Publication Date
2022
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
First Advisor
Britt, Mary Anne
Second Advisor
Millis, Keith K.
Degree Name
Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)
Legacy Department
Department of Psychology
Abstract
Scientific explanations present a causal account of how events happen (e.g., how bees make honey). Understanding explanations is important in a variety of STEM fields. Yet college students routinely struggle to either remember the explanation or transfer their knowledge to new scenarios. One reason might be that students need support in integrating the information with prior knowledge into a mental representation. According to the literature, drawing the contents of science texts can help the reader facilitate integration of scientific explanations. One model, the Cognitive Model of Drawing Construction, assumes that drawing facilitates the selection of key information of the explanation, organization of the information in a mental representation, and integration of the new information with prior knowledge of the scientific phenomenon. Indeed, some evidence indicates that students benefit on comprehension and transfer performance when tasked with producing a drawing of explanations. Explanations contain spatial and causal information. Drawings that depict distances and relations between objects may help with representing this spatial information. Another form of drawing is a causal model, whichabstractly represents the causal chain of events that leads to and results in the phenomenon to be explained. Causal models have not yet been used in a production task, yet it is thought that these causal models may promote the integration of the causal information from scientific explanations. The present study tested the effect of producing depictive drawings and causal drawings on memory and transfer for scientific explanations. Therefore, the present study utilized a 2 Depictive drawing (no, yes) x 2 Causal drawing (no, yes) + 1 (Summary) design. The non- drawing condition reread the materials twice to help control for time on task. Participants read several science passages while producing drawings or summaries after each passage. Then, they recalled the passages from memory and answered transfer questions. Analyses showed that there was a no significant effect of task instruction on either measure of learning, cued recall and transfer. However, when controlling for time on task, the reread condition performed significantly better than all other conditions on both measures of learning. These results indicate a that the generative drawing effect may be largely driven by extra processing time dedicated to the material. In sum, drawing appears to not be an efficient way to learn scientific explanations, but it is likely a more engaging way to teach scientific explanations than simply rereading.
Recommended Citation
Rupp, Kathryn E., "The Effect of Drawing on The Memory and Comprehension of Scientific Explanations" (2022). Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations. 7617.
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allgraduate-thesesdissertations/7617
Extent
104 pages
Language
eng
Publisher
Northern Illinois University
Rights Statement
In Copyright
Rights Statement 2
NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.
Media Type
Text
