Drawings as Diagnostic Cues for Metacomprehension Judgment

Abstract

The accuracy of comprehension monitoring affects the effectiveness of rereading, which in turn affects comprehension. Thus, much research has focused on finding ways to improve monitoring accuracy. The cue-utilization framework of metacognitive monitoring provides a framework for understanding how to improve monitoring accuracy. It suggests that accuracy is driven by cues people use to judge comprehension. When people utilize cues that are highly diagnostic of performance on a test of comprehension, accuracy should improve. Many interventions that have been shown to improve monitoring accuracy have attributed the improved accuracy to increased access to highly diagnostic cues, but have failed to identify highly diagnostic cues. In our recent research, we found that instructing students to generate drawings before judging comprehension improved monitoring accuracy. Using graphic analyses protocol, we identified highly diagnostic cues. In this chapter, we will describe the procedure we used to identify these cues contained in drawings.

To What Extent Do Situation-Model-Approach Interventions Improve Relative Metacomprehension Accuracy? Meta-Analytic Insights

“…Some situation-model-approach interventions support the generation of situation-model cues. They do so either by requiring encoding on the situation-model level, as is the case for selfexplaining and concept mapping, or by requiring retrieval of the situation model, as is the case for delayed-generation tasks (Thiede et al 2019).…”

“…By considering the relevance of textual information and trying to make inferences during self-explaining, learners simultaneously construct and reflect on their situation model, generating situation-model cues. Hence, in contrast to delayed-generation tasks, which prompt learners to draw on an already constructed situation model (i.e., retrieval-based cue-generation intervention), self-explaining encourages learners to focus on their situation model during reading (i.e., encoding-based cue-generation intervention; Thiede et al 2019). Relatedly, in contrast to delayed-generation tasks, which need to be performed after a time lag to increase access to situation-model cues, self-explaining directly involves the situation model, making a delay superfluous (see, e.g., also Griffin et al 2019a;Wiley et al 2016b).…”

“…This eases working-memory demands that can be devoted to monitoring. Second, similar to self-explaining, concept mapping promotes learners not only to build a situation model but also to reflect on it, generating situation-model cues (i.e., encoding-based cue-generation intervention; Thiede et al 2019;see, e.g., also Redford et al 2012;Wiley et al 2016b). Supporting this assumption, Thiede et al (2010, Experiment 2) found that learners used their perception of how many appropriate connections between concepts they could make in a concept map as a situation-model cue for predicting their comprehension, which led to an increased accuracy level.…”

“…This theoretical distinction has been empirically supported as the effects of self-explaining (cue-generation intervention) were nonoverlapping with the effects of rereading (cue-attention intervention) and setting a comprehension-test expectancy (cue-selection intervention; Griffin et al 2008, Experiment 2;Griffin et al 2019b, Experiment 4;Wiley et al 2008, Experiment 2). Furthermore, Thiede et al (2019) suggested to distinguish between encoding-based and retrieval-based cue-generation interventions. Some cue-generation interventions, namely self-explaining and concept mapping, encourage learners to encode a text in a manner that supports the construction of a situation model and thus the availability of situation-model cues, whereas other cue-generation interventions, namely delayed-generation tasks, promote learners to retrieve information about their situation model after reading and hence the availability of situation-model cues.…”

“…& For each particular intervention (i.e., with a similar implementation), more than one study had to meet the criteria for inclusion described so far. This led to the exclusion of the following interventions: generating drawings (Schleinschok et al 2017;Thiede et al 2019; but see Van de Pol et al 2020, for an overview on the impact of drawing and mapping activities), generating explanations for others (Fukaya 2013), generating and answering questions (Bugg and McDaniel 2012), receiving advanced organizers (Dunlosky et al 2002), reading texts with analogies (Wiley et al 2018), and completing sentence-sorting tasks (Thomas and McDaniel 2007). The following interventions remained for inclusion: delayed-summary writing, delayed-keywords listing, delayeddiagram completion, self-explaining, concept mapping, rereading, and setting a comprehension-test expectancy.…”