Changes in Learners’ Exploratory Behavior in a Simulated Psychology Laboratory

Changes in Learners’ Exploratory Behavior in a Simulated Psychology Laboratory Kazuhisa Miwa, Norio Ishii, Hitomi Saito, and Ryuichi Nakaike {miwa, ishii, hitomi, nakaike}@cog.human. nagoya-u.ac. jp Graduate School of Human Informatics, Nagoya University Nagoya, 464-8601 JAPAN Abstract We constructed a virtual psychology laboratory (called VPL) on a computer. VPL simulates the process of pair subjects collaboratively solving Wason’s 2-4-6 task, which has been traditionally used in the field of the psychology of discovery science. Participants were required to study collaborative problem solving while repeating experiments and hypothesis revisions using VPL. We conducted three experimental sessions using VPL. As a result, we confirmed, across the sessions, the improvement in various types of participant’ performance, such as the organizational construction of experimental design, the degree of correctness of hypotheses the participants formed, and the generality of findings they discovered. 1. Introduction It is one of the most important objectives in scientific research to understand the behavior of complex systems, such as physical, chemical, and biological systems. For example, psychologists, regarding humans as complex systems, try to identify the factors that determine the behavior of the systems (humans) through psychological experiments. Various types of knowledge are needed to organize psychological experiments. The ability to control experimental factors, CVS (the Control of Variables Strategy), is regarded as one of the most important skills. Klahr et al. have empirically studied the CVS ability of various types of subjects, such as elementary school students, university undergraduates, and graduates majoring in psychology, by analyzing the discovery process for programming grammar to manipulate a toy vehicle called BigTrak (Klahr, 2000). Moreover, they tried to apply the findings on CVS ability obtained in their laboratory studies to a real educational environment (Klahr, 2001). Schunn and Anderson constructed a simulated psychology laboratory, called SPL, on a computer. Using SPL, they conducted an experiment in which university students and professional psychologists participated, and analyzed their abilities for designing and interpreting experiments (Schunn & Anderson, 1999). In their analysis, they discussed the difference between the general domain-independent and domain- dependent skills used by each participant for planning psychological experiments. Additionally they proposed that SPL could be used as a learning environment for tutoring in experimental planning skills (Schunn & Anderson, 2001). However, in SPL, two ad hoc theories were given to the participants; and the participants were required to plan experiments that determined which of those two theories was valid. The process of forming theories (hypotheses) was ignored. Additionally, SPL did not actually simulate the human cognitive process, but simply output subjects’ performances, using a previously installed function, as numeral values of the parameters input by the subjects. The process through which the output was obtained was not considered. In the present study, we construct a more realistic and complex experimental environment called VPL (Virtual Psychology Laboratory). Using VPL, we let university undergraduates experience conducting psychological experiments that lasted for several hours. Schunn and Anderson were mainly interested in how the participants’ behavior changed based on their degree of expertise in the research domain concerned. Our interest, on the other hand, is to show changes in the participants’ behavior, such as in the formation and verification process of hypotheses including the stage of experimental planning, as a function of their training. We are also interested in the effect of VPL as a simulated psychology laboratory on the training and the improvement of learner’s experimental behavior. 2. Experimental environment 2.1 VPL: Virtual Psychology Laboratory In VPL, two production systems collaboratively solve a traditional discovery task: Wason’s 2-4-6 task (Wason, 1960). The mission given to participants was to study factors determining the systems’ performance. We can think of the factors determining the performance as, for instance, the degree of difference between the two systems’ strategies, the interaction between those strategies and nature of targets, and the capacities of the systems’ working memory. It should be noted that this research theme being used for VPL is a highly realistic subject that has been