Function Of Prior Knowledge Research Articles

Self-derivation of new knowledge through memory integration varies as a function of prior knowledge

ABSTRACT The current research was an investigation of the effects of prior, domain-relevant knowledge on self-derivation of new, integrated knowledge. Adults were presented with novel “stem” facts and tested for self-derivation of new knowledge through integration of the facts in memory. To examine the effects of prior knowledge on memory integration, we tested participants under three within-subject conditions, in which in advance of stem encoding, they were provided with either: (1) no domain relevant information (No Knowledge control), (2) generally relevant information about the domain (General), or (3) generally relevant information about the domain along with a stem fact that was directly necessary for self-derivation (General + Stem). Prior exposure to both General and General + Stem knowledge facilitated memory for the novel, explicitly-taught stem facts. Moreover, for both prior knowledge conditions, the amount of domain-relevant knowledge retained in memory was associated with trial-by-trial self-derivation success. Importantly, the type of prior knowledge modulated memory integration in different ways. Whereas General + Stem knowledge enhanced selective retrieval and integration of the stem facts, General knowledge supported learning of the individual stem facts, but not their integration with one another. Together, the findings indicate how malleable, domain-specific experience shapes encoding, integration, and flexible extension of new, related information.

Input-dependent noise can explain magnitude-sensitivity in optimal value-based decision-making

AbstractRecent work has derived the optimal policy for two-alternative value-based decisions, in which decision-makers compare the subjective expected reward of two alternatives. Under specific task assumptions — such as linear utility, linear cost of time and constant processing noise — the optimal policy is implemented by a diffusion process in which parallel decision thresholds collapse over time as a function of prior knowledge about average reward across trials. This policy predicts that the decision dynamics of each trial are dominated by the difference in value between alternatives and are insensitive to the magnitude of the alternatives (i.e., their summed values). This prediction clashes with empirical evidence showing magnitude-sensitivity even in the case of equal alternatives, and with ecologically plausible accounts of decision making. Previous work has shown that relaxing assumptions about linear utility or linear time cost can give rise to optimal magnitude-sensitive policies. Here we question the assumption of constant processing noise, in favour of input-dependent noise. The neurally plausible assumption of input-dependent noise during evidence accumulation has received strong support from previous experimental and modelling work. We show that including input-dependent noise in the evidence accumulation process results in a magnitude-sensitive optimal policy for value-based decision-making, even in the case of a linear utility function and a linear cost of time, for both single (i.e., isolated) choices and sequences of choices in which decision-makers maximise reward rate. Compared to explanations that rely on non-linear utility functions and/or non-linear cost of time, our proposed account of magnitude-sensitive optimal decision-making provides a parsimonious explanation that bridges the gap between various task assumptions and between various types of decision making.

The lure of seductive details during lecture learning.

Research demonstrates that seductive details negatively impact learning from instructional materials such as textbooks and learning modules. Yet, anecdotally, teachers and students consider seductive details an enhancement to classroom lectures. We examined this apparent disconnect by exploring the impact of seductive details in mathematics lecture learning as a function of prior knowledge across 2 affective contexts: low-stakes learning and high-stakes learning. Undergraduate students viewed a video lecture on matrix algebra with or without seductive details either in a low-stakes or high-stakes learning environment. The high stakes were designed to mimic common classroom accountability for learning and were removed prior to the final test. On the final test, seductive details were generally detrimental in the low-stakes, but not high-stakes, learning environment. However, this effect was moderated by students’ prior knowledge. Students with higher prior knowledge were not impacted by seductive details in either high- or low-stakes learning environments. In contrast, students with lower prior knowledge—those most in need of pedagogical assistance—learned more when seductive details were included in a high-stakes lecture environment. These results suggest that seductive details may not be as detrimental as previously concluded, and may even be beneficial in an incentivized learning environment for students who have the most to learn. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Transient medial prefrontal perturbation reduces false memory formation

Knowledge extracted across previous experiences, or schemas, benefit encoding and retention of congruent information. However, they can also reduce specificity and augment memory for semantically related, but false information. A demonstration of the latter is given by the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, where the studying of words that fit a common semantic schema are found to induce false memories for words that are congruent with the given schema, but were not studied. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has been ascribed the function of leveraging prior knowledge to influence encoding and retrieval, based on imaging and patient studies. Here, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to transiently perturb ongoing mPFC processing immediately before participants performed the DRM-task. We observed the predicted reduction in false recall of critical lures after mPFC perturbation, compared to two control groups, whereas veridical recall and recognition memory performance remained similar across groups. These data provide initial causal evidence for a role of the mPFC in biasing the assimilation of new memories and their consolidation as a function of prior knowledge.

Living on the Other Side of the Tracks: An Investigation of Public Housing Stereotypes

Many ascribe to the concept of “home sweet home”; however, this is an increasingly elusive end state. The economic recession and depressed housing market have resulted in unprecedented numbers of displaced homeowners and an insufficient supply of affordable housing options. As a result of these circumstances, the homeless rate in the United States is at an all-time high, and many jurisdictions report long waiting lists for temporary shelters and subsidized, or “public,” housing. According to research, public housing is often stigmatized, and there are several widely held, negative stereotypes of public housing residents. The authors examine the perceptions of residents when the occupants are renters and the landlord is a governmental entity (i.e., public housing). The authors propose a conceptual model that examines public housing resident stereotypes based on perceivers’ prior knowledge, the propensity to seek out cultural diversity, and demographic characteristics. The findings from an experiment suggest that public housing stereotypes are a function of prior knowledge and diversity-seeking tendencies and that consumers’ diversity-seeking tendencies can be altered in response to certain external, situational stimuli. The authors discuss implications for public policy and consumer welfare.

Beyond ball-and-stick: Students' processing of novel STEM visualizations

Students are frequently presented with novel visualizations introducing scientific concepts and processes normally unobservable to the naked eye. Despite being unfamiliar, students are expected to understand and employ the visualizations to solve problems. Domain experts exhibit more competency than novices when using complex visualizations, but less is known about how and when learners develop representational fluency. This project examined students' moment-by-moment adoption patterns for scientific visualizations. In a laboratory experiment, introductory-level organic chemistry students viewed familiar ball-and-stick and novel electrostatic potential map representations while solving chemistry problems. Eye movement patterns, verbal explanations, and individual difference analyses showed that students initially relied on familiar representations, particularly for difficult questions. However, as the task unfolded, students with more prior knowledge began relying upon the novel visualizations. These results indicate adoption and fluent use of visualizations is not given; rather, it is a function of prior knowledge and unfolding experience with presented content.

Fourteen-month-old infants infer the continuous identity of objects on the basis of nonvisible causal properties.

Research on object cognition in infancy suggests that children from (at latest) 1 year of age are capable of individuating objects according to property/kind information. It remains unclear from previous work, however, whether infants in such studies truly apply sortal (kind) concepts or whether they merely track objects on the basis of superficial surface features. To clarify this question, we examined infants' flexibility in tracking property changes. In particular, we investigated which property changes infants see as diagnostic for kind changes and whether they can dynamically adapt this view as a function of prior knowledge. Fourteen-month-old infants were presented with a salient property transformation indicating a category change (i.e., a rabbit was placed in a box but a carrot was retrieved from it). Prior to the test, half of the infants saw how a stuffed animal could be transformed into another object by a simple mechanism. The other infants were unaware of this transformation. Only infants of the naive group interpreted the property change observed in the subsequent test as diagnostic for a change in identity and thus expected two objects to be present in the box. The results are discussed in the light of psychological essentialism, which can explain why infants treat some classes of property changes but not others as diagnostic for changes in identity.

Content and timing of feedback in a web-based learning environment: effects on learning as a function of prior knowledge

This study investigated the effectiveness of different types of feedback content (elaborate versus global) and feedback timing (immediate versus delayed) for learning genetics in a web-based learning environment as a function of learners' prior knowledge. It was hypothesized that learning outcomes of students with low prior knowledge would be fostered by immediate elaborate feedback, whereas those of students with more prior knowledge would be enhanced by delayed global feedback. Students' perceptions of the feedback they received were explored. Results showed a significant positive effect of global feedback on learning outcomes for higher prior knowledge learners, although those who received elaborate feedback gave a higher appreciation rating. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for the design and delivery of feedback in web-based learning environments.

Accuracy of extrapolated data as a function of prior knowledge and regularization

The prior discrete Fourier transform (PDFT) is a linear spectral estimator that provides a solution that is both data consistent and of minimum weighted norm through the use of a suitably designed Hilbert space. The PDFT has been successfully used in imaging applications to improve resolution and overcome the nonuniqueness associated with having only finitely many spectral measurements. With the use of an appropriate prior function, the resolution of the reconstructed image can be improved dramatically. We explore the ways in which some significant parameters affect the PDFT estimate. A relationship between estimated spectral values, prior knowledge, and regularization was examined. It allows one to assess the reliability of the estimated spectral values for a given choice of prior estimate and provides a means for optimizing PDFT-based estimators.

Use of Elaboration Strategies by Students in Grades Two, Four, and Six

We examined elaboration strategy use as a function of prior knowledge with students in grades 2, 4, and 6. In this study, 134 Canadian students in 4 schools were assigned randomly to either a verbal elaboration (answer why each fact was true), imagery (create a mental picture), or keyword condition (create a mental picture using provided keywords) and presented with 4 familiar and 4 unfamiliar animal story sets. They were then tested for memory of the information. Second graders were not able to benefit from the imagery strategy unless given support. In contrast, verbal elaboration's benefits were not dependent on grade level. Imagery appeared to be a potent strategy for grade 6 students, as it is for adults, even when they had access to limited background knowledge. Introducing strategies as early as possible in the educational curriculum is vital if teachers are to encourage children to become self-regulated learners.

Learning From History Text: The Interaction of Knowledge and Comprehension Skill with Text Structure

Although prior knowledge and reading-comprehension skill have both been shown to influence learning from text, recent research based on the Kintsch (1988) model of text understanding leads to the hypothesis that the development of the text-base representation of text contents should be a function of reading-comprehension skill and not of prior knowledge, whereas the development of a situation model should be a function of the individual's prior knowledge and not of the reader's comprehension skill. Furthermore, the extent to which knowledge and comprehension skill influence learning from text was hypothesized to be a function of text contents. Using fictitious historical accounts, it was found that learning from an expanded text in which causal relations were made explicit was related to reading-comprehension skill and not to prior knowledge, whereas learning from an unexpanded text that did not spell out causes was a function of prior knowledge and not of reading-comprehension skill. The results were con...

The effect of increasing the memorability of category instances on estimates of category size.

According to Tversky and Kahneman’s (1973) availability heuristic, people sometimes make use of the ease with which instances are retrieved when they have to estimate proportions or frequencies. One implication of this availability heuristic is that any factor that affects memorability of instances from a category should also affect the estimated category size. In one of their experiments, Tversky and Kahneman found that, after being presented with a list of names, people judged the more famous names to be more frequent. Similarly, recall was found to be greater for the more famous names. Three experiments that used Tversky and Kahneman’s paradigm are reported. Repeating nonfamous names resulted in their increased recallability and a corresponding increase in estimates of their frequency (Experiments 1 and 3). Making nonfamous names more salient (Experiment 3) also had parallel effects on recallability and frequency estimates, indicating that different memory manipulations affected availability in a similar fashion. Furthermore, reliance on the heuristic was not changed as a function of prior knowledge (Experiment 2) or practice (Experiment 3)

Learning New Information from Text: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Reading Ability

This study was designed to examine children's ability to learn new information from textual materials. It investigated the extent to which equally intelligent average and poor readers could recognize and recall information from expository texts. Two types of explicit and four types of inferential information were tested through recognition items. Subjects recognized more explicit than inferential information, although some inference types were more difficult than others to recognize. In addition, the study examined the extent to which acquisition of new information was a function of prior knowledge. The probability of a correct response was computed for three different prior knowledge conditions: 1) correct, 2) wrong, or 3) unknown. This permitted investigation of the effect of prior knowledge on subjects' acquisition of new information, as well as subjects' ability to correct old information. Prior knowledge was a powerful factor in reading comprehension for both average and poor readers. Both groups were better at acquiring totally new information than at correcting old information that was inaccurate. Even when prior knowledge was contradicted by the text, subjects used it, rather than textual information, for item recognition. Only when they did not, or believed they did not, possess the necessary prior knowledge did they resort to text—with a consequent improvement in recognition.

Some determinants of task preference and the desire for information about the self

AbstractThis research examined the influence of task difficulty and diagnosticity (ability information) on task choice and preference. It was found that males preferred diagnostic over non‐diagnostic tasks, but among females significant preferences along this variable were not exhibited. Furthermore, the desire to obtain ability‐relevant information decreased as a function of prior knowledge about one's ability. Both high and low ability self‐perceptions, induced through prior experiences of success and failure, decreased the attraction toward diagnostic in formation. There was no indication that individuals with high ability self‐concepts are especially avoidant of further ability‐relevant information, as recent literature has suggested. In addition, and contrary to prior findings, difficult tasks were most preferred rather than easy or intermediate tasks, given that diagnosticity is held constant.

The logics and boundary concepts of information acquisition

AbstractBased on the concept of a set of mutually exclusive alternatives, the process of acquisition of knowledge is explained as a change from logical sum to logical product proposition. It is shown further that the definitions of the concept of information and ignorance can be derived from the basic concept of the mutually exclusive set and the definition of information acquisition. It is then demonstrated that other concepts essential in information theory can be defined and explained on the basis of the theory of information acquisition as presented in this article in a consistent way. It is further demonstrated that any nonmutually exclusive set can be converted to a mutually exclusive one, therefore a set of mutually exclusive alternatives represents a boundary concept that can form a foundation for information theory. The concept of a priori knowledge can be explained as a concept of a one‐alternative set and by that it forms another boundary where acquisition of information is no longer necessary. This way there are two boundary concepts in information theory and other concepts are then defined from them. They include the definition of the concept of problem and the concept of so‐called general statements, the role and function of prior knowledge and deductive reasoning in design of mutually exclusive sets, the function of our senses, their substitutes, and the concept of so‐called sixth sense as their boundary concept. Finally the concepts of the amount of information and ignorance and their measures are presented.