Learning with microcomputers: Training primary school children on a problem‐solving program

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of structured training at two informational levels on children's performance on a problem-solving computer program. An informed-training group (strategy training with detailed explanations) performed at a superior level to a blind-training group (strategy training with no explanations) and a control group. This superiority was maintained 3 weeks later on retest. The results are discussed in relation to the processes that mediate and facilitate training.

Writing learning journals: Instructional support to overcome learning-strategy deficits

“…Providing students with an informed prompting significantly increased learning compared to students without informed prompting. These findings are in line with those of previous studies (Paris et al, 1982;Simon et al, 1987). The informed prompting did not only enhance learning outcomes immediately in the training session, but also in the transfer session a week later.…”

“…Paris, Newman, and McVey (1982) found that children from primary school who received brief explanations on the reasons why memory strategies would aid in remembering pictures (informed training) demonstrated a higher use of these strategies and a greater recall than children without such information. An experimental study by Simon, McShane, and Radley (1987) with primary-school students showed that an informed-training group with a detailed explanation of why certain strategies were useful outperformed a blind-training group on a problem-solving computer program.…”

The Influence of Anomalous Data on Solving Human Abductive Tasks

“…Our subjects learn the rules within one hour. Other studies indicate that even children are able to understand the task (Simon et al, 1987). Third, we are able to control the background knowledge of our subjects.…”