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Cognition and Student Learning

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Improving Metacomprehension and Self-Regulated Learning From Scientific Texts

Year: 2007
Name of Institution:
Boise State University
Goal: Development and Innovation
Principal Investigator:
Thiede, Keith
Award Amount: $1,837,208
Award Period: 4 years
Award Number: R305B070460

Description:

Co-Principal Investigators: Jennifer Wiley, Jonathan Brendefur, Thomas Griffin

Purpose: A great deal of student learning occurs in self-regulated activities such as reading or studying outside of a structured classroom context. For these activities, accurate metacognitive (self) monitoring is critical to effective study. If a student does not accurately differentiate well-learned material from less-learned material, he or she could waste time studying material that is already well learned, or worse, fail to restudy material that has not yet been adequately learned. However, students are not adept at judging their own levels of comprehension. In their work, the researchers have tried to understand the factors that lead to poor metacomprehension (judging one's own understanding) accuracy. The goal of better metacomprehension accuracy is ultimately to support better self-regulated study behaviors, which in turn should result in better learning outcomes. The purpose of this project is to explore and test methods of improving reading comprehension, and the ability to learn effectively from text, by improving the effectiveness of self-regulated learning.

Project Activities: The researchers will examine how monitoring accuracy affects how students select materials for restudy, as well as the amount of time students spend restudying different sets of materials. They will try to find out if there is an impact of these interventions on self-regulated learning, and in turn, how monitoring and regulation affect comprehension of scientific texts. The first set of experiments will examine the effect of instructions and practice tests on monitoring accuracy and whether monitoring accuracy affects regulation of study. This first experiment will provide readers with an explicit statement about the nature of the test and will also give readers practice tests. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: One group will be given memory instruction and practice memory tests, a second group will be given comprehension instruction and practice inference tests, and a third group will be a control group that will receive no instructions or practice tests. A series of 11 experiments will be conducted in this way.

Products: The outcomes of this study will be the development and evaluation of interventions that are designed to impact self-regulated learning. Research reports on this study will also be prepared.

Structured Abstract

Purpose: A great deal of student learning occurs in self-regulated activities such as reading or studying outside of a structured classroom context. The goal of better metacomprehension accuracy is ultimately to support better self-regulated study behaviors, which in turn should result in better learning outcomes. The purpose of this project is to explore and test methods of improving reading comprehension, and the ability to learn effectively from text, by improving the effectiveness of self-regulated learning.

Setting: The research will be conducted at a university and in public schools in an urban city in Idaho.

Population: Participants include college students as well as students in Grade 7.

Intervention: In these interventions, researchers will explore whether indicating the kind of test that will be given through either explicit instruction or practice tests affects metamemory and metacomprehension accuracy, and explore whether improvements in monitoring accuracy produce better regulation of study (selection of texts for restudy). A series of experimental interventions will be conducted. In the first set, each group of participants will read a set of nine texts. The memory group will be told that they will be tested on their memory of specific details for each text. They will read the first practice text, and immediately make their judgment of how many items they think they will get correct on a 5-item test. They will then be given a 5-item test of memory for details. They will do the same for the other two practice texts. Following practice, they will read and make judgments on each of the six critical texts. After making the last judgment, they will get the first set of tests. For the critical texts, readers will actually get both the memory test and the inference test for each text. For all these experiments, test order is not hypothesized to influence metacomprehension accuracy and is only manipulated as an experimental control. The comprehension group will complete a similar procedure to the memory group, except participants will be told that they will be tested on their ability to make connections across different parts of the text, and they will be given inference tests for practice texts. The no expectancy group will only be told that they will be taking a test for the critical texts with no indication of the nature of the questions they will receive. They will read and judge each practice text, but will not be shown either practice memory or inference tests.

Research Design and Methods: Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three expectancy groups: One group will be given memory instruction and practice memory tests, a second group will be given comprehension instruction and practice inference tests, and a third group will be a control group that will receive no instructions or practice tests. The research methods include a 3 (expectancy: memory, comprehension, none) x 2 (type of test on critical texts: inference, memory) x 2 (test order on critical texts) mixed design. The type of test given on the critical texts is a within-subjects variable. Test order on the critical texts will be counterbalanced, with half of the participants receiving the expected test type first, and the other half receiving the unexpected test type first.

Control Condition: Participants in the control group will read and judge each practice text, but will not be shown either practice memory or inference tests that are given to the experimental group.

Key Measures: Tests constructed by the researchers in a previously funded IES study will be used. The texts are approximately 1,000 words long. Materials will be nine texts on science topics. Three texts will serve as practice texts, and six will serve as the critical texts. For each text, a 5-item multiple-choice test was created with detail questions, and a second 5-item multiple-choice test was created with inference questions.

Data Analytic Strategy: The effects of instructions and/or practice tests on monitoring accuracy will be analyzed with a three-way analysis of variance. T-tests will be used to compare the groups on metacomprehension accuracy and regulation of study.

Related IES Projects: Improving Monitoring Accuracy Improves Learning From Text (R305H030170)

Publications

Book chapter

Goldman, S.R., and Wiley, J. (2011). Discourse Analysis: Written Text. In N. Duke, and M. Malette (Eds.), Literacy Research Methods (2nd ed., pp. 104–134). New York: Guilford.

Graesser, A.C., Millis, K., D'Mello, S.K., and Hu, X. (2014). Conversational Agents can Help Humans Identify Flaws in the Science Reported in Digital Media. In D. Rapp, and J. Braasch (Eds.), Processing Inaccurate Information: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives From Applied Perspectives From Cognitive Science and the Educational Sciences (pp. 139–159). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Griffin, T.D., Wiley, J., and Salas, C. (2013). Supporting Effective Self-Regulated Learning: The Critical Role of Monitoring. In R. Azevedo, and V. Aleven (Eds.), International Handbook of Metacognition and Learning Technologies, Springer Science, Volume 28 (pp. 19–34). New York: Springer.

Thiede, K.W., Griffin, T.D., Wiley, J., and Redford, J.S. (2009). Metacognitive Monitoring During and After Reading. In D.J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, and A.C. Graesser (Eds.), Handbook of Metacognition in Education (pp. 85–106). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Wiley, J., Jaeger, A. J., & Griffin, T. D. (2018). Generating Keywords Improves Metacomprehension and Self-Regulation in Elementary and Middle School Children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109(3): 294–310.

Griffin, T.D., Jee, B.D., and Wiley, J. (2009). The Effects of Domain Knowledge on Metacomprehension Accuracy. Memory and Cognition, 37(7): 1001–1013.

Griffin, T. D., Wiley, J., and Thiede, K. W. (2019). The Effects of Comprehension-Test Expectancies on Metacomprehension Accuracy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45 (6), 1066-1092. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000634

Griffin, T.D., Wiley, J., and Thiede, K.W. (2008). Individual Differences, Rereading, and Self-Explanation: Concurrent Processing and Cue Validity as Constraints on Metacomprehension Accuracy. Memory and Cognition, 36(1): 93–103.

Redford, J.S., Thiede, K.W., Wiley, J., and Griffin, T.D. (2012). Concept Mapping Improves Metacomprehension Accuracy Among 7th Graders. Learning and Instruction, 22(4): 262–270.

Sanchez, C.A., and Wiley, J. (2009). To Scroll or Not to Scroll: Interactions of Text Presentation and Working Memory Capacity. Human Factors, 51(5): 730–738.

Sanchez, C.A., and Wiley, J. (2010). Sex Differences in Science Learning: Closing the Gap Through Animations. Learning and Individual Differences, 20(3): 271–275.

Thiede, K.W., Griffin, T.D., and Wiley, J. (2011). Test Expectancy Affects Metacomprehension Accuracy. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 81(2): 264–273.

Thiede, K.W., Griffin, T.D., Wiley, J., and Anderson, M. (2010). Poor Metacomprehension Accuracy as a Result of Inappropriate Cue Use. Discourse Processes: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 47(4): 331–362.

Thiede, K.W., Redford, J.S., Wiley, J., and Griffin, T.D. (2012). Elementary School Experience With Comprehension Testing May Influence Metacomprehension Accuracy Among 7th and 8th Graders. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(3): 554–564.

Trabasso, T., and Wiley, J. (2009). What Happens at Reunions? Exploring Causal Connections and Their Role in Reunion Effects. Discourse Processes, 46(4): 269–308.

Wiley, J., Goldman, S.R., Graesser, A.C., Sanchez, C.A., Ash, I.K., and Hemmerich, J.A. (2009). Source Evaluation, Comprehension, and Learning in Internet Science Inquiry Tasks. American Educational Research Journal, 46(4): 1060–1106.

Proceeding

Wiley, J., Griffin, T.D., and Thiede, K.W. (2008). To Understand Your Understanding, One Must Understand What Understanding Means. In B.C. Love, K. Mcrae, and V.M. Sloutsky (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 817–822). Washington, DC: Cognitive Science Society.