BoulderCognitive psychology often produces findings that are relevant to educational instruction. However, many of these studies rely on artificial conditions, which often fail to transfer to realistic settings, resulting in a disconnection between cognitive psychology and education. This article begins to address this issue by taking established principles from cognitive psychology and applying them to teach participants real academic concepts. We report a training paradigm that applies established principles from cognitive psychology: retrieval practice, feedback, self-paced studying, cognitive antidote, and levels of processing. This paradigm was used to teach undergraduates basic concepts of research design that are typically taught in university science courses. Participants studied PowerPoint-style slides that were divided into three sections. At the end of each section, participants were presented quiz questions. After each quiz response, the participant was shown the correct answer. This study also tested different forms of responding to quiz questions (between subjects): (a) fill-in-the-blank, (b) multiple-choice, and (c) fill-in-the-blank followed by a multiple-choice version of the same question. Participants completed two posttests, one immediately after training and another 1 week later. Both posttests consisted of items that tested retention and conceptual understanding. A control condition (wherein participants received no training) was used to assess the effectiveness of the training paradigm. Participants who used this paradigm outperformed control participants on both posttests. However, no differences in performance were found among participants who used different forms of responding.
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