Effects of different forms of tutor action in a conditional reasoning task: An experimental approach to the tutorial dialogue

Abstract

This study investigated how different forms of tutor action influenced novice students’ performance on the Wason selection task, and how the students perceived the situation. In the control condition, the tutor provided supportive feedback which was minimal in terms of content (CG), in contrast to help in the form of directives (IM) or questions (QM). Based on the findings of studies of tutorial dialogue in the literature, we expected to observe: lower performance for CG (H1) and better performance with QM than IM (H2), a less positive perception of the tutor’s assistance for CG (H3), and that the tutees would differentiate between the IM and QM conditions (H4). These hypotheses were confirmed, with the exception of H2, IM and QM producing similar performances.