Working memory capacity moderated disfluency effects in one study but not another¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2016 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Lehmann et al. found disfluency advantageous for university students with higher working memory capacity and disadvantageous for those with lower capacity, but Strukelj et al. found no WMC moderation. → Tim Kühl & Alexander Eitel 2016

Evidence¶

Tim Kühl & Alexander Eitel 2016¶

Tim Kühl & Alexander Eitel. (2016). Effects of disfluency on cognitive and metacognitive processes and outcomes. Metacognition and Learning, 11, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-016-9154-x

q2 · i? · review · r2

Narrative review of Lehmann et al. (2015), an aptitude-treatment-interaction study with 65 university students learning a 1070-word expository text. The review reports that "working memory capac ity was related to retention and compre- hension outcomes in the disfluent but not in the fluent font conditions"; no effect size is printed.

"The authors found that working memory capac ity was related to retention and compre- hension outcomes in the disfluent but not in the fluent font conditions."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Working Memory — moderator: an instructional effect differs with it

Related Claims¶

• Disfluency increased study times without improving performance, suggesting time was spent deciphering text rather than processing contents more deeply — related
• Medium moderated disfluency effects on reasoning: disfluent text fostered calibration and performance on screen but not on paper — related
• All 13 special-issue studies failed to show overall better performance due to disfluency — related
• Prior knowledge and working memory capacity did not moderate the worked example effect — related
• Evidence on working memory capacity as a moderator of the interleaving effect is mixed, but WM does not appear to be a major barrier to classroom use — related
• The null effect of the disfluency × WMC interaction on transfer replicated the primary study's null finding, with both studies showing negative coefficients
• Working memory capacity predicts comprehension performance only in the disfluency condition, with higher WMC yielding better comprehension — related
• Working memory capacity predicts retention performance only in the disfluency condition, with higher WMC yielding better retention — related
• In e-learning text comprehension, higher working memory and lower self-reported navigation behavior predict better comprehension — related
• Across the four existing experiments on WMC moderation of disfluency, results are inconsistent: one finds the effect restricted to high-span, one to low-span, and two find null moderation — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• In a pre-registered direct replication (N = 96), the disfluency × WMC interaction did not significantly predict retention, failing to replicate Lehmann et al. (2016) — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• The learning benefits of perceptual disfluency reported by Diemand-Yauman et al. (2011) do not replicate in any general way — related
• Eye tracking shows fluency does not affect recall but learners spend more time on later sentences of degraded text — related
• Disfluency benefits retention and comprehension only for learners with high working memory capacity — a narrower finding that bears on this claim