Neural Correlates of People's Hypercorrection of Their False Beliefs

Despite the intuition that strongly held beliefs are particularly difficult to change, the data on error correction indicate that general information errors that people commit with a high degree of belief are especially easy to correct. This finding is called the hypercorrection effect. The hypothesis was tested that the reason for hypercorrection stems from enhanced attention and encoding that results from a metacognitive mismatch between the person's confidence in their responses and the true answer. This experiment, which is the first to use imaging to investigate the hypercorrection effect, provided support for this hypothesis, showing that both metacognitive mismatch conditions—that in which high confidence accompanies a wrong answer and that in which low confidence accompanies a correct answer—revealed anterior cingulate and medial frontal gyrus activations. Only in the high confidence error condition, however, was an error that conflicted with the true answer mentally present. And only the high confidence error condition yielded activations in the right TPJ and the right dorsolateral pFC. These activations suggested that, during the correction process after error commission, people (1) were entertaining both the false belief as well as the true belief (as in theory of mind tasks, which also manifest the right TPJ activation) and (2) may have been suppressing the unwanted, incorrect information that they had, themselves, produced (as in think/no-think tasks, which also manifest dorsolateral pFC activation). These error-specific processes as well as enhanced attention because of metacognitive mismatch appear to be implicated

Investigating Individual Differences in the Conceptual Change of Biology Misconceptions Using Computer-Based Explanation Tasks

The current study examined the effects of computer-based self-explanations (i.e., generated by the learner) and instructional explanations (i.e., provided to the learner) on undergraduate biology students’ revision of photosynthesis and respiration misconceptions. Individual differences, particularly students’ prior knowledge, significantly impact the effectiveness of instructional tasks. Oftentimes, an instructional task is effective only for learners at a particular prior knowledge level. Cognitive Load Theory suggests that too much or too little instructional support can overwhelm a learner’s working memory. When used for building knowledge, self-explanations and instructional explanations, like those employed in the current study, both interact with prior knowledge. Prior research has indicated that instructional explanations may only benefit students with low prior knowledge, and self-explanations may only benefit students with high prior knowledge. The current study addressed whether such effects extend to the use of explanation tasks to facilitate knowledge revision, in which existing misconceptions are revised. Four hundred and thirty eight undergraduate major and non-major biology students completed an online activity for course credit. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (self-explanation, instructional explanation, or no explanation) and then prompted with a set of photosynthesis questions, each of which was followed by their assigned instructional task and a cognitive load measure. One week later, participants returned to the activity to take a posttest. Results indicated students entered the activity with high rates of photosynthesis and respiration misconceptions. Further regression analyses indicated that only self-explanations, not instructional explanations, increased learning compared to no explanations. Trends in effect sizes suggest self-explanations only benefited students with sufficient prior knowledge. Higher cognitive load was associated with less learning in both explanation conditions, but not in the no explanation condition. The current results suggest that self-explanations may effectively promote knowledge revision, assuming students are familiar with the content, while instructional explanations may not foster knowledge revision in a computer-based setting. Implications for adaptive instruction that targets knowledge revision are addressed

Memory and truth: correcting errors with true feedback versus overwriting correct answers with errors

In five experiments, we examined the conditions under which participants remembered true and false information given as feedback. Participants answered general information questions, expressed their confidence in the correctness of their answers, and were given true or false feedback. In all five experiments, participants hypercorrected when they had made a mistake; that is, they remembered better the correct feedback to errors made with high compared to low confidence. However, in none of the experiments did participants hyper'correct' when false feedback followed an initially correct response. Telling people whether the feedback was right or wrong made little difference, suggesting that people already knew whether the feedback was true or false and differentially encoded the true feedback compared to the false feedback. An exception occurred when false feedback followed an error: participants hyper'corrected' to this false feedback, suggesting that when people are wrong initially, they are susceptible to further incorrect information. These results indicate that people have some kind of privileged access to whether their answers are right or wrong, above and beyond their confidence ratings, and that they behave differently when trying to remember new “corrective” information depending upon whether they, themselves, were right or wrong initially. The likely source of this additional information is knowledge about the truth of the feedback, which they rapidly process and use to modulate memory encoding

Multilingualism and metacognitive processing

This chapter critically reviews evidence for overlap and divergence in the neural and psychological basis of metacognition and executive function. It considers the implications for current debate on the proposed cognitive advantages associated with the acquisition and regular use of two or more languages. The chapter focuses on the relationship between executive function and metacognitive abilities, and also considers whether and how multilingualism might impact upon them. Metacognitive awareness is often quantified via confidence judgements in relation to a specific measure of cognitive task performance, such as accuracy or error rate. Whatever the nature of the cortical and subcortical developmental effects of multi-language acquisition, converging evidence is emerging that multilingualism impacts on a broad, distributed network of brain regions, including both primary language and domain general/nonverbal processing sites involved in the emotional regulation and higher-level cognitive control

To err is human, to avoid err is even more human : the impact of error avoidance on the selection of learning environments

Tese de mestrado, Psicologia (Área de Especialização em Cognição Social Aplicada), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Psicologia, 2020People don’t usually see the benefits behind committing errors, choosing to avoid situations or questions that might lead to error. Consequently, this tendency influences how we shape and select learning environments, by preferring contexts that reinforce what we already know even though that doesn’t allow new learning to occur. To explore this topic, we used an implicit learning task where participants had to implicitly learn the criteria underlying target words by classifying them, along several test blocks, as following or not the criteria. During the initial classification test blocks, we manipulated whether participants could shape their learning environments. Specifically, in a mandatory-response condition, participants had to give an answer to all the trials, which was always followed by corrective feedback. In the optional-response condition, participants could choose to not answer to the trials. However, by not answering they are expected to generate a wicked learning environment since no feedback is provided to those. Thus, in a final and critical test block, where no feedback is provided and all trials had to be answered by all participants, we expected participants from the optional-response condition to have worse performances than those in the mandatory-response condition. The opposite is expected in the initial blocks, where participants in the optional-response condition could avoid answering to the trials they did not know the answer, at the cost of hindering their learning in the long run. However, our findings didn’t confirm any these hypotheses. Different explanations of the obtained results and follow-up studies are discussedO que é mais valioso na aquisição de conhecimento responder a uma pergunta em que sabe a resposta, ou responder a uma pergunta em que não se sabe a resposta? A reação intuitiva pode ser escolher a pergunta para qual sabemos a resposta, pois demonstra que adquirimos conhecimento suficiente para a responder. Seguindo este raciocínio, devemos evitar as questões para as quais não sabemos a resposta sendo que podemos cometer erros se o fizermos. Contudo, responder a uma pergunta para a qual já sabemos a resposta vai ensinar-nos algo de novo? Não necessariamente, responder a esta pergunta pode apenas aumentar a nossa confiança acerca da resposta. Por outro lado, se respondermos à pergunta para a qual não sabemos a resposta, tal permite-nos testar o limite do nosso conhecimento, de forma a podermos dirigir esforços em aprender mais acerca do tema. Para além disso, podemos ver até que ponto o nosso conhecimento prévio é capaz de estimar a resposta certa. Adicionalmente, ao falhar em responder à pergunta, isto permite a oportunidade de recebermos feedback acerca de qual era a resposta certa, e idealmente, porque é que essa era a resposta certa. Finalmente, isto também informa um potencial tutor/mentor/professor que precisamos de assistência com o tópico. Portanto, o processo de tentar responder a uma pergunta para a qual não sabemos a resposta, é uma oportunidade muito mais rica para a aquisição de conhecimento, pois um erro pode permitir que o ambiente forneça feedback corretivo. O exemplo dado acima pode ser visto como dois tipos de ambientes de aprendizagem. Segundo Hogarth (2001), a existência e a qualidade do feedback dependem da estrutura do ambiente em que as nossas ações e decisões ocorreram. Os ambientes de aprendizagem, por sua vez, podem ser distinguidos entre kind ou wicked. Os ambientes de aprendizagem kind são caracterizados por fornecerem feedback que é completo, relevante, preciso, frequente e corretivo (Hogarth, 2001; Hogarth, 2010; Hogarth & Soyer, 2011; Hogarth, Lejarraga & Soyer, 2015). Por outro lado, os ambientes de aprendizagem wicked são caracterizados por feedback que é pobre, enviesado, enganoso ou ausente. Por estas razões, muito do que aprendemos depende do feedback que o ambiente nos fornece. Contudo, o ser humano não é simplesmente passivo e reativo durante os seus processos de aprendizagem. Hogarth (2001) postulava que os indivíduos tinham a capacidade de procurar, selecionar e moldar os ambientes em que se encontravam. Portanto, estes deviam ser proativos na procura, exposição e criação de ambientes de aprendizagem kind. Por outras palavras, as pessoas têm a capacidade de gerar os seus próprios ambientes de aprendizagem. Porém, para a maioria dos ambientes de aprendizagem se tornarem kind é primeiro necessário que se cometam erros. O problema situa-se em que a maior parte das pessoas não reconhece os benefícios que cometer erros traz (Huelser & Metcalfe, 2012), resultando numa tendência para escolher e gerar ambientes em que os mesmos possam ser evitados, criando consequentemente ambientes de aprendizagem wicked. Os benefícios que cometer erros traz para a aprendizagem já são conhecidos na literatura há algum tempo. Em particular, como a geração de erros acompanhada por feedback corretivo leva a uma melhor memória para respostas corretas (Kang, Pashler, Cepeda, Rohrer, Carpenter & Mozer, 2011; Kornell, Hays, & Bjork, 2009; Kornell & Metcalfe, 2014; Metcalfe, 2017). O aspeto essencial sendo o feedback corretivo, que permite que os erros sejam retificados e que deixem de persistir (Fazio, Huelser, Johnson & Marsh, 2010; Pasher, Cepeda, Wixted & Rohrer, 2005). No entanto, um aspeto que enfraquece a perceção dos benefícios do erro, são os seus componentes negativos. Afinal, ninguém gosta de cometer erros. Um destes componentes é a aversão inerente ao erro. Existe uma visão que defende que os erros são processados como ameaças endógenas, que podem causar ou colocar o ser humano em perigo (Hajcak, 2012; Proudfit, Inzlicht, & Mennin, 2013; Weinberg et al., 2016). Outro componente que justifica a evitação do erro, é o esforço. Muitas vezes antes de realizarmos uma tarefa podemos avaliá-la quanto ao esforço que vai requerer em termos de tempo, dificuldade e de probabilidade de erro. Este evitamento do esforço pode ser considerado um comportamento adaptativo, onde as pessoas escolhem e estimam as opções que requerem menos esforço para conservarem recursos cognitivos (Dunn et al., 2019; Feghhi & Rosenbaum, 2020). Neste caso, a probabilidade de cometermos erros numa situação é utilizada como pista para evitar realizá-la. O que sugere que as pessoas veem mais esforço em corrigir erros do que em evitar que estes ocorram, resultando numa escolha de contextos onde estes tenham menos probabilidade de ocorrer. Frequentemente situações na vida real salientam estes aspetos negativos do erro, contribuindo para uma perspetiva enviesada que justifica o evitamento do erro ao mesmo tempo que se ignora os benefícios que estes podem causar. O objetivo deste estudo é explorar como é que esta perceção enviesada dos benefícios do erro guiam a seleção de ambientes de aprendizagem, e consequentemente como é que isto afeta o que aprendemos. Este estudo contribuí para a literatura através do seu foco no papel proativo dos indivíduos em criar os seus próprios contextos de aprendizagem, uma criação que é, no entanto, afetada pela perceção dos benefícios que o erro tem na aprendizagem. Para explorar este tópico, utilizamos um paradigma de aprendizagem implícita. Neste paradigma, os participantes começavam por estudar palavras que partilhavam entre si um conjunto de critérios. Estes critérios nunca eram ditos explicitamente ao participante. De seguida, os participantes realizavam três blocos de teste onde tinham de classificar palavras como seguindo ou não os critérios das palavras estudadas anteriormente. Nestes blocos iniciais de classificação, nós manipulámos a capacidade de os participantes poderem selecionar o seu ambiente de aprendizagem. Especificamente, os participantes que estavam numa condição de resposta-obrigatória tinham de responder a todos os ensaios, podendo apenas responder se a palavra seguia ou não os critérios. Estas opções de resposta eram seguidas de feedback corretivo. Na condição de resposta-opcional, os participantes tinham uma opção de resposta adicional, que permitia que estes pudessem escolher não responder aos ensaios. Contudo, ao escolherem esta opção não recebiam feedback. Após estes três primeiros blocos, existia um quarto bloco de classificação, onde todos os participantes independentemente da condição eram obrigados a responder a todos os ensaios, sendo que não recebiam feedback após a sua resposta. Este quarto e último bloco servia como um último teste para averiguar o que tinha sido aprendido. Era esperado que os participantes na condição de resposta-opcional durante os primeiros três blocos apenas respondessem a ensaios em que eles tivessem a certeza da resposta, evitando aqueles em que estavam incertos ou que pudessem levar a erro. Ao realizar isto, estariam a gerar para eles próprios um ambiente de aprendizagem wicked, uma vez que não responder a ensaios não dava feedback corretivo. Este evitamento apesar de ter vantagens a curto prazo ia afetar negativamente a aprendizagem destes participantes a longo prazo. Consequentemente, era então esperado que os participantes na condição opcional tivessem melhores performances nos primeiros três blocos, mas no quarto e último bloco estes tivessem piores performances, quando comparados com os participantes na condição de resposta-obrigatória. No entanto, os resultados deste estudo não confirmaram nenhuma destas hipóteses. Na discussão são apresentadas diversas explicações para os dados obtidos e são apresentadas ideias para estudos futuros

Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum

The field of specialization known as the science of learning is not, in fact, one field. Science of learning is a term that serves as an umbrella for many lines of research, theory, and application. A term with an even wider reach is Learning Sciences (Sawyer, 2006). The present book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings (Science of Instruction, Mayer 2011). Although much, but not all, of what is presented in this book is focused on learning in college and university settings, teachers of all academic levels may find the recommendations made by chapter authors of service. The overarching theme of this book is on the interplay between the science of learning, the science of instruction, and the science of assessment (Mayer, 2011). The science of learning is a systematic and empirical approach to understanding how people learn. More formally, Mayer (2011) defined the science of learning as the “scientific study of how people learn” (p. 3). The science of instruction (Mayer 2011), informed in part by the science of learning, is also on display throughout the book. Mayer defined the science of instruction as the “scientific study of how to help people learn” (p. 3). Finally, the assessment of student learning (e.g., learning, remembering, transferring knowledge) during and after instruction helps us determine the effectiveness of our instructional methods. Mayer defined the science of assessment as the “scientific study of how to determine what people know” (p.3). Most of the research and applications presented in this book are completed within a science of learning framework. Researchers first conducted research to understand how people learn in certain controlled contexts (i.e., in the laboratory) and then they, or others, began to consider how these understandings could be applied in educational settings. Work on the cognitive load theory of learning, which is discussed in depth in several chapters of this book (e.g., Chew; Lee and Kalyuga; Mayer; Renkl), provides an excellent example that documents how science of learning has led to valuable work on the science of instruction. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology. We might have selected other topics (and, thus, other authors) that have their research base in behavior analysis, computational modeling and computer science, neuroscience, etc. We made the selections we did because the work of our authors ties together nicely and seemed to us to have direct applicability in academic settings

Third person interpretation and the sociolinguistics of verbal communication

PhD ThesisThis thesis is addressed to analysts of talk in social scenes. Its principal aim is to develop a framework for systematically investigating third person interpretations of what communicates and what is communicated in the data products of everyday verbal exchange. The programme of research that is designed to meet this aim is based on analytic and descriptive techniques adopted from a wide range of disciplines concerned with the study of verbal communication, and particularly those associated with the work of John Gumperz (1982a; 1982b). By focussing on the nature of third person descriptions of what goes on and who is involved in various tape recorded products of talk, the research seeks to explore the nature of members' interpretive resources for recovering and warranting communicative norms that are not normally verbalised as talk is in progress. The investigative method developed for this purpose provides professional observers with an empirical means of citing evidence in support of their own analytic claims about what participants are doing in talk. It also provides an enabling device for generating and testing hypotheses about the communicative salience of different sociolinguistic factors, much as Gumperz (1982a) suggests. On the basis of the work presented, it is argued that whatever the disciplinary motivation of the analyst or the sociolinguistic contexts in which talk occurs third person interpretive methods offer a powerful descriptive tool. The research potential of this tool is evaluated in terms of its utility for not only investigating the interpretive resources of different individuals within a specific culture, but also for developing culturally sensitive theories of communicative language use in general

Attitudes to contemporary English interference on Welsh

The research outlined in this thesis is based on the hypothesis that there is a connection between interference usage and language attitudes. The milieu chosen for the research is present day Wales, with the contact situation under investigation involving the English and Welsh languages. The research proceeds by investigating the attitudes and usage of four groups of subjects from the Aberystwyth area. These comprise groups of Lecturers and local Teachers and two less well-educated groups of urban subjects from Aberystwyth and rural subjects from Llangwyryfon. The language attitudes investigated involve both general attitudes towards the language situation in Wales and attitudes towards language standards in Welsh with particular reference to interference from English. The instrument employed to elicit this data was a questionnaire comprising largely closed questions. Comparable examples of interference usage, mainly in the lexical field, were elicited by the use of a number of specially devised tests. Results showed that the two less well-educated groups were not as normative towards certain kinds of interference (especially lexical) and less aware of other kinds. In addition, these groups also tended to be less pro- Welsh on an index of Welsh commitment which consisted of questions on language use and on political aspects of the language situation. In the usage tests, high levels of interference usage were revealed in the same less well-educated groups. Some differences were also revealed between sub-groupings of the Lecturer and Teacher groups on the basis of the medium of instruction employed by the subjects in their work. Any differences are, however, restricted to the attitude questionnaire and are not paralleled in usage. It is posited that while there is a clear relationship between the two phenomena tested, it is not proven that the relationship is a direct one

English speakers' common orthographic errors in Arabic as L2 writing system : an analytical case study

PhD ThesisThe research involving Arabic Writing System (WS) is quite limited. Yet, researching writing errors of L2WS Arabic against a certain L1WS seems to be relatively neglected. This study attempts to identify, describe, and explain common orthographic errors in Arabic writing amongst English-speaking learners. First, it outlines the Arabic Writing System’s (AWS) characteristics and available empirical studies of L2WS Arabic. This study embraced the Error Analysis approach, utilising a mixed-method design that deployed quantitative and qualitative tools (writing tests, questionnaire, and interview). The data were collected from several institutions around the UK, which collectively accounted for 82 questionnaire responses, 120 different writing samples from 44 intermediate learners, and six teacher interviews. The hypotheses for this research were; a) English-speaking learners of Arabic make common orthographic errors similar to those of Arabic native speakers; b) English-speaking learners share several common orthographic errors with other learners of Arabic as a second/foreign language (AFL); and c) English-speaking learners of Arabic produce their own common orthographic errors which are specifically related to the differences between the two WSs. The results confirmed all three hypotheses. Specifically, English-speaking learners of L2WS Arabic commonly made six error types: letter ductus (letter shape), orthography (spelling), phonology, letter dots, allographemes (i.e. letterform), and direction. Gemination and L1WS transfer error rates were not found to be major. Another important result showed that five letter groups in addition to two letters are particularly challenging to English-speaking learners. Study results indicated that error causes were likely to be from one of four factors: script confusion, orthographic difficulties, phonological realisation, and teaching/learning strategies. These results are generalizable as the data were collected from several institutions in different parts of the UK. Suggestions and implications as well as recommendations for further research are outlined accordingly in the conclusion chapter