Psychological Science ›› 2014, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (3): 656-660.

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Influence of the Presentation of Source Problems on Cognitive Load and Analogical Reasoning

SONG GUANGWEN1,Shu-Juan Ma2,   

  • Received:2013-10-14 Revised:2014-04-02 Online:2014-05-20 Published:2014-05-20

源问题呈现方式对认知负荷及类比推理的影响

宋广文1,马姝娟2,刘莎莎3   

  1. 1. 华南理工大学
    2. 中国农业大学
    3. 曲阜师范大学
  • 通讯作者: 刘莎莎

Abstract: With 176 third-year junior high school students as subjects, the influence of presentation of source problems on cognitive load and analogical reasoning were studied using a 2×2×2 matching block experimental design.   Randomly select 230 third-year junior high school students. There are 176 students whose basic reasoning abilities are similar screening by Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices. Divide them into 8 groups according to the final achievement in Chinese. The experimental material is arranged as follows. There are two similar articles of the war: one is a story of the general attacking the castle; the other is a story of the commander taking command. And there are two similar articles of putting out the fire: one is a story of the red rescue team putting out the fire; the other is a story of the neighbors putting out the fire. Select one story from the war and one story from putting out the fire, and the two stories constitute the dissimilar materials. Each story was adapted to a clear structure and an unclear structure. Finally there ware 8 stories. Four kinds of the materials of this research are: similar content, clear structure; dissimilar content, clear structure; similar content, unclear structure; dissimilar content, unclear structure. Radiation problem as the goal problem were used. There are 8 groups of this experiment, and each group randomly receives one of the four materials (see table 1). Five minutes later, the materials and distribute inductive questionnaire among the inductive group were collected. Ten minutes later, collect the inductive questionnaire and distribute the goal questionnaire (including cognitive load questionnaire and radiation problem) among all the subjects. Cognitive load measurement tool is the Self-reported invested mental effort scale. Participants report the mental effort they invest in learning and understanding the experimental material by themselves. Use SPSS13.0 statistical software package to process and analyze the collected data.   The results showed that: (1) All of the method of summary, the similarity of the source problems' contents and the clarity of the source problems' structure had significant impacts on cognitive load (p<.05, p<.001, p<.001), and there were no significant interaction among them. (2) The method of summary and the clarity of the source problems' structure had significant impacts on analogical learning (p<.01, p<.05), but the similarity of the source problems' contents did not have significant impact on analogical learning (p>.05). However, there were significant interaction among them (p<.05). In conclusion, the results of this study indicated that problem-presenting mode and inductive method had significant influence on cognitive load and analogical learning. So, if instructional design was the same to all the students, it would cause part of students have heavy cognitive load and the other part of them have to process redundant information. Therefore, individual instructional design was needed. More choices of textbook compiling and teaching plan design can be considered to provide for the students. Students can choose learning situation according to their own ability.

Key words: analogical reasoning, cognitive load, presentation of source problems, junior high school students

摘要: 采用2×2×2匹配分组实验设计,以176名初中三年级学生为被试,探讨了源问题呈现方式对中学生认知负荷及类比推理的影响。结果表明:(1)归纳、源问题内容相似性和源问题结构清晰性对认知负荷均有显著影响。(2)归纳和源问题结构清晰性对类比推理均有显著影响,且归纳、源问题内容相似性和源问题结构清晰性三者之间在对类比推理的影响上存在交互作用。

关键词: 类比推理, 认知负荷, 源问题呈现方式, 初中生