Effects of sentence form on the construction of mental plans from procedural discourse.

Dixon, Peter; Harrison, Karen; Taylor, Dean

doi:10.1037/h0078827

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Thus, in the domain of Cognitive Psychology, research about procedure learning related to the comprehension of instructions (see [10], in press) generally shows that in the first steps of learning (i.e., when the procedure is still unknown), the individual proceeds by the elaboration of one or several intermediate mental representations from the presented instructions in order to carry out the described actions, which is time and cognitive resources consuming (see [16], [5] and a review of different models [9](in press)). Then, procedural knowledge is considered acquired when the task, the material or the procedure are so familiar that it becomes possible to recover the procedure directly from memory [18].…”

Section: Assessment Of Procedural Learning With the Gvt Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

GVT: a platform to create virtual environments for procedural training

Gerbaud

Mollet

Ganier³

et al. 2008

2008 IEEE Virtual Reality Conference

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Figure 1: A trainee, who interacts with objects to perform the procedure, within the virtual environment, supervised by the trainer ABSTRACTThe use of Virtual Environments for Training is strongly stimulated by important needs for training on sensitive equipments. Yet, developing such an application is often done without reusing existing components, which requires a huge amount of time. We present in this paper a full authoring platform to facilitate the development of both new virtual environments and pedagogical information for procedural training. This platform, named GVT (Generic Virtual Training) relies on innovative models and provides authoring tools which allow capitalizing on the developments realized. We present a generic model named STORM, used to describe reusable behaviors for 3D objects and reusable interactions between those objects. We also present a scenario language named LORA which allows non computer scientists to author various and complex sequences of tasks in a virtual scene. Based on those models, as an industrial validation with Nexter-Group, more than fifty operational scenarios of maintenance training on military equipments have been realized so far. We have also set up an assessment campaign, and we will expose in this paper the first results which show that GVT enables trainees to learn procedures efficiently. The platform keeps on evolving and training on collaborative procedures will soon be available.

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Section: Assessment Of Procedural Learning With the Gvt Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

GVT: a platform to create virtual environments for procedural training

Gerbaud

Mollet

Ganier³

et al. 2008

2008 IEEE Virtual Reality Conference

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“…Although the effect of prior knowledge on text recall is well documented (Moravcsik & Kintsch, 1993;McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996), its effect on sentence recognition tasks remains unclear. Chiesi et al (1979) showed that the recognition performances of high-knowledge subjects were better than those of lowknowledge subjects, whereas Dixon and colleagues (Dixon, Faries, & Gabrys, 1988;Dixon, Harrison, & Taylor, 1993) found that, in contrast to recall results, recognition performances did not vary as a function of background reading. The finding of Dixon et al, suggests that recall and recognition are differentially sensitive to aspects of the mental representation and that recall tasks require subjects to have a semantic representation of the text, whereas recognition tasks require them to be able to compare the surface structure of two sentences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

The interaction between textual structures and prior knowledge: Hypotheses, data and simulations

Caillies

Denhière

2001

Eur J Psychol Educ

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Our purpose was to compare the effect of two types of textual semantic coherence -causal and teleological -on the organization of the mental representation elaborated after reading by learners with different levels of prior knowledge. Beginners, Intermediates and Advanced in computer domain read either the causal or the teleological version of a text describing three functions of a text editor, then performed a cued recall and a recognition task. We assumed that Advanced learners build a mental representation of the domain organized in a hierarchical goal/sub-goals structure, whereas Beginners and Intermediates have a mental representation organized in a causal path. If this is so, the results should indicate a significant interaction between prior knowledge and the semantic coherence ofthe texts: for the Advanced learners, recall and recognition of the teleological text should be better, whereas for the Beginners and Intermediates, the reverse was expected. As we assumed, results indicated that a teleological organization of textual information facilitated the comprehension of Advanced participants while a temporal-causal organization facilitated the comprehension of Beginner and Intermediate participants. The Construction-Integration model of Kintsch (1988, 1998) was used to simulate the recall results and to reproduce the effect of prior knowledge on the retrieval of textual information.

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“…However, their study also suggested that this effect occurs only if the information describes the internal functioning of the product, not when it merely stresses motivational aspects or general principles. Experiments by Dixon et al showed no effect of system information on how accurately subjects chose the actions needed to complete a task [7]. However, they did show an effect of system information on the recall of actions that needed to be performed.…”

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confidence: 91%

Some Effects of System Information in Instructions for Use

Karreman¹,

Steehouder²

2004

IEEE Trans. Profess. Commun.

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Abstract-An experiment was carried out to investigate whether it is useful to add system information to procedural information in instructional text. It was assumed that readers of instructions construct bothDoes someone who operates a device need to know how that device works? Many tend to answer in the negative: "Just tell me what I should do and don't bother me with the technical details." Researchers of user instructions seem to agree; they advocate an action-directed or procedural approach with some additional information only in small introductory or concluding notes (e.g., [1]). Nevertheless, it seems plausible that at least some understanding of the working of a technical device or a software program is useful for operating it adequately and that this understanding might be enhanced by explanatory information in user instructions. In this article, we make a distinction between two types of relevant knowledge for task performance. PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE includes knowledge about goals, actions, and effects of actions, also called a mental plan [2]. SYSTEM KNOWLEDGE includes knowledge about the different parts of the device, their functions, the processes that occur within the device, etc. (for the distinction, see also [3] and [4]). Parallel to these two forms of knowledge, we also distinguish two types of information in instructional documents: PROCEDURAL INFORMATION and SYSTEM INFORMATION. LITERATURE REVIEWPrevious research is not conclusive to the question of whether system information improves task performance. Smith and Goodman showed that instructions with descriptive information enhanced task performance [5]. Kieras and Bovair found that a schematic description of the internal mechanism of a device led to reduction of errors in task performance [6]. However, their study also suggested that this effect occurs only if the information describes the internal functioning of the product, not when it merely stresses motivational aspects or general principles. Experiments by Dixon et al. showed no effect of system information on how accurately subjects chose the actions needed to complete a task [7]. However, they did show an effect of system information on the recall of actions that needed to be performed.Ummelen investigated the use and effects of "declarative" information (including system information) in an experiment with an unknown and rather complex spreadsheet program [8]. Subjects were offered a manual on screen containing two types of text blocks: procedural (stepwise instructions) and declarative (task-related information about the system). The text blocks were blurred and thus illegible, except for the headings that suggested what kind of information the text block contained. By clicking with the mouse on a block, it became legible for the subjects. This "click and read technique" enabled Ummelen to see when, how often, and how long procedural and declarative information were read.The experiment showed that subjects read procedural text blocks more often and for longer periods of time than declara...

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Effects of sentence form on the construction of mental plans from procedural discourse.

Cited by 14 publications

References 25 publications

GVT: a platform to create virtual environments for procedural training

GVT: a platform to create virtual environments for procedural training

The interaction between textual structures and prior knowledge: Hypotheses, data and simulations

Some Effects of System Information in Instructions for Use

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