A New Stragegy for Learning Highly Similar Concepts

描述（由申请人提供）：在教育环境中，学生通常需要学习概念对的定义（例如，流体和结晶智力）。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，因为测试经常被评估概念之间差异的问题淹没。这项理论研究的目的是研究一种新的学习类似但经常混淆的概念的策略的有效性，即差异联想处理（即，D-A）。每一组拟议的研究包括生态有效的刺激改编自教科书和学生谁在种族和社会经济地位不同。前三组研究评估D-A的有效性，确定D-A是否转移到中性条件，并测试知识的持续时间。最后一组研究考察了D-A是否补偿了较小的工作记忆、关于学习的天真信念和较低的元认知意识。D-A的价值是双重的：既有认知理论的实际应用，又对学生和教师有实用价值。有许多关于学习的认知理论（例如，编码特异性，独特性假设）。虽然这些理论中有许多已经很好地建立起来，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。从学生和教师的角度来看，学习相似的概念是教育环境中普遍存在的问题，D-A很可能会导致更丰富和更强大的记忆痕迹，不仅可以减少未来对重要概念的重新学习，而且还可以为整合未来知识提供心理框架。此外，D-A可以鼓励学生使用用于扩展工作记忆和阅读理解的重要整合过程。最后，D-A可以帮助教育背景较差的学生，为他们提供有价值的学习策略。未来的提案将寻求在辅导课程中应用D-A（即，教师-学习者课程）在大学一级提供，并将寻求将D-A应用于年轻人，包括预读者。

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.