Aptitudes and Instructional Methods: Research on Individual Differences in Learning-Related Processes

摘要

Research on aptitude-instructional treatment interactions has shown that the relation of general ability to learning tends to increase as instruction places increased information processing burdens on learners and to decrease as instruction is designed to reduce the information processing demands on learners. This report summarizes a research project aimed at exploring and analyzing this result more deeply, through continued literature reviewing, experimental studies of individual differences in information processing during cognitive ability test performance, and instructional studies of ability-learning relationships. The research included eye movement measurement during cognitive performance and introspective reports of strategies following cognitive performance, in addition to conventional measures of error and latency. The principal implication of this project's exploratory work was that a cognitive process-based theory of aptitude for learning from instruction could be attainable, if continued research could clarify the role of executive assembly and control processes in aptitude and learning task performance. (Author)