Doris R. Pridemore

Control of feedback in computer-assisted instruction

Although considerable research has been conducted on both learner control and feedback, very little research has addressed the effect of giving learners control over the feedback that they receive. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of learner control over feedback in a CAI lesson. Subjects used one of four CAI programs which provided either program control or learner control over verification or elaboration feedback. Results indicated that subjects who received elaboration feedback during instruction performed better than students who received verification feedback. Type of control did not have a significant influence on performance. However, when subjects selected feedback for items answered incorrectly during instruction, subjects under learner control/elaboration performed better on the posttest than subjects under learner control/verification. Implications for the design of CAI are discussed.

Effects of Cooperative Learning and Need for Affiliation on Performance, Time on Task, and Satisfaction.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of cooperative learning and the need for affiliation on performance, time on task, and satisfaction. Subjects used either a cooperative or individual learning strategy while receiving information, examples, practice, and feedback from an instructional television lesson. Results indicated that subjects who worked cooperatively spent more time working on practice exercises and reported greater satisfaction than those who worked individually. In addition, results revealed an interaction between instructional method and the need for affiliation. Performance of subjects with a high need for affiliation who worked alone was lower than that of all other groups when subjects were asked to apply what they had learned from the lesson. Implications for employing cooperative groups in settings that were originally designed for individual learning are provided.

Using maps to retrieve text : a test of conjoint retention

Abstract Two experiments tested the conjoint retention model by having undergraduates learn an intact map and text, and then see the map as a retrieval cue, in either its original form or a reorganized format. Subjects remembered more text events when cued by the original map. The pattern of results supports the assumption that image representations of maps improve text recall only when they retain both feature and structural properties available during encoding.

Responding to Feedback after Multiple-choice Answers: The Influence of Response Confidence

A model is proposed that describes how people choose multiple-choice answers and deal with subsequent feedback. Central to the model is the construct of likelihood, a signal that: (1) indexes the match between task demands and what is known, (2) gives a basis for decisions, and (3) is estimated by response confidence ratings. In two experiments, subjects answered an item, rated confidence, and studied feedback (for 100 items), and then answered the items again. All predictions of the model were confirmed. Specifically, for right/wrong feedback messages, feedback study intervals were longer after correct than incorrect choices (for correct choices, these intervals decreased as confidence increased). Also, there was no relation between the probability of correcting errors and level of confidence. For feedback messages that consisted of an item with correct alternative marked, there was a positive relation between probability of correcting errors and level of confidence.

How map features cue associated verbal content

Undergraduates learned a complex map, heard a related text passage, and received either the original map or a picture of its boundary as a retrieval cue for the text on both an immediate and a 2-week-delayed test. Features on the map were either modified by visually keyed adjectives or not modified. Recall of text events was higher for the map, for the modified features, and on the immediate test. Analysis of feature-event conditional probabilities indicated that a combination of feature icons and verbal modifiers provided the greatest recall of both modified and nonmodified events.

The effects of evidence statements in a passage on the acceptability of bridging inferences

Abstract During reading, bridging inferences provide logical or thematic links between sentences, and people often behave as if such inferences actually appeared in the original passage. We placed different types of evidence sentences in a passage, each directly related to a bridging inference that linked two passage sentences. We had people read the passage one sentence at a time. In a first study, we assessed how often bridging inferences were accepted as original passage sentences, and in a second study, we assessed how often bridging inferences were judged true, given the reading. Results from both studies demonstrated that sentences containing supporting empirical evidence increased the acceptability of the supported inferences.