Content uploaded by Fred Paas
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Fred Paas on Jul 05, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
Training Strategies for Attaining Transfer of Problem-Solving Skill in Statistics: A Cognitive-Load Approach
Abstract
Studied the differential effect on training performance, transfer performance, and cognitive load for 3 computer-based training strategies. The conventional, worked, and completion conditions emphasized, respectively, the solving of conventional problems, the study of worked-out problems, and the completion of partly worked-out problems. The relation between practice-problem type and transfer was expected to be mediated by cognitive load. It was hypothesized that practice with conventional problems would require more time and more effort during training and result in lower and more effort-demanding transfer performance than practice with worked-out or partly worked-out problems. With the exception of time and effort during training, the results supported the hypothesis. The completion strategy and, in particular, the worked strategy proved to be superior to the conventional strategy for attaining transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... Perceived cognitive load was measured with the 9-point mental effort rating scale developed by Paas (1992;also used in e.g., Hoogerheide et al., 2016;Ouwehand et al., 2015) which asked participants 'How much effort did you invest while studying the video?' with answer options ranging from (1) very, very low mental effort to (9) very, very high mental effort. ...
... These outcomes are not in line with studies on other types of visual cueing that did report that cueing reduced perceived cognitive load (e.g., Kalyuga et al., 1999). Ouwehand et al. (2015), on the other hand, also did not find significant effects of gaze and gesture cues on perceived cognitive load while using the 9-point subjective scale by Paas (1992) that we also used in our study. It is possible that this measure was not sensitive enough to measure the effects of visual complexity and social cues on experienced cognitive load. ...
... It is possible that this measure was not sensitive enough to measure the effects of visual complexity and social cues on experienced cognitive load. The scale by Paas (1992) Klepsch et al., 2017;Klepsch & Seufert, 2020;Leppink et al., 2013). It would be interesting to investigate this further in future research on social cues. ...
Background
There are only few guidelines on how instructional videos should be designed to optimize learning. Recently, the effects of social cues on attention allocation and learning in instructional videos have been investigated. Due to inconsistent results, it has been suggested that the visual complexity of a video influences the effect of social cues on learning.
Objectives
Therefore, this study compared the effects of social cues (i.e., gaze & gesture) in low and high visual complexity videos on attention, perceived cognitive load, and learning outcomes.
Methods
Participants (N = 71) were allocated to a social cue or no social cue condition and watched both a low and a high visual complexity video. After each video, participants completed a knowledge test.
Results and Conclusions
Results showed that participants looked faster at referenced information and had higher learning outcomes in the low visual complexity condition. Social cues did not affect any of the dependent variables, except when including prior knowledge in the analysis: In this exploratory analysis, the inclusion of gaze and gesture cues in the videos did lead to better learning outcomes.
Takeaways
Our results show that the visual complexity of instructional videos and prior knowledge are important to take into account in future research on attention and learning from instructional videos.
... Among the common questionnaires used for subjective measure of cognitive load are the multidimensional measures: NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) (Hart & Staveland, 1988), which evaluates mental load associated to each dimension of the task; Subjective Workload Assessment Technique (SWAT) (Reid & Nygren, 1988) and Workload Profile (WP) (Tsang & Velazquez, 1996), that measure the mental load experienced by learners rather than load generated by the task directly. A unidimensional measure, the Paas scale, has also been introduced as a measure of subjective cognitive load (Paas, 1992). Thus, depending on the type of standardized subjective measure, cognitive load is described as a multi-or unidimensional measure (Meshkati, 1988;Wickens, 2002). ...
... These different learning effects contribute to the construction of an adapted instructional design, required for optimal processing of cognitive load. The five main learning effects are redundancy effect Sweller, 1994); splitattention effect Sweller, 1994;Sweller, Chandler, Tierney, & Cooper, 1990); goal-free effect (Owen & Sweller, 1985;Sweller, Mawer, & Ward, 1983;Tarmizi & Sweller, 1988); worked-example effect (Cooper & Sweller, 1987;Sweller & Cooper, 1985); completion effect (Paas, 1992;Van Merriënboer & De Croock, 1992). Redundancy effect is related to the presenta- Goal-free effect is related to focusing attention on means to solve a problem rather than to the whole situation. ...
This thesis has been conducted to analyze the cognitive load of train travelers in one of the most visited train station in Paris, Île-de-France: Saint-Michel Notre Dame. In order to anticipate the risk associated to overcrowding and security hazard in this megacity, we investigated how travelers' expertise modulates cognitive load during information processing. Through four experiments, we investigated variations in travelers' cognitive load in an ecological context, in both field and a validated virtual experiment. Cognitive load was assessed through physiological, subjective and behavioral aspects. Learning effects associated to cognitive load such as split-attention, instructional design, modality effect, redundancy effect and expertise reversal effect, were also discussed in our empirical studies for optimal cognitive load evaluation in train travelers. Travelers¿ cognitive load was evaluated through different environmental vagary levels, ranging from no vagary to successive vagaries situations. Our empirical studies allowed us to put in light variations in cognitive load between the different levels of expertise in travelers, with a higher cognitive load in novice or occasional travelers than in expert or regular travelers, in no vagary context. An expertise reversal effect, where experts expressed a higher cognitive load than novices, arises with increase in environmental vagary level. Novice travelers, however, showed no significant difference in cognitive load level, with varying environmental vagary level. We discussed how reducing the gap between experts and novices could encourage expert travelers to be more aware of their surrounding environment in moment of no vagary as well as non-optimal situations, to reduce the risk of abrupt rise in cognitive load. This thesis represents a mix between fundamental and applied research, to unravel the mechanism underlying cognitive load variations in a real-life context.
... * Task. #2: Subjective Ratings distinguishing Task, in which the 9-point rating hierarchy system [38] of 1-3 as low (lo) workload, 4-6 as moderate (mi) workload, and 7-9 as high (hi) workload is used to evaluate the MWL states. The EEG signals were captured with a sampling frequency of 128Hz and 16-bit A/D resolution, collected using Emotiv EPOC EEG headset system . ...
Mental workload (MWL) assessment is crucial in fatigue evaluation applications to avoid potential health problems or serious accidents. This paper proposes an MWL recognition approach developed with a topological investigation of EEG-based brain functional connectivity (FC) network. In this work, the graph filtration-based features are extracted to reveal the brain state variations utilizing the persistent homology technique from the topological data analysis area. Three public open benchmark datasets are used to test and verify the recognition ability of the proposed method, which are developed with the MWL assessment experiments of Simultaneous Capacity (SIMKAP) test tasks, arithmetic calculations, and Multi-Attribute Task Battery II (MATB-II) MWL tasks. The experimental results show that the proposed topological FC network analysis scheme shows excellent distinguishing ability in brain state recognition, comparable to or better than the state-of-art results with similar settings. This work is the first investigation of EEG-based MWL evaluation with the persistent homology analysis of multivariate time series. The proposed topological features are effective and robust brain states indicators, providing an alternative feature in designing novel brain-computer interface systems.
... was adapted from the literature [60,61]. The mental effort items ("I put a lot of effort into this" and "I didn't try very hard to do well at this activity") were from Paas [62] and Krell [57]. Each of these three items was administered on a 9-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ("not at all true") to 9 ("very true"). ...
Video lectures are becoming an important and accessible way for adults to learn a new second language (L2). Unlike face-to-face classroom teaching, teachers are more challenged by the asynchronous mode of video teaching. Finding more effective teaching methods is a great concern for teachers. The present study examined adults’ second language (L2) vocabulary learning in a video-based social learning environment. Participants included 116 Chinese undergraduates. They learned German words through one of three pedagogical video lecture conditions: social-context (SC) condition, picture-phonics (PP) condition, and non-picture phonics (NPP) condition. We measured learners’ learning performance, cognitive load, intrinsic motivation, and learning satisfaction. The results indicated that adult learners in the SC condition performed significantly better in word meaning retention, had significantly higher intrinsic motivation, and perceived significantly lower cognitive load as compared to the PP and NPP conditions. The implications are that teachers could use social learning pedagogy to create a better video-based learning environment for L2 adult learners for better learning performance.
... A scale for self-reporting mental effort developed by Paas (1992) was used to assess the mental effort of the participants during instruction. Each participant was asked "How much mental effort have you invested in studying the material on the immune system?" and was asked to respond using a 9-point scale ranging from 1 (very, very low effort) to 9 (very, very high effort). ...
Several studies in multimedia learning have examined the effect of emotional design. Recent findings from cognitive psychology provide opportunities for educators to use more direct ways of manipulating emotion to enhance learning. These studies have shown that emotionally arousing words and pictures are remembered better than neutral ones. Building upon these findings, this experimental study investigates the effect of arousal of instructional materials on learning. A total of 154 participants were randomly divided into a “high-emotional arousal” and a “low-emotional arousal” group in a between-subjects design. These results suggest that emotional arousal enhanced learning. Mediation analyses show that the effect of arousal on learning was partially mediated by interest. Accordingly, emotional arousal increased interest, which in turn improved transfer scores. The findings imply that motivational factors such as situational interest encouraged elaborative processing and deeper levels of learning. The direct effect of emotional arousal on learning was also significant.
... • Cognitive Load Questionnaire: The questionnaire for this study was adapted from the cognitive load questionnaire proposed by Paas [50] and Hwang et al. [49]. The content of the questionnaire is divided into two categories: mental load and mental effort. ...
COVID-19 has resulted in the increased use of distance learning around the world. With the advancement of information technology, traditional classroom teaching has gradually integrated the Internet and distance learning methods. Students need to be able to learn on their own in a distance learning environment, so their ability to self-regulate their learning in a distance learning environment cannot be ignored. However, in previous studies on self-regulated learning, most learners learn alone. When they have academic doubts, they cannot obtain help and support from their studies, resulting in reduced learning outcomes. This study uses the peer self-disciplined learning mechanism to establish a distance teaching system that assists students and to improve their own learning status by meeting with peers at a distance. It can also help learners orient themselves by observing their peers’ learning status and goal considerations. The participants in this study were 112 college students in the department of information management. The control group used a general self-regulated teaching system for learning, and the experimental group used a distance learning system, incorporating peer self-regulated learning. The results of the study found that learners who used the distance peer learning mechanism were more effective than those who used the general distance self-regulated learning system; learners who used the distance peer-regulated learning mechanism had better motivation, self-efficacy, and reflection after the learning activity than those who used the general distance self-regulated learning system. In addition, with the aid of such mechanisms, learners’ cognitive load can be reduced, and learning effectiveness can be improved.
... At the end of the study session, participants rated their invested mental effort ('How much mental effort did you invest in working on your learning tasks?'), concentration ('How much did you concentrate during this learning session?') and perceived difficulty ('how difficult was it for you to work on your learning tasks?') on a scale from 1 (very, very low) to 9 (very, very high) (Paas, 1992). ...
Background:
During self-study, students need to monitor and regulate mental effort to replete working memory resources and optimize learning results. Taking breaks during self-study could be an effective effort regulation strategy. However, little is known about how breaktaking relates to self-regulated learning.
Aims:
We investigated the effects of taking systematic or self-regulated breaks on mental effort, task experiences and task completion in real-life study sessions for 1 day.
Sample:
Eighty-seven bachelor's and master's students from a Dutch University.
Methods:
Students participated in an online intervention during their self-study. In the self-regulated-break condition (n = 35), students self-decided when to take a break; in the systematic break conditions, students took either a 6-min break after every 24-min study block (systematic-long or 'Pomodoro technique', n = 25) or a 3-min break after every 12-min study block (systematic-short, n = 27).
Results:
Students had longer study sessions and breaks when self-regulating. This was associated with higher levels of fatigue and distractedness, and lower levels of concentration and motivation compared to those in the systematic conditions. We found no difference between groups in invested mental effort or task completion.
Conclusions:
Taking pre-determined, systematic breaks during a study session had mood benefits and appeared to have efficiency benefits (i.e., similar task completion in shorter time) over taking self-regulated breaks. Measuring how mental effort dynamically fluctuates over time and how effort spent on the learning task differs from effort spent on regulating break-taking requires further research.
Introduction
Simulation-based medical education (SBME) is widely used to teach bedside procedural skills. Feedback is crucial to SBME but research on optimal timing to support novice learners’ skill development has produced conflicting results.
Methods
We randomly assigned 32 novice medical students to receive feedback either during (concurrent) or after (terminal) trialing lumbar puncture (LP). Participants completed pre- and post-acquisition tests, as well as retention and transfer tests, graded on a LP checklist by two blinded expert raters. Cognitive load and anxiety were also assessed, as well as learners’ perceptions of feedback.
Results
Participants who received concurrent feedback demonstrated significantly higher LP checklist scores (M = 91.54, SE = 1.90) after controlling for baseline levels, than those who received terminal feedback (M = 85.64, SE = 1.90), collapsed across post, retention, and transfer tests. There was no difference in cognitive load and anxiety between groups. In open-ended responses, participants who received concurrent feedback more often expressed satisfaction with their learning experience compared to those who received terminal feedback.
Discussion and conclusions
Concurrent may be superior to terminal feedback when teaching novice learners complex procedures and has the potential to improve learning if incorporated into SBME and clinical teaching. Further research is needed to elucidate underlying cognitive processes to explain this finding.
The aim of this study was to examine the effects of cognitive demand during acute exercise on the behavioral and electrophysiological correlates of inhibitory control. In a within- participants design, 30 male participants (age range = 18-27 years) performed 20-min sessions of high cognitive-demand exercise (HE), low cognitive-demand exercise (LE), and an active control (AC) on separate days in a randomized order. A moderate-to-vigorous intensity interval step exercise was used as the exercise intervention. During the exercise periods, the participants were instructed to respond to the target among competing stimuli to impose different cognitive demands with their feet. A modified flanker task was administered to assess inhibitory control before and after the interventions, and electroencephalography was used to derive stimulus-elicited N2 and P3 components. Behavioral data showed that the participants performed significantly shorter reaction time (RT), regardless of congruency and a reduced RT flanker effect following HE and LE compared with the AC condition with large (ds = -0.934 to -1.07) and medium effect sizes (ds = -0.502 to -0.507), respectively. Electrophysiological data revealed that compared with the AC condition, acute HE and LE had facilitative effects on stimuli evaluation, as indicated by significantly shorter N2 latency for congruent trials and P3 latency regardless of congruency with medium effect sizes (ds = -0.507 to -0.777). Compared with the AC condition, only acute HE elicited more efficient neural processes in conditions requiring high inhibitory control demand, as indicated by significantly shorter N2 difference latency, with a medium effect size (d = -0.528). Overall, the findings suggest that acute HE and LE facilitate inhibitory control and the electrophysiological substrates of target evaluation. Acute exercise with higher cognitive demand may be associated with more refined neural processing for tasks demanding greater amounts of inhibitory control.
[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 15(5) of
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record
2008-10689-001). On page 157, parts of two sentences in the
Results and Discussion section were omitted. The corrected sentences are provided in the erratum.] Three experiments examined transfer between 2 isomorphic subdomains of algebra and physics. The two areas were arithmetic-progression problems in algebra and constant-acceleration problems in physics. High school and college students who had learned one of these subtopics were presented with word problems that used either content from the domain they had originally studied or content based on the unfamiliar but analogous domain. Ss who had learned arithmetic progressions were very likely to spontaneously recognize that physics problems involving velocity and distance can be addressed using the same equations. Analysis of problem-solving protocols revealed that the recognition was immediate and that the solutions were a straightforward application of the algebraic method. Such recognition occurred even when the algebraic procedures were taught using example word problems all of which were drawn from a single content area (e.g., "money" problems). In contrast, Ss who had learned the physics topic almost never exhibited any detectable transfer to the isomorphic algebra problems. The results were interpreted in terms of content-free vs content-specific applicability conditions for mathematical procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper presents a detailed description of the ADAPT (Apply Delayed Automatization for Positive Transfer) design model. ADAPT is based upon production system models of learning and provides guidelines for developing instructional systems that offer transfer of leamed skills. The model suggests that transfer of training can be attributed to procedure overlap between the original training task and the transfer task, as well as to analogy between new problem solving situations and acquired cognitive schemata. More specifically, the role of schemata in transfer is thought to increase as the transfer task becomes more different from the original training task. Several instructional tactics are suggested to optimize transfer of training. Declarative tactics pertain to the instructional design for acquiring knowledge which is relevant to performance of the skill; such tactics include demonstrating the skill, verbal instruction, the encouragement to paraphrase particular pieces of information, the application of advance organizers and mnemonic systems, and the presentation of concrete models and examples. Procedural tactics refer to the instructional design for acquiring the skill, that is, to the design of practice; such tactics include the encouragement to imitate the skill, the application of variability of practice and contextual interference, and the presentation of annotated examples. The relevance of ADAPT is evaluated and implications for future research are presented.
Methods of measuring subjective difficulty, effort and other aspects of work-load which have been developed by the author and his colleagues are described, and the use of these methods as means of distinguishing between individuals, and their relationships to psychometric measures, are discussed. Applications are noted to both physical and mental work.
In an introductory programming course, the differential effects on learning outcomes were studied for an experimental instructional strategy that emphasized the modification and extension of existing programs ( completion strategy) and a traditional strategy that emphasized the design and coding of new programs ( generation strategy). Two matched groups of twenty-eight and twenty-nine high school students from grades ten through twelve volunteered for participation in a ten-lesson programming course using a small subset of the structured programming language COMAL-80. After the course, the completion group was superior to the generation group in measures concerning the construction of programs; furthermore, it was characterized by a lower mortality. The data indicated that the completion strategy facilitated the use of templates; however, this does not necessarily seem to imply that the students actually understood the working of those templates, because no differences occurred in the ability to interpret programs. In the conclusion, the completion strategy is considered to be a good alternative to more traditional strategies and recommendations are made for further improvements.
Cognitive skills are encoded by a set of productions, which are organized according to a hierarchical goal structure. People solve problems in new domains by applying weak problem-solving procedures to declarative knowledge they have about this domain. From these initial problem solutions, production rules are compiled that are specific to that domain and that use of the knowledge. Numerous experimental results may be predicted from this conception of skill organization and skill acquisition. These include predictions about transfer among skills, differential improvement on problem types, effects of working memory limitations, and applications to instruction. The theory implies that all varieties of skill acquisition, including those typically regarded as inductive, conform to this characterization.
Three tests of intellectual performance capacity referring to factors V, S, and R, according to Thurstone's system of primary mental abilities were administered to a total number of 34 subjects. Immediately after finishing an individual item, subjects were asked to estimate the perceived difficulty of that item. The ratings were to be given on a symmetrical scale with 9 categories with verbal expression labels. A high correlation between the rank order of items according to estimated difficulty and the real item sequence was obtained in all three tests used. A linear relationship was found between estimated difficulty and standard scores corresponding to solution frequencies. A close correspondence was noticed between the widths and the levels of the ranges of the estimates on the one hand and the corresponding widths and levels of the standard score ranges on the other hand. Subjects who could solve an item correctly tended to estimate the difficulty of that item as lower than subjects who could not. (Author)
Researchers have suggested that often, having students study worked examples may be superior to active problem solving. The guidance provided by such examples reduces cognitive load compared with that imposed by the means–ends strategy used by most novice problem-solvers. This may facilitate schema acquisition. The guidance provided by worked examples or other sources of information, such as subgoals, must not themselves require significant cognitive resources for effective processing. In many areas of mathematics, conventional methods of presentation may result in a splitting of attention between multiple sources of information that must be mentally integrated. The cognitive load imposed may eliminate any benefit of a worked example or other form of guidance. A series of 5 geometry experiments provided evidence for this hypothesis. When guidance in the form of subgoals or worked examples was provided using a conventional format requiring attention to 2 sources of information, Ss' performance was no better and possibly worse than when solving conventional problems. Presenting information using a format that did not split attention resulted in a superiority of worked examples over conventional problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Hypothesized that schema acquisition would precede rule automation and that it would have a strong effect on problems similar to initial acquisition problems. We further hypothesized that rule automation would have its primary effect on transfer and that the use of worked examples could facilitate both transfer and performance on similar problems. Experiments 1 and 2 contained simple algebra transformation problems involving the changing of the subject of an equation. The results indicated that subjects whose training included a heavy emphasis on worked examples or an extended acquisition period were better able to solve both similar and transfer problems than were those subjects trained with conventional problems. In Experiment 3, the use of verbal protocols gave some support to the hypotheses. Experiment 4, using algebra word problems, yielded data supporting the hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
An argument is detailed for modifications to some traditional procedures of mathematics and science instruction. It is suggested that cognitive research findings, in revealing the essential domain specificity of problem-solving skills, have pointed to negative aspects of some traditional emphases. As a major example, conventional problem solving frequently can interfere with the acquisition of knowledge. Alternatives to problem solving such as studying worked examples can be equally ineffective unless they are designed in accordance with current findings. It is concluded that if material is structured with learning rather than goal attainment in mind, problem-solving skills can be enhanced substantially. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
BORG, G., BRATFISCH, O. & DORNI'C, S. On the problems of perceived difficulty. Scand. J. Psychol., 1971, 12, 249–260.–The development and meaning of the concept of “perceived difficulty” is presented. A concise survey of experiments carried out so far is given with regard to the main theoretical, methodological and applied problems at which the investigations aimed. A substantial part of the paper is devoted to the analysis of the concept of perceived difficulty and to the possibilities of measurement. The concept of perceived difficulty is dealt with also in a differential connection and a model for interindividual comparisons is suggested. It is emphasized that a systematic investigation of perceived difficulty is both possible and useful, and that it yields an opportunity to improve and facilitate the construction of psychological tests. Finally, possible future research projects are briefly outlined.