Learning 2

Question 1

What is the elaborative interrogation learning technique?

Answer 1

Generating an explanation for why an explicitly stated fact or concept is true

Question 2

What is the self explanation learning technique?

Answer 2

Explaining how new information is related to known info, or explaining steps taken during problem solving

Question 3

What is the highlighting/underlining learning technique?

Answer 3

Marking potentially important portions of to-be-learned materials while reading

Question 4

What is the keyword mnemonic learning technique?

Answer 4

Using keywords and mental imagery to associated verbal materials

Question 5

What is the imagery for text learning technique?

Answer 5

Attempting to form mental images of text materials while reading or listening

Question 6

What is the rereading learning technique?

Answer 6

Restudying text material again after an initial reading

Question 7

What is practice testing?

Answer 7

Self testing or taking practice tests of to-be-learned material

Question 8

What is distributed practice?

Answer 8

Implement a schedule of practice that spreads out study activities over time

Question 9

What is interleaved practice?

Answer 9

Implementing a schedule of practice that mixes different kinds of problems, or a schedule of study that mixes different kinds of material within a single study session

Question 10

What was Fowler and Barker (1974) Experiment about highlighting and what were the results?

Answer 10

• UGs (undergraduates) read articles (around 8000 words) e.g. from Science
• Active highlighting group: highlights as much of the text as they want. Mark important material
• Passive-highlighting group: read text which had been highlighted by yoked Ps in the AH group
• Control group: Simply read the article
• All groups had 1 hour to study
• The test was 1 week later – 54 MCQs (allowed to review material for 10 mins prior to test)
• Result: highlighting groups did not outperform controls
• Active group performance better on test items for which the relevant text had been highlighted
• Benefit greater for active compared to passive group
• Benefit to highlighted material accompanied by a small cost to test questions probing info that had not been highlighted
• Actively selecting material e.g. working out what’s important should benefit performance slightly (Fowler study: benefit of active-highlighting)
• But experimenter (someone highly knowledgeable about the subject) highlighted text can be better than student highlighted text (Nist and Hogrebe, 1987)

Question 11

What impact does the quality of highlighting have on learning?

Answer 11

• Suggestion of a negative relationship between amount of text highlighted and performance
• More highlighting – less distinctive
• Less processing to mark out big chunks of text
• Maybe if you were trained in highlighting it would work better
• But usually for highlighting you need to be quite well versed on the subject

Question 12

Is highlighting as a learning technique recommended?

Answer 12

No not really. It may hurt performance on higher level-tasks that require inference making. It would only help if the subject was already very well known.

Question 13

What was Pressley et al. (1987) experiment on elaborative processing and what were the results?

Answer 13

• They gave participants a series of sentences to be retained, such as ‘the hungry man got into the car’ they then split them into three groups:
• An elaborative interrogation group who were asked – ‘why did the man get into the car?’
• An explanation provided group who were given an explanation -e.g. ‘the man got into the car to go to the restaurant’
• A reading control group who were simply told the sentence
• In a final test they were later asked “who got into the car?”
• Results: those in the elaborative interrogation remembered significantly more than the other two groups

Question 14

What was Woloshyn et al (1992) experiment on elaborative interrogation and what were the results?

Answer 14

• Examined memory for new facts about German and Canadian states in German and Canadian students
• When they used elaborative interrogation German students remembered more about German states than Canadian states
• Similarly Canadian students remembered more about Canadian states than German states
• Higher baseline levels of knowledge about their own country helped them generate more appropriate explanations for why a fact was true

Question 15

How is elaborative interrogation thought to work?

Answer 15

By supporting the integration of new information with your existing knowledge

Question 16

What are the benefits of elaborative interrogation?

Answer 16

• fairly effective
• doesn’t require much training
• Doesn’t take long to do

Question 17

When may it be difficult to use elaborative interrogation techniques?

Answer 17

when studying longer texts

Question 18

What type of practice tests are there?

Answer 18

• practicing recall
• practice problems or questions
• multiple choice tests
• fill in the blank tests
• essay style recall tests

Question 19

What is the benefit of practice tests?

Answer 19

They help with long-term retention

Question 20

What is the linguistics experiment to do with practice testing?

Answer 20

• Trained in 60 Swahili words and given English translations
• Initial study trial for all items
• Then Either:
   Study-study-study-study
   Test-study-test-study
• Then a final recall test
• Results: test-study-test-study got much better results on final test

Question 21

What was Reodiger and Karpicke (2006) experiment on practice testing and what were the results?

Answer 21

• Repeated study: passage read 4 times, no test
• Single test: passage read 3 times then students recall as much as possible
• Repeated test: read once then recall as much as possible on 3 occasions
• Results: average recall was 50% higher in the repeated test condition compared to repeated study. Robust effect. (tested after a week)
• However After a 5 minute delay repeated study was higher than the repeated test condition

Question 22

Why does practice testing improve learning?

Answer 22

• Direct effect – changes that arise from the act of taking the test itself
• Mediated effects – better learning at next study

Question 23

What was Carpenter’s (2009) theory on why practice testing helps retrieval and recall?

Answer 23

testing can enhance retention by triggering elaborative retrieval processes (if you get used to recalling something you can recall it using different pathways)

Question 24

What was Carpenter’s experiment on practice tests?

Answer 24

• Study weakly related word-pairs (e.g. Mother-child)
• Either goes on to study that or do a practice test
• Final test: given related word – if retrieval practice enhances semantic links, would expect greater recall for semantically – related cues
• Results: also better recall for the related word

Question 25

What is the recommendation in regard to practice testing?

Answer 25

• very useful
• demonstrated utility across an array of practice test formats
• the more testing the better (up to a certain point)
• Greatest benefit if you continue until correct recall
• if you get it wrong keep testing until you get it right

Question 26

What is Bude et al. (2011) experiment on distributed practice?

Answer 26

• Learning of statistics. Took advantage of a curriculum change: 8 weeks vs 6 months
• Found that people did better during the 6 month course and after it
• Compared it to a control course and found that the benefit was specific to that course

Question 27

What was Cepeda et al. (2006) study on distributed practice?

Answer 27

• Reviewed 254 studies involving more than 14000 participants altogether
• Students recalled more after spaced study (47%) compared to massed study (37%)

Question 28

Why is distributed practice good?

Answer 28

• Deficient processing – do not have to work very hard to reread notes or retrieve straightaway. Students can be mislead into thinking they know the material better than they do (Behrick and Hall, 2005)
• Reminding – Second presentation of to-be-learned material reminds learner of the first learning opportunity (practice testing)
• Consolidation – second learning episode benefits from the consolidation of the first learning episode

Question 29

How should learning episodes be spaced?

Answer 29

• Generally longer lags are better but depends on how long you want to know the material for
• Cepeda et al. (2008) performance best when the lag between sessions is around 10-20% of the desired retention interval
• To remember something for a week, learning episodes should be 12-24 hours apart. 5 years: 6-12 months apart

Question 30

Is distributed practice recommended?

Answer 30

Yes