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Self-generated explanations on the question demands are not always helpful.
Raquel Cerdán1, Ramiro Gilabert, Eduardo Vidal-Abarca
1Universidad de Valencia (Spain).
The Spanish Journal of Psychology
|July 20, 2013
Summary
Self-explaining questions did not help skilled students but hindered less-skilled students
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Educational Psychology
- Learning Sciences
Background:
- Effective learning requires understanding task demands.
- Self-explanation is a strategy to improve comprehension.
- Its impact on student performance varies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To measure high-school students' task model representation when self-explaining.
- To test the effects of self-generated explanations on understanding and performance.
Main Methods:
- Experimental design with high-school students.
- Students read texts and answered questions.
- Self-explanation was required for half the questions.
Main Results:
- Self-explanation did not significantly affect skilled comprehenders.
- It hindered performance and information search in less-skilled comprehenders.
- Less-skilled students' explanations contained inaccuracies.
Conclusions:
- Self-explanation can be detrimental for less-skilled learners.
- Explanation quality impacts information search and task success.
- Findings relate to the TRACE model of comprehension.
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