How the Polls Can Be Both Spot On and Dead Wrong: Using Choice Blindness to Shift Political Attitudes and Voter Intentions

Political candidates often believe they must focus their campaign efforts on a small number of swing voters open for ideological change. Based on the wisdom of opinion polls, this might seem like a good idea. But do most voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We tested this premise during the most recent general election in Sweden, in which a left- and a right-wing coalition were locked in a close race. We asked our participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their attitudes on the manipulated issues. Finally, we summarized their survey score, and asked for their voter intention again. The results showed that no more than 22% of the manipulated replies were detected, and that a full 92% of the participants accepted and endorsed our altered political survey score. Furthermore, the final voter intention question indicated that as many as 48% (69.2%) were willing to consider a left-right coalition shift. This can be contrasted with the established polls tracking the Swedish election, which registered maximally 10% voters open for a swing. Our results indicate that political attitudes and partisan divisions can be far more flexible than what is assumed by the polls, and that people can reason about the factual issues of the campaign with considerable openness to change

Simulatorträning som ett redskap för att förbättra procedurell kunskap

Anestesören arbetar i en miljö som är dynamisk och komplex vilket gör att det krävs att de kan utföra sekvenser av moment på automatik eftersom det oftast inte finns tid till djupare beslutsöverläggningar. Vid Huddinge Unviersitetssjukhus finns METI som är en patientsimulator. Denna simulator används idag för att öva medicine kandidater i att ge anestesi. Detta arbete undersöker om simulatorträning kan förbättra medicine kandidaters procedurella färdigheter. Undersökningen är en enkätundersökning där frågor som sökte ta reda på deltagarnas procedurella ställdes. Enkäten delades ut till deltagare som fått undervisning i simulatorn och till en grupp deltagare som endast fått traditionell undervisning. Utifrån dessa enkätsvar gjordes en kvalitativ analys där simulatorgruppens enkätsvar jämfördes för att se om gruppen lärt sig något från sin simulatorträning. Det gjordes även en kvantitativ undersökning där ett t-test räknades ut för att se om simulatorgruppens och kontrollgruppens medelvärden var signifikanta. Detta t-test blev statistiskt signifikan

Review of feedback in digital applications - Does the feedback they provide support learning?

Aim/Purpose The goal of this paper is to examine digital applications used in Swedish schools and whether they fulfill their potential as support for learners. This is done by examining the kinds of feedback they provide and discussing if this feedback supports learning or not. Background The paper targets one aspect regarding which educational apps can be of high value for learners and teachers, namely the feedback they provide. The paper also addresses the need for supportive feedback and reviews 242 apps with respect to what types of feedback they provide. Methodology A sample of apps used in primary school was collected via email to schools in Sweden. The author evaluated each app with respect to what kind of feedback it provided. The article concerns both positive and negative feedback, with a focus on negative. The following types of feedback were evaluated; verification feedback, corrective feedback, elaborated feedback, encouraging feedback and result feedback. Contribution This paper contributes to knowledge regarding how most apps only contain verification feedback (telling the student whether their answer was correct or not). In order to help a student while learning, verification feedback is not enough. Rather, previous research has shown that explanatory feedback is more beneficial for learning. Findings Seventy-seven percent of all apps contained verification feedback, and only 12 % provided the student with some type of explanation as to why their answer was incorrect. Looking at previous research, this is not desirable if one wants the app to support learning and not only act as a testing device. Fifty-five percent of all apps also contained some type of encouragement, but none of this encouragement addressed the task or the effort the learners put into the task - something that would be preferable from a learning perspective. Recommendations for Practitioners There is much to be gained for developers of educational software if they would make more use of the feedback in educational apps. As for now, the feedback is primarily suited for testing and not for learning. For users of apps (teachers, parents, and children) this paper shows that feedback can be and is an important factor to evaluate before deciding if the app is "worth" spending time on. Recommendation for Researchers The research describes different types of feedback and their (dis)advantages. Impact on Society The paper stresses that most feedback represented in apps today corresponds to a behavioristic approach comparable to instrumental conditioning by means of reinforcement. In essence, most apps miss the opportunity of treating the learner as an active and constructive being who would benefit from more nu-anced feedback. Future Research Previous research has shown that elaborated feedback is more beneficial for learning, but more research needs to be done here, the amount of elaborated feedback will most likely affect varying student groups and varying tasks in dif-ferent ways. And more importantly, how can we make the students pay attention to and act upon the feedback provided to them

Choice blindness as a new tool to study preference change

Recent research has shown that we might not be as aware of our choices as we believe ourselves to be - a phenomenon called choice blindness (Johansson et al, 2005). In this thesis I replicate and extend these results by showing that choice blindness can be used to unconsciously influence preferences. An experiment with four conditions was conducted. In all conditions, participants were shown two series of pictures of female faces, and were instructed to point to the one they found the most attractive. On some pairs they were also instructed to verbalize the reason behind their choice. Unknown to the participants on certain trial a card trick was used to covertly exchange one face for the other. In the second condition an extended verbal report was required. In the third condition a verbal report and an attractiveness rating was required. Finally, the fourth condition was a combination of condition two and three. The results showed (i) that in the card trick trials the participants often failed to notice the mismatch between their intended choice and the manipulated outcome, and (ii) that the outcome of the mismatched trials exerted a strong influence on the second choices made by the participants, and (iii) that this effect was moderated by the type and amount of feedback provided in the manipulated trials

“I didn’t understand, i'm really not very smart”—How design of a digital tutee’s self-efficacy affects conversation and student behavior in a digital math game

How should a pedagogical agent in educational software be designed to support student learning? This question is complex seeing as there are many types of pedagogical agents and design features, and the effect on different student groups can vary. In this paper we explore the effects of designing a pedagogical agent’s self-efficacy in order to see what effects this has on students´ interaction with it. We have analyzed chat logs from an educational math game incorporating an agent, which acts as a digital tutee. The tutee expresses high or low self-efficacy through feedback given in the chat. This has been performed in relation to the students own self-efficacy. Our previous results indicated that it is more beneficial to design a digital tutee with low self-efficacy than one with high self-efficacy. In this paper, these results are further explored and explained in terms of an increase in the protégé effect and a reverse role modelling effect, whereby the students encourage digital tutees with low self-efficacy. However, there are indications of potential drawbacks that should be further investigated. Some students expressed frustration with the digital tutee with low self-efficacy. A future direction could be to look at more adaptive agents that change their self-efficacy over time as they learn

Gender differences in allocation of attention and read time in an educational history game

Previous research has shown that female students sometimes benefit more than males when it comes to interacting with pedagogical agents. In our analysis we examined students' tendency to attend to and read feedback text that were visually signalled by a teachable agent (TA), or by an arrow (AR), or non-signalled in a control condition (CN). The results indicate that male learners may benefit from having a TA signalling such feedback texts. The female learners in the study allocated their attention quite similarly between the three different signaling conditions whereas the male learners were most likely to attend to the feedback when presented by their TA. However, for reading the feedback text, both male and female students were more inclined to read the feedback texts when presented by their TA, compared to in the two other conditions

Supporting Low-Performing Students by Manipulating Self-efficacy in Digital Tutees

Educational software based on teachable agents has repeatedly proven to have positive effects on students’ learning outcomes. The strongest effects have been shown for low-performers. A number of mechanisms have been proposed to explore this outcome, in particular mechanisms that involve attributions of social agency to teachable agents. Our study examined whether an expression of high versus low self-efficacy in a teachable agent would affect low-performing students with respect to their learning outcomes and with respect to a potential change in their own self-efficacy. The learning domain was mathematics, specifically the base-ten system. Results were that the learning outcomes of low-performers who taught a low self-efficacy agent were significantly better than the learning outcomes of low-performers who taught a high self-efficacy agent. There were no effects from the manipulation of self-efficacy expressed by the teachable agent on changes of the low-performing students’ own self-efficacy

Off-task Engagement in a Teachable Agent based Math Game

A previous study compared two student groups that played a mathematics game based on a teachable agent. One group played with, and the other without, the inclusion of a social conversation module: a chat between the student and the teachable agent. Results were that students who used the game with the chat included had a more positive experience of the game and learned more in the sense of teaching their agent better. However, patterns dif¬fered between sub-groups of students. Low-achievers did not prefer the game with the chat included, whereas high- and mid-achievers did, but simultaneously low-achievers tended to chat more. Low-achievers tended not to use the options of not starting the chat or quitting a chat beforehand as much as high- and mid-achievers did. In this paper we pursue a more de¬tailed analysis of the students’ conversational behavior in the chat. The analytic focus is on the notion of engagement. Results point towards differences between the student groups in their engagement in the off-task conversation, that in turn can help explain the previous somewhat paradoxical result

Challenging gender stereotypes using virtual pedagogical characters

The paper explores motivational and cognitive effects of more neutral or androgynous-looking characters versus more feminine-looking female and masculine-looking male characters. A user study involving 158 students, aged 17-19, encountering four virtual characters, visually manipulated to represent gender stereotypicality versus androgyny, is presented. On the one hand we explored students’ attitudes towards the different characters as seen in how they rank them as preferred presenters and articulate their arguments about the characters. On the other hand we looked for patterns as to which character(s) influence female and male students most positively with respect to their attitude towards a university level computer engineering program. Results from the study are presented and discussed. We conclude with pointing towards future research within the area