Shift disfluency research and interventions from perceptual difficulties to generative difficulties that require learners to generate information¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 4 claims (2 for, 2 mixed) · 1 study (1 review), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The editorial recommends redirecting disfluency research toward difficulties that require generative processing at encoding, such as deleting words from a passage, which basic experimental research found beneficial because they produce stronger memory traces. The authors write that "it might hence be promising to shift disfluency research from perceptual difficulties to difficulties that ask learners to generate information - and test for whether this pays off in the long run," situating this within the desirable difficulties framework.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Difficulties must produce higher difficulties at encoding that require more generative processing, unlike subtle perceptual font manipulations

Constraints¶

• The beneficial evidence for generative difficulties cited is from more basic experimental research (Maki et al. 1990), not from the special issue's educational studies

Target Learners¶

• university students
• school pupils

Target Learning Goals¶

• long-term retention of instructional materials

Claims¶

• All 13 special-issue studies failed to show overall better performance due to disfluency [+W]
• Disfluency increased study times without improving performance, suggesting time was spent deciphering text rather than processing contents more deeply [+W]
• Medium moderated disfluency effects on reasoning: disfluent text fostered calibration and performance on screen but not on paper [~W]
• Disfluency affected metacognitive monitoring (JOLs) only under specific conditions: within-subjects manipulation with unrelated word pairs, or on screen rather than paper [~W]

Related Strategies¶

• Do not recommend applying perceptual disfluency to study materials absent convincing evidence of a (moderated) effect

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• 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