No abstract

The present paper analyzes the self‐generated explanations (from talk‐aloud protocols) that “Good” and “Poor” students produce while studying worked‐out examples of mechanics problems, and their subsequent reliance on examples during problem solving. We find that “Good” students learn with understanding: They generate many explanations which refine and expand the conditions for the action parts of the example solutions, and relate these actions to principles in the text. These self‐explanations are guided by accurate monitoring of their own understanding and misunderstanding. Such learning results in example‐independent knowledge and in a better understanding of the principles presented in the text. “Poor” students do not generate sufficient self‐explanations, monitor their learning inaccurately, and subsequently rely heavily on examples. We then discuss the role of self‐explanations in facilitating problem solving, as well as the adequacy of current AI models of explanation‐based learning to account for these psychological findings.

We thank Yehuda Bassok for suggesting the subject matter, Matthew Lewis for his help in initiating the project, and the students and teachers of Schenley High School in Pittsburgh for their generous assistance.

No abstract

This article concerns the strategies people use to gather information about another's personality. In a series of three experiments, subjects were asked to test the hypothesis that another person possesses a certain personality trait by selecting sources of behavioral evidence. The two main informational properties on which these sources of evidence varied were (a) the probability of the evidence under the hypothesized trait, from highly probable evidence to highly improbable evidence and (b) the diagnosticity of the evidence (i.e., the extent to which the evidence was differentially probable under the hypothesized and alternative traits). The results showed diagnosticity to be the major determinant of the information-gathering preferences. There was very little evidence for a confirmatory strategy wherein evidence probable under the hypothesized trait is preferred to evidence improbable under this trait. In fact, improbable evidence was preferred when it was more diagnostic than probable evidence. Thus, the confirmatory strategy, whatever appeal it may have had to subjects, did not reduce the diagnostic power of the information assembled.