Interactions of Expertise and Prior-Knowledge Activation with Low-Coherent and High-Coherent Concept Mapping Tasks

Interactions of Expertise and Prior-Knowledge Activation with Low-Coherent and High-Coherent Concept Mapping Tasks Johannes Gurlitt (gurlitt@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) Alexander Renkl (renkl@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de) Lucie Faulhaber (luciefaulhaber@nexgo.de) University of Freiburg, Educational Psychology, Engelbergerstr. 41 D-79085 Freiburg, Germany Frank Fischer (frank.fischer@psy.lmu.de) University of Munich, Educational Psychology, Leopoldstrasse 13 D-80802 Munich, Germany Abstract The following experiment investigated effects of low- and high-coherent prior-knowledge activation using concept maps. Thereby, we refer to and extend coherence-effects from text comprehension (McNamara & Kintsch, 1996) to prior- knowledge activation. Low-coherent prior-knowledge activation was operationalized by conditions of creating-and- labeling-lines between provided concepts, high-coherent prior-knowledge activation by labeling provided lines in a concept mapping task. Subjects with two different levels of expertise (43 high-school and 45 physics university students) were randomly assigned to three conditions (1) no prior- knowledge activation (2) creating-and-labeling-lines and (3) labeling-provided-lines. Results confirm a positive effect of prior-knowledge activation, a positive effect of expertise, and an interaction between expertise and the coherence of prior- knowledge activation in the posttest. Keywords: Prior-knowledge activation; concept mapping; coherence. Introduction Prior-knowledge is one of the most important prerequisites for learning (e.g., Ausubel, 1968). It influences learning through cognitive processes of selection, organization, integration, and recall (Mayer, 1997; Renkl, 1996). (1) For selection, prior-knowledge focuses the learner's attention on relevant information and away from distractions, thus saving information-processing resources. (2) For organization, prior-knowledge facilitates the combining of information into meaningful ‘chunks’ that can be processed as a whole, again saving information-processing resources. (3) For integration, prior-knowledge provides a framework or scheme through which new information can be actively assimilated (integration in existing schemes) or accommodated (modification of existing schemes that conflict with the new information). (4) For recall, the influences of prior-knowledge on the selection, organization, and integration of new information reduces the amount of information chunks to be recalled and provides association cues for accessing information from long-term memory. Ausubel (1968) emphasized the importance of prior- knowledge and developed the idea of the advance organizer. He did not, however, provide educators with simple functional tools to assess and activate prior-knowledge (Novak & Gowin, 1984). Based on Ausubel's work, Novak and Gowin, 1984 described hierarchical concept maps as a tool for getting students to examine their prior-knowledge before studying new materials. Concept maps provide an external network-like representation of knowledge structures and consist of spatially grouped nodes with key- words representing concepts, connection lines representing the semantic connection of concepts, and labels on the lines to specify the kind of the semantic relation. Concept maps may be created entirely by the student. Alternatively educators may prepare incomplete maps and leave specific activities, for example creating and labeling the connection lines, for the learners. Research has shown that different mapping tasks evoke different cognitive and metacognitive processes (Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson, Li, & Schultz, 2001). A think-aloud study from Gurlitt, Renkl, Motes, and Hauser (2006) has shown that the low-coherent mapping task of creating-and-labeling lines elicits more organization- and model-construction processes compared to the high-coherent mapping task of labeling provided lines. Think-aloud statements were labeled as organization processes if the relationship between two concepts was processed. Think-aloud statements were classified as model- construction processes if subjects drew a conclusion or related more than two concepts with each other. Model- construction processes focus on higher-order relations; they should be especially useful for the construction of higher- order structures (Gentner, 1983) in domains with interacting relations. Although external representations as concept maps influence the internal mental models and learning, this influence is not a straight-forward process. Instead there may be complex interactions between the level of prior- knowledge and the task used for prior-knowledge activation. This possibility of different instructional methods for different levels of expertise is supported by research about learning from texts (McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996) that shows an interaction between the level of prior-knowledge and text coherence: High-knowledge readers learned more after