ANALYTICAL REASONING SKILLS: IMPROVING PERFORMANCE WITH NOTATIONS

In this study we explored the effect of notations that undergraduates produce on their reasoning abilities. Participants solved four analytical reasoning problems, making notes to solve two problems and solving two without notations. Most participants produced notes when given the opportunity. The production of higher quality notes did not aid performance when we compared the write and no write conditions and those producing poorer quality notes performed even worse in the write condition. The results suggest that students do not necessarily have adequate note‐taking skills and that they may need instruction in the production and use of external representations. Keywords: problem‐solving, notational quality, note‐taking, external representations Dans cette étude, les auteures ont exploré l’effet des notes prises par des étudiants de premier cycle sur leur capacité de raisonnement. Les participants ont résolu quatre problèmes de raisonnement analytique, prenant des notes en vue de résoudre deux problèmes sur quatre. La plupart des participants ont pris lorsqu’ils en avaient l’occasion. La prise de meilleures notes n’a pas contribué à l’obtention de meilleurs résultats si l’on compare les contextes avec ou sans notes ; les personnes qui ont pris de moins bonnes notes ont obtenu un rendement encore plus mauvais dans le contexte avec notes. Les résultats semblent indiquer que les étudiants ne savent pas nécessairement comment prendre de bonnes notes et qu’il faudrait peut‐être leur montrer comment prendre des notes et s’en servir. Mots clés : résolution de problèmes, prise de notes, qualité des notes

Eliciting emotion ratings for a set of film clips: A preliminary archive for research in emotion

Film clips are commonly used to elicit subjectively experienced emotional states for many research purposes, but film clips currently available in databases are out of date, include a limited set of emotions, and/or pertain to only one conceptualization of emotion. This work reports validation data from two studies aimed to elicit basic and complex emotions (amusement, anger, anxiety, compassion, contentment, disgust, fear, happiness/joy, irritation, neutrality, pride, relief, sadness, surprise), equally distributed according to valence (positive, negative) and intensity (high, low). Participants rated film clips according to the degree of experienced emotion, and for valence and arousal. Our findings initiate an iterative archive of film clips shown here to discretely elicit 11 different emotions. Although further validation of these film clips is needed, ratings provided here should assist researchers in selecting potential film clips to meet the aims of their work