When learning new information, should students focus on studying 1 concept at a time or should they alternate studying between different concepts? Recent research shows that students should mix up or interleave the study of different concepts, particularly when the concepts are related or hard to discriminate (Carvalho & Goldstone, 2015). But…

Relational reasoning, or the ability to identify meaningful patterns within streams of information, has emerged as an important factor in a variety of complex tasks. One factor that has received relatively little research attention, however, is how relational reasoning may be influenced by the representational systems (i.e., verbal or nonverbal)…

This study explored ways to foster generative learning during a narrated video lesson about the human kidney. In a 2 × 3 between-subjects design, 196 college students were randomly assigned to a video format condition and a learning strategy condition. Students listened to oral explanations from the instructor as they viewed either a series of…

Recent reforms in science education emphasize having students develop and refine core disciplinary ideas through participation in science knowledge--building practices. Supporting students' meaningful participation in these practices is challenging, in part because our understanding of how this kind of participation develops is underexplored. This…

Misconceptions impair not only learners' comprehension of a text but also the accuracy with which they judge their comprehension, that is, "metacomprehension accuracy." Refutation texts are beneficial to elicit conceptual-change processes and thus to overcome the detrimental impact of misconceptions on comprehension. However, it is…

The cognitive conflict hypothesis asserts that information that directly contradicts a prior conception is 1 of the prerequisites for conceptual change and other forms of nonmonotonic learning. There have been numerous attempts to support this hypothesis by adding a conflict intervention to learning scenarios with weak outcomes. Outcomes have been…

The combined use of rational sets of concept instances and of a concept definition is validated as a powerful controllable variable in instructional material that is designed to facilitate concept attainment. (Author)

Learning is analyzed into two components, monitoring and strategy learning, using a technique that avoids the confounding of the Durling and Schick method. A strategy analysis showed that most subjects employed the same strategy across problems. Strategy shifters displayed a small tendency toward more efficient strategies. (Author/GK)

Examines the performance of third grade children, given no feedback as to the correctness of their hypotheses, on color, number, and size dominant conjunctive concept problems. (Author/DEP)

Differences in the rate of successive acquisition of four concepts as a result of two presentation conditions and their interaction with the learner's preferred strategy was investigated. (Authors)

Subjects read a text concerning a new computer programing language, with an advance organizer given either before or after reading. On a recall test, there were different patterns of performance. Results suggested that the locus of the effect was at encoding rather than retrieval. (Author/GDC)