A New Stragegy for Learning Highly Similar Concepts

描述（由申请人提供）：在教育环境中，学生通常被期望学习成对概念的定义（例如，流体智力和结晶智力）。对于许多学生来说，这些概念很难学习，因为它们有相似的定义，很容易混淆。学习这些相似但经常混淆的概念的挑战是复杂的，因为测试中经常充斥着评估概念之间差异的问题。这项理论动机研究的目的是检验一种学习相似但经常混淆的概念的新策略的有效性，即差异联想处理（即D-A）。每一组拟议的研究都包括从教科书和不同种族和社会经济地位的学生中改编的生态有效刺激。前三组研究评估了D-A的有效性，确定了D-A是否转移到中性条件，并测试了知识的持续时间。最后一组研究考察了D-A是否补偿了较小的工作记忆、对学习的幼稚信念和较低的元认知意识。D-A的价值是双重的：一是对现有认知理论的实际应用，二是对学生和教师的实用价值。关于学习有许多认知理论（如编码特异性、独特性假说）。虽然这些理论中有许多已经建立，但研究人员倾向于使用具有有限生态有效性的刺激来研究这些理论；例如，像“啤酒-葡萄酒”这样的单词对。本项目旨在将这些理论应用于教育相关（和生态有效）的刺激，即类似概念对的定义。从学生-教师的角度来看，学习相似的概念在教育环境中是一个普遍存在的问题，D-A很可能会导致更丰富、更强大的记忆痕迹，这不仅应该减少未来对重要概念的重新学习，而且应该为整合未来的知识提供一个心理框架。此外，D-A可能会鼓励学生使用重要的整合过程，用于扩展工作记忆和阅读理解。最后，D-A可以通过为教育背景较差的学生提供有价值的学习策略来帮助他们。今后的建议将设法在大学一级提供的辅导课（即教师-学习者课程）中应用幼儿发展教学法，并将设法将幼儿发展教学法应用于较年轻的人口，包括初级读者。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In educational settings students are often expected to learn the definitions of pairs of concepts (e.g., fluid and crystallized intelligence). For many students these concepts are difficult to learn because they have similar definitions that are easy to confuse. The challenge of learning these similar yet often confused concepts is complicated by the fact that tests are often inundated with questions that assess differences between the concepts. The purpose of this theoretically motivated research is to examine the efficacy of a new strategy for learning similar, yet often confused concepts, namely differential-associative processing (i.e., D-A). Each set of proposed studies includes ecologically valid stimuli adapted from textbooks and students who vary in ethnicity and SES. The first three sets of studies assess the effectiveness of D-A, determine whether D-A transfers to neutral conditions, and test the duration of knowledge. The final set of studies examines whether D-A compensates for smaller working memories, naive beliefs about learning, and low meta-cognitive awareness. The value of D-A is two-fold: practical application of existing cognitive theories and practical value for students and teachers. There are a number of cognitive theories about learning (e.g., Encoding Specificity, the distinctiveness hypothesis). Although many of these theories are well established, researchers have tended to study these theories using stimuli with limited ecological validity; for example, word pairs like "beer-wine." The present project seeks to apply these theories to educationally relevant (and ecologically valid) stimuli, namely definitions of similar pairs of concepts. From the student-teacher perspective, learning similar concepts is a pervasive problem in educational settings, and it is quite possible that D-A may lead to richer and more robust memory traces that should not only reduce future relearning of important concepts but should also provide a mental framework for integrating future knowledge. Moreover, D-A may encourage students to use important integration processes that are used for extending working memory and reading comprehension. Finally, D-A may help students from poorer educational backgrounds by providing them with a valuable strategy for learning. Future proposals will seek to apply D-A in tutorials sessions (i.e., teacher-learner sessions) offerred at a university level, and will seek to apply D-A to younger populations, including pre-readers.