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Domain-Specific Knowledge and Memory Performance: A Comparison of High- and Low-Aptitude Children
(1989)
Two studies compared memory performance and text comprehension of groups that were equivalent on domain-specific knowledge but differed in overall aptitude, to investigate whether prior knowledge about a particular domain or overall aptitude level was more important when the task was to acquire and use new information in the domain of interest. Both studies dealt with third-, fifth-, and seventh-grade soccer experts' and novices' memory and comprehension of a story dealing with a soccer game. Several measures of memory performance, memory monitoring, and text comprehension were used. Levels of soccer knowledge and of overall aptitude were varied in a factorial design. Neither study detected significant differences between high-aptitude and low-aptitude experts, regardless of their ages. Low aptitude experts outperformed high-aptitude novices on all memory and comprehension measures. The results indicate that domain-specific knowledge can compensate for low overall aptitude on domain-related cognitive tasks.
In a short-term longitudinal study, we investigated how domain-specific knowledge in soccer influences the amount of text recall and comprehension in elementary school and junior high school children of high and low overall aptitudes. Both level of soccer knowledge and overall aptitude were varied in a factorial design. Third, fifth, and seventh grade children were given several measures of text recall and comprehension and were retested on these measures about 1 year later. Performance was more a function of soccer knowledge than of aptitude level.
According to more recent studies on memory development in young children, preschoolers and kindergarteners are able to demonstrate surprisingly good memory skills in natural as weH as in laboratory-type settings. This finding is not consistent with the results of a study by Istomina (1975), conducted in 1948, leading to the concJusion that (a) preschoolers do not use voluntary remembering, and (b) children generally recall better in play situations than in typical experimental settings. In this study, two experiments were conducted to replicate Istomina's research. In the first, it was shown that Istomina's findings were replicable when methodological problems in the procedure were ignored. Experiment 2 improved methodologically upon Istomina's experimental methods and did not produce results to support her concJusions. Four- and 6-year-olds showed voluntary memory in play activities as weH as in laboratory-type settings, and remembered equally weB in both contexts. The results did not support the assumption that memory performance in young children can be substantially facilitated by motivating contexts.
Second- and fourth-grade children were classified according to their knowledge of soccer (experts vs. novices) and IQ (high vs. low), and given 2 sort-recall tasks. One task included items related to the game of soccer and the other included items from familiar natural language categories. Previous research has shown that expertise in a snbject can compensate for low levels of performance on text comprehension tasks. Our results, the flrst examing the effects of both expertise and intelligence on a strategic memory task, were that soccer expert children recalled more items on the soccer list bnt not on the nonsoccer list than soccer novice children. However, soccer expertise did not modify a significant effect of IQ level, with high-IQ children recalling more than low-IQ children for all contrasts. Interest in soccer was found to be related to expertise but did not contribute to differences in memory performance. The results demonstrate that the knowledge base plays an important role in children's memory, but that domain knowledge cannot fully eliminate the effects of IQ on sort-recall tasks using domain-related materials. That is, although rich domain knowledge seemed to compensate for low aptitude, in that low-aptitude experts performed at the level of high-aptitude novices, its effects were not strong enough to eliminate performance differences between highand low-aptitude soccer experts.
The present study investigated the relationshtp between developmental shifts in the organization of materials and developmental changes in deliberate strategy use. Second and fourth grade children were presented with clusterable sort/recall lists representing the factorial combinations of high and low interitem association, and high and low category relatedness. Strategy use in the task was rated by the experimenter and also assessed via self reports. General and task-related strategy knowledge tmetamemoryt was also examined. Second graders displayed more category clustering during recall for highly associated items than for weakly associated items. whereas older children’s recall organization (but not recall) was unaffected by this organizational dimension. Correlations among measures of metamemory and organizational behavior indicated that second graders in general were unaware of the importance of categorization strategies for facilitation of recall. On the other hand. sorting during study and task-related metamemory were the most important predictors of fourth graders’ recall performance, thus indicating that most fourth graders used categorization strategies deliberately.
Wolfgang Schneider fasst den Stand der Forschung zum Konzept des Metagedächtnisses zusammen. Zunächst illustriert er Probleme der Definition und der Konzeptualisierung von Metagedächtnis und lässt eine knappe Charakterisierung der wichtigsten- Erfassungsmethoden folgen. Abschliessend werden die wichtigsten Befunde zur Entwicklung des Metagedächtnisses im Kindesalter und ihre Beziehung zur Anwendung von Gedächtnisstrategien und zur Entwicklung von Gedächtnisleistungen dargestellt.
No abstract available
Vorgestellt wird ein Versuch, die in der einschlägigen literatur postulierte multifaktorielle Bedingtheit von Rechtschreibleistungen in der Grundschule über ein angemessenes methodisches Design zu prüfen. Zentral ist dabei die Frage, ob sich identische Kausalstrukturen für beginnende und geübte Rechtschreiber (Schüler der zweiten w. vierten Klasse) nachweisen lassen. Konventioneffe Verfahren der Kausafanafysa hatten sich in der Primärstudie (Schneider 1980) als unökonomisch und wenig aussagekräftig erwiesen, 10 daß in der Sekundäranalvse auf eine flexiblere Prozedur zurückgegriffen wird. Mit diesem Verfahren zur AnaIVse von Strukturgleichungssysteman (LiSREL) ist es möglich, für die Gruppe der Zweitund Viertkläßler Modelle zu entwickeln und zu überprüfen, die mit den Ausgangsdaten kompatibel sind. Als wesentliches Ergebnis zeigt sich, daß die theoretisch postulierte Bedingungsstruktur nur für die Viertkläßler (eingeschränkt) bestätigt werden kann, während für die Schüler der zweiten Klassenstufe ein grundlegend verschiedenes Muster resultiert.
Theoretische Analysen zum Problem des Recht-Schreibens weisen darauf hin, daß weniger Intelligenzmerkmale als vielmehr Gedächtnis'eistungen bei dem Erwerb der Schriftsprache von Bedeutung sind. Daraus folgt, daß für die Prüfwörter in normierten Rechtschreibtests zumindest hinreichende Vorkommensfrequenz gewährleistet sein sollte. Diese Frage wird in der vorliegenden Untersuchung am Beispiel des Allgemeinen Schulleistungstests überprüft: für die ausgewählten Klassenstufen kann gezeigt INerden, daß die Vorkommenshäufigkeit der PrüfWÖfter nicht ausreicht und damit wenig geeignet ist, um die tatsächliche Rechtschreibfertigkeit zu erfassen. Der Vergleich mit mehreren eng am Curriculum orientierten Diktatproben kann gleichzeitig die Schwierigkeiten verdeutlichen, die dann entstehen, wenn zuverlässige Bestimmungen der individuellen Rechtschreibkompetenz vorgenommen werden sollen.
Nine hierarchical and four nonhierarchical clustering algorithms were compared on their ability to resolve 200 multivariate normal mixtures. The effects of coverage, similarity measures, and cluster overlap were studied by including different levels of coverage for the hierarchical algorithms, Euclidean distances and Pearson correlation coefficients, and truncated multivariate normal mixtures in the analysis. The results confirmed the findings of previous Monte Carlo studies on clustering procedures in that accuracy was inversely related to coverage, and that algorithms using correlation as the similarity measure were significantly more accurate than those using Euclidean distances. No evidence was found for the assumption that the positive effects of the use of correlation coefficients are confined to unconstrained mixture models.
The nature of good information processing is outlined as determined by intact neurology, information stored in long-term memory, and general cognitive tendencies, attitudes, and styles. Educators can promote the development of good information processing by promoting what is in long-term memory. This can be accomplished by teaching important literary, scientific, and cultural knowledge; teaching strategies; motivating the acquisition and use of important conceptual knowledge and strategies; and encouraging the general tendencies supporting good information processing. Good information processing can be produced by years of appropriate educational input. Good information processors cannot be produced by short-term interventions.
One’s own name constitutes a unique part of conscious awareness – but does this also hold true for unconscious processing? The present study shows that the own name has the power to bias a person’s actions unconsciously even in conditions that render any other name ineffective. Participants judged whether a letter string on the screen was a name or a non-word while this target stimulus was preceded by a masked prime stimulus. Crucially, the participant’s own name was among these prime stimuli and facilitated reactions to following name targets whereas the name of another, yoked participant did not. Signal detection results confirmed that participants were not aware of any of the prime stimuli, including their own name. These results extend traditional findings on ‘‘breakthrough’’ phenomena of personally relevant stimuli to the domain of unconscious processing. Thus, the brain seems to possess adroit mechanisms to identify and process such stimuli even in the absence of conscious awareness.