A New Stragegy for Learning Highly Similar Concepts

学习高度相似概念的新策略

• 批准号: 7899335
• 负责人: BRENDA A HANNON
• 金额: $ 12.54万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SAN ANTONIO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-30 至 2011-09-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7899335
• 关键词: Alfalfa; Ammonia; Antibiotics; Awareness; Bacterial Infections; Beer; Belief; Binding; Brucella abortus; Cells; Cognitive; Comprehension; Data; Development; Educational Background; Effectiveness; Environment; Ethnic Origin; Figs - dietary; Foundations; Funding; Future; Gene Expression; Genes; Genetic; Glycosaminoglycans; Grant; Hair Cells; Health; Intelligence; Knowledge; Laboratories; Lead; Learning; Liquid substance; Location; Longitudinal Studies; Membrane; Membrane Proteins; Memory; Microbiology; Minority; Modification; Molecular; Molecular Conformation; Multi-Drug Resistance; Peer Review; Periplasmic Proteins; Plant Roots; Population; Post-Translational Protein Processing; Process; Protein Binding Domain; Proteins; Psyche structure; Publications; Published Comment; Reader; Reading; Regulon; Research; Research Personnel; Research Project Grants; Research Support; Role; Short-Term Memory; Signal Pathway; Signal Transduction; Signal Transduction Pathway; Sinorhizobium meliloti; Site; Solid; Specificity; Staging; Stimulus; Students; System; Testing; Textbooks; Time; Training; Universities; Virulence Factors; Wine; Work; base; career; college; design; graduate student; improved; insight; novel strategies; pathogen; periplasm; practical application; sensor; teacher; theories

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.

描述（由申请人提供）：在教育环境中，通常希望学生学习成对概念的定义（例如，流体和结晶的智能）。对于许多学生来说，这些概念很难学习，因为它们具有易于混淆的类似定义。学习这些类似但经常混淆的概念的挑战使得测试经常被评估概念之间差异的问题所淹没。这项理论上动机的研究的目的是研究一种新策略的效力，以学习类似但经常混淆的概念，即差异化的促进性处理（即D-A）。拟议的每组研究都包括根据教科书和种族和SES不同的学生进行的生态有效的刺激。前三组研究评估了D-A的有效性，确定D-A是否转移到中性条件并测试知识持续时间。最后一组研究检查了D-A是否弥补了较小的工作记忆，对学习的天真信念以及低元认知意识。 D-A的价值是两个方面：对学生和教师的现有认知理论和实际价值的实际应用。关于学习有许多认知理论（例如，编码特异性，独特性假设）。尽管这些理论中的许多理论已经建立了良好，但研究人员倾向于使用生态有效性有限的刺激来研究这些理论。例如，单词对像“啤酒葡萄酒”。本项目旨在将这些理论应用于在教育相关（和生态上有效）刺激上，即对类似概念的定义。从学生教师的角度来看，学习相似的概念是一个普遍的教育环境中的问题，D-A很可能导致更丰富，更健壮的记忆痕迹，不仅应该减少对重要概念的未来重新学习，还应为整合未来知识提供一个心理框架。此外，D-A可能会鼓励学生使用用于扩展工作记忆和阅读理解的重要集成过程。最后，D-A可以通过为他们提供有价值的学习策略来帮助来自较贫穷的教育背景的学生。未来的建议将寻求在大学级别的教程会议（即教师课程）中应用D-A，并将寻求将D-A应用于包括预读者在内的年轻人群。