Application-based Intruction: Are there Long-Term Benefits for Students?

Standard memory research has shown that memory accuracy decreases over time (Ebbinghaus, 1885; Murre & Dros, 2015) and that the largest drop in memory occurs immediately after learning. This impact of natural memory loss can be lessened by spacing out learning or exposure to material (Cepeda et al., 2006). Importantly, when looking into the realm of education-based learning specifically, memory has been found to be improved when application-based instruction methods are used during initial exposure (Daniels & Braasch, 2013; Lakin & Wichman, 2005). In these studies, students were exposed to application-based exercises in classroom settings across multiple disciplines (i.e., statistics and social psychology). They found that these application-based exercised increased transfer ability of students (2013), increased their likelihood to relate material to other real-life examples (2013), improved their judgements of usefulness of courses (2005), believed they learned more (2005), and had better overall grades in the course (2005). Importantly, in neither of these studies, or other studies we are familiar with, did they test the long-term effects of students who were exposed to application-based instruction and/or exercises. This study is seeking to answer that question using student who have already taken Consumer Psychology that were taught by these researchers.

Figure 1.
Preliminary data suggests trends for information that was taught in a “basic” or definitional way is forgotten more overtime, compared to application-taught material. This trend is not being solely driven by the grade that the student got in the class either; this is demonstrated with the size of the dot representing the data (i.e., larger dots mean a higher grade in the course).

Associated Presentations/Publications

Simonson, T.L. (2022, October). Application-based Instruction: Are there Long-term Benefits for Students? Poster presented at Mid-Western Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Moving Away from Verbal-based Measures of Cognition: Using Drawing to Measure Event Comprehension and Memory

Episodic memory performance is usually determined by tasks such as free recall or recognition of verbal material. These tests measure age-related decline in episodic memory performance, but do not fully demonstrate the complex process of remembering real-world experiences. Nonverbal communication measures are currently utilized to assess cognition in certain clinical populations (e.g., clock-drawing test for dementia patients), but these measures are often used for diagnoses rather than to measure complex cognition (i.e., memory, comprehension, etc.). Measures that do not rely on verbal abilities are needed to avoid potential barriers and provide all individuals with ways of expressing their comprehension and memory. Our work uses drawing, rather than verbal reports, to assess event comprehension and memory. Participants (29 older and 31 younger adults) watched 6 Hollywood film clips and then drew comics of each narrative. Drawings were scored using an action coding scheme to identify narrative goals (i.e., A1 units/small goals and A2 units/large goals) within each panel. Comprehension for the film clips, measured by the comic drawing scores, was compared to working memory and free recall data to evaluate the psychometric properties of our drawing measure and to identify potential relationships between standard measures of cognition and our proposed drawing method.

It was determined that an individual's drawing task performance was strongly correlated with free recall task performance. Although older adults were underperforming the younger adults on the free recall task, older adults had closer to the same memory performance as the younger adults on the drawing task. These discoveries provide evidence that the drawing task is a memory task that could be used in the lab in the future to evaluate age-related decline in episodic memory when remembering complex, real-world events.

Since this drawing task was the first exploratory measure, there may still be some fine tuning to how cognitive ability is measured, but it is an excellent first step. In the future, the hope is that this drawing task could help older adults to use their episodic memory to perform similarly in cognitive ability to the younger adults.

Figure 1.
Example of a comic drawn in the Comic task. The participant drew the required 4-panels and described what was happening in each.

Figure 2.
Graph depicting the younger adults demonstrating better memory performance by drawing the comics with more accuracy than the older adults.

Associated Presentations/Publications

Simonson, T.L., Hubbell, I., & Bailey, H. R. (2022, November). Moving Away from Verbal-based Measures of Cognition: Using Drawing to Measure Event Comprehension and Memory. Poster Presentation at Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, Massachusetts.

Simonson, T.L., Hubbell, I., McGatlin, K. C., & Bailey, H. R. (2023, April). Moving Away from Verbal-based Measures of Cognition: Using Drawing to Measure Event Comprehension and Memory. Submitting as a talk for Mid-western Psychological Association Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Simonson, T. L. Hubbell, I., McGatlin, K. C., & Bailey, H. R. (In preparation). Cognition in drawing special edition, Memory & Cognition.

Prior Knowledge and its Role in Making Predictions

Our perceptual system constantly makes predictions about the near future. In the current study, we evaluated whether prior knowledge and age influence one’s ability to make predictions during complex, dynamic events. In Experiment 1, 140 participants (ages 18-75) watched and segmented movies with or without context. In Experiment 2, 30 young and 30 older adults (ages 60-85) watched the same movies with the same context manipulation; however, the movie was paused several times and the participant was asked to make predictions about what would happen 5 seconds later. In Experiment 1, we found that context did not influence event segmentation ability. In Experiment 2, young adults’ predictions were equally accurate within the same events and across different events, which differs from past work. Their predictions were also more accurate when context was provided. Older adult data collection is still ongoing. We expect to find age-related deficits in prediction accuracy, but this deficit may be alleviated with context. Such results would indicate that prior knowledge helps older adults understand ongoing activity and make predictions about future events.

Interplay Between Fluid Intelligence and Working Memory

Prior literature established how strategy use mediated the relationship between working memory and fluid intelligence tasks, showing the importance of accounting for an individuals’ strategic choices on these tasks. Previous studies focused on understanding strategies within working memory and fluid intelligence tasks individually but did not assess the rates of strategy use between these tasks. This line of research aims to evaluate the rates of strategy used across both working memory and fluid intelligence tasks, and also investigate whether working memory capacity influences these rates.

Note: Theoretical models by Gonthier & Thomassin (2015) depicting the possible relationship between working memory capacity and strategies on the Raven’s Progressive Matrices task. In Figure 1a, the relationship between WM and FI is higher than in Figure 1b when strategies are considered. These results show that strategy choice is related to how well one can remember information (e.g., those who remember less information are more likely to use RE; those who remember more information are more likely to use CM).

Data is currently being collected and this will be updated once the results are processed

Associated Presentations/Publications

Coming Soon!

Fluid Intelligence Strategies

There are a multitude of strategies to solve any given problem in our daily lives. Some strategies result in a better understanding of a task, while others are detrimental to the problem-solving process. Previous research on a fluid intelligence (e.g. our ability to solve new problems using little to no prior experience) task, the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrix (RAPM; Court & Raven, 1983), focused on two main strategies. The first strategy, constructive matching (CM) is an interactive, elaborate strategy (Gonthier & Thomassin, 2015), whereas, the second strategy, response elimination (RE) is thought to involve shallow processing (Mitchum & Kelley, 2010). Individuals who report using CM perform better on RAPM compared to those who report using RE (Gonthier & Roulin, 2019). Our line of reseach aims to understand whether the effectiveness of strategy depends on problem difficulty. Results of our studies suggest that, not only does perceived difficulty play a role in task performance, but it also influences the efficacy of strategies. That is, so-called "effective" strategies may not be useful when perceived difficulty peaks (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

 

Raw data for the proportion correct on the RAPM for each strategy (CM – blue line, RE – green line, Both – read line) across the number of trials for each order. In the ascending condition (easy trials to hard trials), CM decreased in proportion correct as trial difficulty increases, whereas RE increased in proportion correct as trial difficulty decreased. The opposite pattern is found in the descending condition (hard trials to easy trials), where the efficacy of CM increased as difficulty decreased and the efficacy of RE remained roughly the same across trial difficulty.

In addition to the completed studies above, student-lead research in the laboratory is currently underway to evaluate the role of feedback on the RAPM task across different conditions (e.g. ascending or descending order). Results will be updated once the data is analyzed.

Associated Presentations/Publications
(* denotes current or former undergraduate author)

*Applegate, W., Bell, T. J., & Bailey, H. (2021, November). What happens to strategy use and effectiveness when difficulty is manipulated on the RAPM task? Poster presented at Psychonomics. Online.

Bell, T. J, *Applegate, W., *Muto, M., & Bailey, H. (2021, March). Effective strategies – When do they fail? Talk presented at Midwestern Psychological Association. Online.

*Applegate, W., Bell, T. J., & Bailey, H. (2021, May). The effects of difficulty on problem-solving. 2021 Undergraduate Research Convocation at Kansas State University.Manhattan, KS.

Bell, T. J, *Applegate, W., *Muto, M., & Bailey, H. (2019, March). Effective strategies – When do they fail? Talk presented was to be presented at Midwestern Psychological Association. Chicago, IL. Cancelled due to COVID-19.

*Pachek, S., *Augustine, E., & Bell. T. J. (2019, March). Performance on the Ravens Matrices does not differ significantly by sex. Poster was to be presented at Midwestern Psychological Association. Chicago, IL. Cancelled due to COVID-19.

Bell, T. J, & Bailey, H. (2019, November). Effective strategies – When do they fail? Poster presented at Psychonomics. Quebec, Canada.

Neural Oscillations associated with Encoding Strategies

We rely on our long-term memory (LTM) system to remember a wide range of information. However, we know from experience, whether forgetting a necessary item on a grocery list or answers to a test question, we are not always able to accurately recall that information. What determines how well information is stored in LTM? One factor is how memory stimuli are encoded. Encoding strategies are designed to help counteract failures by providing memory cues that are associated with the to-be-remembered information. This line of research aims to understand the underlying neural signatures involved in utilizing encoding strategies. Normatively effective strategies, or more elaborative strategies (e.g., sentence-linking and imagery), often lead to a better memory performance for verbal information. These strategies typically require the participant to consider the meaning of the to-be-remembered. For example, sentence-linking allows the participant to connect the to-be-remembered information to other to-be-remembered words (e.g., linking the words “DOG” and “BREAD” together as “my dog, Miller, likes to steal bread from the counter”), which increases the association in long-term memory. On the other hand, normatively less effective strategies, or less elaborative strategies (e.g., rehearsing a word repeatedly), are associated with lower performance compared to when people report using the normatively effective strategies (Dunlosky & Kane, 2007, Turley-Ames & Whitfield, 2003). Rehearsal, for instance, only requires the participant internally repeat the information to keep it active in memory but does not require the participant to make associations between the to-be-remembered information and long-term memory (Craik & Watkins, 1973; Richardson, 1998).

Strategies mentioned above can counteract retrieval failures by providing memory cues during encoding. Past literature evaluated the behavioral accuracy of strategies, but less is known about the associated neural oscillations. The current research addressed this gap using time-frequency analyses of electroencephalography (EEG) recorded during a paired-associates memory task. Word pairs that were later correctly recalled exhibited higher theta power (4 – 7 Hz) during encoding than those that were later forgotten (see Figure 1). Further, bands of alpha (8 - 12 Hz) and beta power (17 - 27 Hz) showed greater power for less effective strategies during encoding (see Figure 2). Results are consistent with prior work proposing a role for theta oscillations in encoding. It is plausible beta recruitment is associated with an internal rehearsal loop whereas alpha increases with number of maintained items. Thus, the current data can speak to potential differences in the "effortfulness" of employing effective compared to less effective strategies.

Figure 1.
Brain activity during the encoding period while participants later A) correctly recalled words and B) incorrectly recalled words. Frequency (Hz) is plotted on the Y-axis and time from the start of the remember period (ms) is on the X-axis. Trials where participants later recalled words correctly showed more theta (4-7 Hz) power than trials where participants were later incorrect.

Figure 2.
Brain activity during the encoding period while participants used A) Effective strategies and B) Less Effective strategies. Frequency (Hz) is plotted on the Y-axis and time from the start of the remember period (ms) is on the X-axis. Less effective strategies required more alpha power (8-12 Hz) and beta power (17-27 Hz) than effective strategies.

Associated Presentations/Publications
(* denotes current or former undergraduate author)

Bell, T. J., Anguiano, A., Krehbiel, K., Zakrzewski, A. C., Wisniewski, M. G., & Bailey, H. (2022, November). Neural Oscillations Differentiate Effective and Less Effective Strategies. Poster to be presented at Psychonomics. Boston, Massachusetts.

Bell, T. J., *Krehbiel, K., *Harper, A. & Bailey, H. (2022, April). Neural Oscillations in Memory Strategies. Talk presented at Midwestern Psychological Association. Chicago, IL.