988). (2 points)

Answer 59

1. Meaningful encoding (relating information to pre-existing knowledge)
2. Accessible retrieval structure
3. (Practise)Memory expert achieve their performance via practice of these techniques, which speeds up both encoding and retrieval.