Elaborative Interrogation Facilitates Adult Learning of Factual Paragraphs

Abstract

The authors evaluated the potency of elaborative interrogation for promoting acquisition of facts in paragraphs. University students studied 6-sentence factual paragraphs about 5 universities (1 fact per sentence). In general, elaborative interrogation facilitated learning better than did self-reference (Experiment 1 only) and reading-control conditions; performances in the elaborative-interrogation conditions equaled performances in the imagery conditions. The elaborative interrogation over control advantage was obtained for both intentional and incidental learning (Experiment 2) and both when subjects processed sentences individually and when they generated answers for each new sentence in a paragraph by considering information presented earlier in the paragraph (Experiment 2). Even when elaborative-interrogation subjects could not recall facts in their entirety, they were more likely than control subjects to have learned the associations between the university and the factual attribute.

Full text

Journal
of
Educational Psychology
1990,
Vol. 82, No.
3,
513-524Copyright
1990
by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0022-0663/90/$00.?5
Elaborative Interrogation Facilitates Adult Learning
of Factual Paragraphs
Vera E. Woloshyn
University
of
Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
Eileen Wood
Wilfred Laurier University
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Teena Willoughby
University
of
Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Michael Pressley
University
of
Maryland
The authors evaluated the potency of elaborative interrogation
for
promoting acquisition of facts
in paragraphs. University students studied 6-sentence factual paragraphs about
5
universities
(1
fact
per
sentence).
In
general, elaborative interrogation facilitated learning better than
did self-
reference (Experiment
1
only)
and
reading-control conditions; performances
in the
elaborative-
interrogation conditions equaled performances
in the
imagery conditions.
The
elaborative
interrogation over control advantage
was
obtained
for
both intentional
and
incidental learning
(Experiment 2) and both when subjects processed sentences individually and when they generated
answers
for
each
new
sentence
in a
paragraph
by
considering information presented earlier
in
the paragraph (Experiment
2).
Even when elaborative-interrogation subjects could not recall facts
in their entirety, they were more likely than control subjects
to
have learned
the
associations
between
the
university
and the
factual attribute.
Sometimes students lack prior knowledge that might make
obvious the significance
and
meaning of to-be-acquired facts
(e.g., Bransford
et al.,
1982).
If
so, fact learning reduces
to
rote learning
of
arbitrary associations,
a
process known
to be
difficult
(e.g.,
Rohwer,
1973).
Alternatively, even when people
possess relevant prior knowledge that can be used
to
elaborate
novel facts
to
make them more meaningful
and
memorable,
they may fail to activate such knowledge (Pressley, McDaniel,
Turnure, Wood,
&
Ahmad,
1987;
Pressley, Symons,
Mc-
Daniel, Snyder,
&
Turnure,
1988).
One purpose of our studies
was
to
evaluate
one
mechanism that
can
encourage students
to activate relevant prior knowledge
in
response
to
novel facts
and,
in
turn, facilitate acquisition of those facts.
Bransford and his associates (e.g., Stein & Bransford,
1979;
Stein, Littlefield, Bransford,
&
Persampieri, 1984) presented
learners with information about types
of
men: specifically,
statements about actions that were arbitrarily associated with
a number
of man
types (e.g., **The tall
man
bought
the
crackers,"
"The
hungry
man got
into
the
car"). They found
that when adults
and
children were provided elaborations
for
arbitrary facts that made
the
significance
of
the man-action
pairings more obvious
(i.e.,
precise elaborations,
to
use Brans-
ford
et al/s 1982
terminology), arbitrary facts were more
memorable. Thus
"The
tall
man
bought
the
crackers that
were
on the top
shelf
was
more memorable than
"The
tall
man bought the crackers." Bransford
et
al. (1982) argued that
provision of precise elaborations helps to activate the learner's
This research
was
supported
in
part
by an
operating grant
to
Michael
Pressley
from
the
Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research
Council of Canada.
Correspondence concerning this article should
be
addressed
to
Vera
E.
Woloshyn, Department of Psychology, University of Western
Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
N6A
5C2.
prior knowledge
and
promotes integration
of
seemingly arbi-
trary information with previous experience, making the novel
facts more comprehensible
and
memorable. Unfortunately,
memory gains produced
by
providing precise elaborations
to
adults are often small.
More optimistically, Pressley et
al.
(1987) identified another
procedure designed
to
encourage learners
to
make connec-
tions between arbitrary facts
and
their prior knowledge. Pres-
sley
et
al. instructed their subjects
to
generate
an
answer
to a
uwhy" question (e.g., "Why did that particular man do that?")
when presented
man
statements. Pressley
et al.
found that
this approach (elaborative interrogation) produced larger
learning gains that
did
provision of precise elaborations.
One
reason
why the
self-generated elaborations
may be
more
effective than experimenter-provided ones
is
that they
are
more likely
to be
consistent with
the
learner's prior knowl-
edge.
Alternatively, elaborative interrogation
may
involve
more conscious
and
effortful memory processes than does
provision
of
elaborations (Hasher
&
Zacks,
1979,
Jacoby,
1978),
and the
resulting memory trace
may be
more distinc-
tive (e.g., Slamecka
& Graf,
1978).
The
elaborative-interro-
gation effect seems consistent with other demonstrations that
learning
is
better when study includes active generation
of
information (e.g., Jacoby, 1978; Schwartz,
1971;
Slamecka
Sc
Fevrieski,
1983;
Slamecka &
Graf,
1978).
In addition
to
enhancing acquisition
of
essentially random
associations (i.e.,
man
sentences), Pressley
et al.
(1988) also
demonstrated that elaborative interrogation promotes learn-
ing of more educationally relevant content. Canadian univer-
sity students were presented facts about Canadian geography,
history, economics,
and
sociology.
If,
during study, students
answered "why" questions about
the
facts (e.g., "Why would
it make sense that British Columbia
is the
province with
the
highest percentage of its population
in
unions?"), retention
of
513
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