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Comparison and Explanation in Learning and Transfer
Pavlova, Margarita Velinova
Pavlova, Margarita Velinova
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Abstract
The ability to notice relational patterns across situations is considered a sign of expertise and it is crucial to learning. An important question is how people build transferable and generalizable knowledge by learning from examples. Having a deep, well-connected understanding of the relational structure shared across situations allows for further deeper understanding of the phenomena and supports making connection across disparate domains. The research literatures on analogical comparison and explanation have demonstrated that comparing pairs of examples or explaining a single example can support understanding of the material and subsequent transfer. However, not much research has investigated these processes in the same paradigm, and often, studies yield inconsistent results regarding the superiority of each of these processes, indicating that more work is needed to better understand how these processes support learning. This study investigated the conditions that make comparison and explanation beneficial to learning by comparing learning outcomes of engaging in explanation or comparison across various transfer tasks and examining how varying degrees of instructional support affect these two processes. The results showed that there was an advantage of comparison over explanation; however, this advantage was specific to combination of relational labels (and sometimes definitions) and prompts to compare. These results add to the existing literature and extend our understanding of how best to support college students when they learn relatively difficult material. The findings from this study also offer an understanding of the robustness of learning achieved by engaging in comparison and explanation and can inform ways educators can support learning by developing instructional designs that support learning through analogical reasoning.
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Date
2022-08-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Psychology, Cognitive psychology, analogy, comparison, explanation, learning, transfer