Collaboration facilitates abstract category learning

Abstract

We examined the effects of collaboration (dyads vs. individuals) and category structure (coherent vs. incoherent) on learning and transfer. Working in dyads or individually, participants classified examples from either an abstract coherent category, the features of which are not fixed but relate in a meaningful way, or an incoherent category, the features of which do not relate meaningfully. All participants were then tested individually. We hypothesized that dyads would benefit more from classifying the coherent category structure because past work has shown that collaboration is more beneficial for tasks that build on shared prior knowledge and provide opportunities for explanation and abstraction. Results showed that dyads improved more than individuals during the classification task regardless of category coherence, but learning in a dyad improved inference-test performance only for participants who learned coherent categories. Although participants in the coherent categories performed better on a transfer test, there was no effect of collaboration.

Group Size and Peer Learning: Peer Discussions in Different Group Size Influence Learning in a Biology Exercise Performed on a Tablet With Stylus

“…On the contrary, other studies claim that increasing the number of students in a group might improve collaborative learning, leading students to benefit greatly from peer discussions due to a wider range of views (Needham, 1987). Some research suggests that dyads are better than groups of three or more members (Slavin, 1987;Webb, 1989;Lohman and Finkelstein, 2000;Kim et al, 2020), or individuals working alone (McDonald et al, 1985;Richey et al, 2018;Kim et al, 2020). Other research recommends groups of three to four members to improve student achievement (Lou et al, 2001;Caulfield and Caroline, 2006), while other studies have tried to distinguish the differences between triads and four-member groups (Egerbladh, 1976;Wiley and Jensen, 2006).…”