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This article presents two longitudinal studies that investigated expertise reversal effects in journal writing. In Experiment 1, students wrote regular journal entries over a whole term. The experimental group received a combination of cognitive and metacognitive prompts. The control group received no prompts. In the first half of the term, the experimental group applied more cognitive and metacognitive strategies in their journals and showed higher learning outcomes than the control group. Towards the end of the term, the amount of cognitive and metacognitive strategies elicited by the experimental group decreased while the number of cognitive strategies applied by the control group increased. Accordingly, the experimental group lost its superiority on learning outcomes. In order to avoid these negative long-term effects of prompts, a gradual and adaptive fading-out of the prompts was introduced in the experimental group in Experiment 2 while a control group received permanent prompts. The results showed that, over the course of the term, the fading group applied increasingly more cognitive strategies while the control group applied fewer and fewer cognitive strategies. Accordingly, at the end of the term, the permanent prompts group showed substantially lower learning outcomes than the fading group. Together, these results provide evidence for an expertise reversal effect in writing-to-learn. The more the students became skilled in journal writing and internalized the desired strategies, the more the external guidance by prompts became a redundant stimulus that interfered with the students' internal tendency to apply the strategies and, thus, induced extraneous cognitive load. Accordingly, a gradual fading-out of the prompts in line with the learners' growing competencies proved to be effective in mitigating the negative side-effects of the provided instructional support.

Despite a plethora of recommendations for personalization techniques, such approaches often lack empirical justification and their benefits to users remain obscure. The study described in this paper takes a step towards filling this gap by introducing an evidence-based approach for deriving adaptive interaction techniques. In a dialogue experiment with 36 dyads of computer experts and laypersons, we observed how experts tailored their written explanations to laypersons' communicational needs. To support adaptation, the experts in the experimental condition were provided with information about the layperson's knowledge level. In the control condition, the experts had no available information. During the composition of their answers, the experts in both conditions articulated their planning activities. Compared with the control condition, the experts in the experimental condition made a greater attempt to form a mental model about the layperson's knowledge. As a result, they varied the type and proportion of the information they provided depending on the layperson's individual knowledge level. Accordingly, such adaptive explanations helped laypersons reduce comprehension breakdowns and acquire new knowledge. These results provide evidence for theoretical assumptions regarding cognitive processes in text production and conversation. They empirically ground and advance techniques for adaptation of content in adaptive hypermedia systems. They are suggestive of ways in which explanations in recommender and decision support systems could be effectively adapted to the user's knowledge background and goals.

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