Using Instructions in Procedural Tasks

Using Instructions in Procedural Tasks Elsa Eiriksdottir (gtg702v@mail.gatech.edu) School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 654 Cherry Street Atlanta, GA 30332-0170 USA Richard Catrambone (rc7@prism.gatech.edu) School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 654 Cherry Street Atlanta, GA 30332-0170 USA The nature of the procedural task is important in terms of how easy or difficult it is to learn and perform. The complexity of a procedural task is contingent upon various factors, for instance the materials needed (e.g., tools and parts), the physical manipulations required for the task, the affordances, or the acts permitted by the materials used in the task, and prior experience with similar tasks (Norman, 1988). Most consumers base their decision to read the instructions on whether they think the product needs instructions (Schriver, 1997). This indicates that the complexity of a task will influence whether people use instructions or not; instructions become presumably more important if a task is unfamiliar and involves complicated manipulations. Traditionally, procedural instruction documents have been designed to be read before the learner attempts the task and it is assumed that the knowledge is first learned from the instructions and then applied to the task (Carroll, Mack, Lewis, Grischkowsky, & Robertson, 1985; Ganier, 2004; Schriver, 1997). This is a linear process because the learner reads through the instructions step by step before applying the information to the task. This linear or instruction-based strategy is commonly used by novices or cautious users. Another strategy often seen, but not commonly supported by instructional materials, is more interactive. The learner attempts the task and uses the instructions for referencing. This task-based strategy is preferred by experienced users and a subset of novices (Ganier, 2004; Schriver, 1997). In order to use instructions as references the learner must have some idea about what he or she has to do. The task cannot be too complex or unfamiliar. Given that learners employ different strategies for using instructions when approaching procedural tasks, which strategy, the task- based or the instruction-based, is more helpful? More specifically, how does the strategy affect one-time procedural performance on one hand and procedural learning on the other? It seems that learners could clearly benefit from using an instruction-based strategy because it provides them with clear delineation of what to do and how to go about doing it. This might be more beneficial to one-time procedural performance, but it might actually be detrimental to procedural learning because the learner does not necessarily actively engage in what he or she is doing. Research on procedural tasks indicates that the key to effective procedural learning is to get the learner Abstract The study examined whether an instruction-based strategy (studying the instructions before attempting the task) or task-based strategy (attempting the task and referencing instructions) is more effective for procedural performance and learning. Four groups of participants performed two macrame tasks, and received detailed instructions at different times in the process of attempting the tasks. Performance was measured with task completion time. The results indicated that the instruction-based strategy helped procedural performance as compared to the task-based strategy. Participants not made to use a specific strategy showed the best performance and participants not having access to detailed instructions did the worst. When repeating the tasks a week later without instructions there was no performance difference among the groups. Keywords: Procedural tasks; Instructions; Learning. Introduction People engage in procedural tasks many times a day, and some of these tasks are well learned and performed effortlessly, such as tying shoelaces or driving. Others are unfamiliar or seldom encountered, like assembling furniture or setting up a stereo system, in which case instructions of some kind are needed to help perform the task. The most common kind of instructions for procedural tasks consists of pictures and text explaining each step of the procedure in a linear fashion. Given that instructions are needed and available, how do people make use of them? It is often assumed that instructions should be read before performing a task, but more often than not people do not look at the instructions until they do not know (or cannot guess) what to do next (Ganier, A procedural task can be thought of as a series of steps, where each step consists of actions applied if certain conditions are met, according to some production rules (Anderson, 1993; Newell & Simon, 1972). A distinction can be made between two different goals of performing a procedural task. In some cases the goal is simply to perform the task only once, without any intention to learn the procedure. An example of this kind of one-time procedural performance is when new furniture is assembled. In other cases the goal is to learn to perform the procedure from memory, and be able to apply it across situations. An example of this kind of procedural learning is when children learn to tie their shoelaces.