Prior-knowledge activation instructions before study had little effect on retention in Experiment 2¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3 · i0 negligible
Currency · newest study 1992 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on an ERIC document (a report, conference paper or thesis). It is kept because 5 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Activation of topic-relevant versus unrelated knowledge produced only one significant effect, a free-recall activation-by-fact interaction the authors urge caution about. → Woloshyn 1992

Evidence¶

Woloshyn 1992¶

Woloshyn, Vera E.; Paivio, Allan; Pressley, Mike. (1992). Using Elaborative Interrogation To Help Students Overcome Their Inaccurate Science Beliefs. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED356949

q3 · i0 · causal · r2

Experiment 2 activation analysis: students talked 1.5 minutes about topic-relevant or unrelated headings before study. "There was only one effect due to activation," a free-recall interaction favoring unrelated-topic activation for belief-consistent facts, which the authors say should be interpreted with caution.

"There was only one effect due to activation.For free recall, the activation by fact interaction was significant [F(1,76) = 5.43].. Instructions to activate information about unrelated facts facilitated acquisition of belief-consistent facts relative to instructions to activate prior knowledge about to-be-learned facts (a = 4.41, 2 <.01).Caution must be used when interpreting this interaction because students generated very few ideas that corresponded with to-be-learned content (M = 1 idea per topic)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Advance organizers produce a small average learning benefit, larger for high-ability than for low-ability learners — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Students recognize more belief-consistent science facts than belief-inconsistent facts, an effect appearing on recognition but not recall tests — related
• Advance organizers aided learning in a 1980 meta-analysis, but activating prior topic knowledge did not improve primary pupils' text comprehension in one experiment — related
• Advance organizers facilitate conceptual retention and far transfer of unfamiliar technical material for learners lacking relevant prior knowledge — related
• Problem-based tutorial discussion of a relevant problem before studying an expository text increases the number of accurate propositions recalled from that text — reports the opposite
• Question prompts improve learning — related
• The quality of elaborative-interrogation answers had little effect on retention; even failed or inadequate why-answers facilitated learning relative to reading — related
• Analyzing a problem before reading facilitates subsequent recall of a relevant text for both novices and experts — related