General Knowledge Test Research Articles

Greater response cardinality indirectly reduces confidence

ABSTRACTKoriat's Self-Consistency Model of subjective confidence proposes that the consistency and accessibility with which a response is retrieved are cues to confidence in the accuracy of that response. The Self-Consistency Model, however, has only been assessed using two-alternative forced-choice questions. Consideration of open-ended questions suggested that response cardinality—the number of unique response options that might come to mind—should directly reduce response consistency, and thus indirectly reduce confidence. Australian undergraduate students (N = 389) completed a 20-item open-ended general-knowledge test with confidence ratings attached to each answer. Replicating previous Self-Consistency Model findings, but in an open-ended format for the first time, consistency and accessibility were independent positive predictors of confidence, though the prediction of accessibility did not reach statistical significance. Extending the model, the number of unique responses given by participants, a measure of response cardinality, was found to be a strong negative predictor of consistency and indirect negative predictor of confidence. Implications of the results therefore include the use of simple strategies such as prompting or providing varying numbers of response options as potentially effective for manipulating cardinality and thus confidence.

Personality Traits, Learning and Academic Achievements

<p>There has been an increased interest in personality traits (especially the five-factor model) in relation to education and learning over the last decade. Previous studies have shown a relation between personality traits and learning, and between personality traits and academic achievement. The latter is typically described in terms of Grade Point Average (GPA). This review paper gives an overview, based on previous research, of highly relevant factors that might explain the relation between personality traits and learning on the one hand and the relation between personality traits and academic achievement on the other hand. Motivation, goals and approaches to learning are important factors that are associated with some personality traits. Two conclusions can be made from this review: (1) intrinsic motivation, a deep approach to learning and learning goals are associated with general knowledge and good test results, all linked together by the openness trait; (2) extrinsic (in combination with intrinsic) motivation, an achieving (in combination with deep) approach to learning and performance goals (in combination with learning goals) are associated with high grades in general linked together by the conscientiousness trait. Openness is associated with learning and general knowledge while conscientiousness is associated with academic achievement.</p>

What is Normal Cognitive Aging? Evidence from Task-Based Functional Neuroimaging.

The idea that our cognitive abilities change with age has support from empirical research as well as from anecdotal reports. Cognition has many component processes, some of which are impaired by normal aging like attention and memory as a result of changes in perceptual systems or speed of processing. Other cognitive domains improve in functioning as aging continues such as wisdom and some kinds of decision making. Many years of research in the psychology of cognitive aging has described patterns of age-related changes in cognitive processes with older adults performing worse than younger adults on tests of attention, working memory and episodic memory and better on tests of general knowledge. More recent work in task-related functional neuroimaging has further elucidated the effects of aging on brain circuitry related to these cognitive processes. Generally, studies show that older adults activate regions of the frontal cortex more than younger adults while younger adults activate more posterior cortical areas. This paper describes normal patterns of cognitive change in healthy aging, describes how some of these processes can be explored with functional neuroimaging, and briefly describes the work attempting to describe differences between normal and pathological cognitive aging.

Improved memory for error feedback.

Surprising feedback in a general knowledge test leads to an improvement in memory for both the surface features and the content of the feedback (Psychon Bull Rev 16:88-92, 2009). Based on the idea that in cognitive tasks, error is surprising (the orienting account, Cognition 111:275-279, 2009), we tested whether error feedback would be better remembered than correct feedback. Colored words were presented as feedback signals in a flanker task, where the color indicated the accuracy. Subsequently, these words were again presented during a recognition task (Experiment 1) or a lexical decision task (Experiments 2 and 3). In all experiments, memory was improved for words seen as error feedback. These results are compared to the attentional boost effect (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 39:1223-12231, 2013) and related to the orienting account for post-error slowing (Cognition 111:275-279, 2009).

Teacher professional knowledge and classroom management: on the relation of general pedagogical knowledge (GPK) and classroom management expertise (CME)

Due to the need for measurement instruments that allow an investigation of teachers’ situational cognition and thus go beyond the limited scope of classical paper-and-pencil-tests, we ask how a specific video-based measurement of teachers’ classroom management expertise can provide additional information when compared with an established paper-and-pencil-test that broadly covers mathematics teachers’ general pedagogical knowledge. For this, we apply the general pedagogical knowledge test previously developed in the Teacher Education and Development Study—Mathematics (TEDS-M) comprising knowledge of structuring lessons (‘structure’); motivating students and managing the classroom (‘motivation/classroom management’); dealing with heterogeneous learning groups (‘adaptivity’); and assessing students (‘assessment’). Using test data of 188 novice teachers, advanced beginners, and expert teachers, we raise questions regarding the two tests’ (1) structural relations, (2) expert-novice differences, and (3) predictive validity. Findings: (1a) classroom management expertise can be empirically separated from general pedagogical knowledge, although the two constructs are positively inter-correlated (medium effect size), (1b) classroom management expertise is more highly correlated with pedagogical knowledge of classroom management than with pedagogical knowledge of ‘adaptivity’, ‘structure’, and ‘assessment’, (1c) classroom management expertise is more highly correlated with procedural pedagogical knowledge (cognitive demand ‘generate’) than with declarative pedagogical knowledge (cognitive demands ‘recall’ and ‘understand/analyze’), (2) novice teachers as well as advanced beginners are outperformed by expert teachers, and (3) classroom management expertise, compared with general pedagogical knowledge, is a stronger predictor for instructional quality aspects of classroom management as rated by students.

Gender differences on general knowledge tests: Are they due to Differential Item Functioning?

Gender differences on knowledge tests favoring men are among the most stable gender differences found in cognitive ability measures. Even though several attempts have been made to explain this finding, most studies have not sufficiently considered methodological aspects such as Differential Item Functioning (DIF). The present study investigated whether a German general knowledge test would show gender differences and whether these gender differences could be explained by DIF. To this end, we administered a knowledge test to a sample of N=977 German high-school students. We observed a large gender difference in the total score of the general knowledge test (|d|=0.78). On the basis of a nonparametric DIF-detection approach, we found that 40 of the 84 items showed a substantial amount of DIF. Eliminating those items from the overall knowledge test score reduced the observed gender difference to |d|=0.32. Results are discussed with regard to gender differences on knowledge tests in general and methodological considerations.

Conceptual Processing of Distractors by Older but Not Younger Adults

Evidence from perceptually based implicit memory tasks demonstrates greater priming from distracting information among older compared with younger adults. We examined whether older adults also show greater conceptually based implicit priming from distracting information. We measured priming using a general-knowledge test that was preceded by an incidental-encoding task (a color-naming Stroop task in one experiment and a 1-back task involving pictures with irrelevant words superimposed in a second experiment). Younger adults showed no priming from the distracting information in either experiment, whereas older adults showed reliable priming in both experiments. Thus, unlike young adults, older adults process irrelevant information conceptually and then can use that information to boost their performance on a subsequent task.

Sex differences in general knowledge: meta-analysis and new data on the contribution of school-related moderators among high-school students.

Research from various countries consistently reported an advantage of boys over girls in general knowledge and was also suggestive of some overall trends regarding specific domains of general knowledge that were speculated to stem from biologically differentiated interests. However, results were heterogeneous and, as of yet, had not been evaluated meta-analytically. Moreover, previous research drew on overly homogeneous high-school or undergraduate samples whose representativeness appears problematic; mostly, likely moderators, such as school type, student age or parental education, were also not directly investigated or controlled for. We provide a meta-analytical aggregation of available results regarding sex differences in general knowledge and present new data, investigating the psychometric properties of the General Knowledge Test (GKT), on which previous research primarily relied, and explored sex differences in a large and heterogeneous Austrian high-school student sample (N = 1088). The aggregated sex effect in general knowledge was of medium size in previous research, but differences in specific domains were heterogeneous across countries and only modest at best. Large sex differences in our data could be explained to a large part by school-related moderators (school type, school, student age, parental education) and selection processes. Boys had a remaining advantage over girls that was only small in size and that was consistent with the magnitude of sex differences in general intelligence. Analysis of the GKT yielded no evidence of biologically differentiated interests, but of a specific interest in the humanities among girls. In conclusion, previous research likely overestimated sex differences in general knowledge.

Recent study, but not retrieval, of knowledge protects against learning errors.

Surprisingly, people incorporate errors into their knowledge bases even when they have the correct knowledge stored in memory (e.g., Fazio, Barber, Rajaram, Ornstein, & Marsh, 2013). We examined whether heightening the accessibility of correct knowledge would protect people from later reproducing misleading information that they encountered in fictional stories. In Experiment 1, participants studied a series of target general knowledge questions and their correct answers either a few minutes (high accessibility of knowledge) or 1 week (low accessibility of knowledge) before exposure to misleading story references. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants instead retrieved the answers to the target general knowledge questions either a few minutes or 1 week before the rest of the experiment. Reading the relevant knowledge directly before the story-reading phase protected against reproduction of the misleading story answers on a later general knowledge test, but retrieving that same correct information did not. Retrieving stored knowledge from memory might actually enhance the encoding of relevant misinformation.

Model-based clustering for multivariate partial ranking data

This paper proposes the first model-based clustering algorithm dedicated to multivariate partial ranking data. This is an extension of the Insertion Sorting Rank (isr) model for ranking data, which has the dual property to be a meaningful model through its location and scale parameters description and to be a kind of “physical” model through its derivation from the ranking generating process assumed to be an insertion sorting algorithm. The heterogeneity of the rank population is modeled by a mixture of isr, whereas a conditional independence assumption allows the extension to multivariate ranking. Maximum likelihood estimation is performed through a SEM-Gibbs algorithm, and partial rankings are considered as missing data, that allows us to simulate them during the estimation process. After having validated the estimation algorithm as well as the robustness of the model on simulated datasets, three real datasets were studied: the 1980 American Psychological Association (APA) presidential election votes, the results of French students to a general knowledge test and the votes of the European countries to the Eurovision song contest. The proposed model appears to be relevant in comparison with the most standard competitor ranking models (when available) and leads to significant interpretation for each application. In particular, regional alliances between European countries are exhibited in the Eurovision contest, which are often suspected but never proved.

Amazing Stories: Acquiring and Avoiding Inaccurate Information From Fiction

Authors of fiction need not provide accurate accounts of the world, which might generate concern about the kinds of information people can acquire from narratives. Research has demonstrated that readers liberally encode and rely upon the information provided in fictional stories. To date, materials used to demonstrate these effects have largely included stories taking place in real-world settings. We tested whether readers might exhibit more conservative use of information from stories with unrealistic settings and characers, as in science fiction and fantasy genres. In two experiments, participants read texts containing accurate, misleading, or neutral information, embedded in realistic or unrealistic stories. They subsequently completed a general knowledge test that included probes for story information. Unrealistic stories, in comparison to realistic stories, led to reductions in the use of misinformation. Source monitoring judgments suggest explanations for these reductions. The findings offer intriguing possibilities for encouraging readers' critical evaluation of text content.

Suggestibility From Stories: Can Production Difficulties and Source Monitoring Explain a Developmental Reversal?

Children's memories improve throughout childhood, and this improvement is often accompanied by a reduction in suggestibility. In this context, it is surprising that older children learn and reproduce more factual errors from stories than do younger children (Fazio & Marsh, 2008). The present study examined whether this developmental reversal is limited to production tests, or whether younger children are still less suggestible when the final test (multiple-choice) asks them to recognize the answer. A second goal was to explore the role of source monitoring in children's suggestibility by examining children's awareness of learning within, versus before, the experiment. Five-year-olds and 7-year-olds listened to stories containing correct, neutral, and misleading references and later took either a multiple-choice or short-answer general knowledge test. In addition, they judged whether each answer had appeared in the stories and whether they had known it before the experiment. Critically, a developmental reversal in suggestibility was observed on both tests; younger children were less suggestible even when faced with the story errors at test. Although older children showed superior source discriminability for whether their answers had appeared in the stories, they showed an illusion of prior knowledge, believing they had known their misinformation answers all along. To this effect, older children's increased suggestibility may be due not only to their superior memory capacity for specific story errors, but also to their ability and tendency to integrate story information into their knowledge base.

Pilgrims sailing the Titanic: Plausibility effects on memory for misinformation

People rely on information they read even when it is inaccurate (Marsh, Meade, & Roediger, Journal of Memory and Language 49:519-536, 2003), but how ubiquitous is this phenomenon? In two experiments, we investigated whether this tendency to encode and rely on inaccuracies from text might be influenced by the plausibility of misinformation. In Experiment 1, we presented stories containing inaccurate plausible statements (e.g., "The Pilgrims' ship was the Godspeed"), inaccurate implausible statements (e.g., . . . the Titanic), or accurate statements (e.g., . . . the Mayflower). On a subsequent test of general knowledge, participants relied significantly less on implausible than on plausible inaccuracies from the texts but continued to rely on accurate information. In Experiment 2, we replicated these results with the addition of a think-aloud procedure to elicit information about readers' noticing and evaluative processes for plausible and implausible misinformation. Participants indicated more skepticism and less acceptance of implausible than of plausible inaccuracies. In contrast, they often failed to notice, completely ignored, and at times even explicitly accepted the misinformation provided by plausible lures. These results offer insight into the conditions under which reliance on inaccurate information occurs and suggest potential mechanisms that may underlie reported misinformation effects.

The “None of the Above” Option in Multiple-Choice Testing: An Experimental Study

The authors assessed the effects of using “none of the above” as an option in a 40-item, general-knowledge multiple-choice test administered to undergraduate students. Examinees who selected “none of the above” were given an incentive to write the correct answer to the question posed. Using “none of the above” as the keyed option made items much more difficult (d = −1.11). Furthermore, 45% of the time that examinees correctly selected “none of the above,” they wrote either a wrong answer (19%) or no answer (26%), and rescoring items to deny credit in these cases caused item discrimination to fall (d = −0.35). Thus, when “none of the above” is the keyed option, credit earned by examinees with knowledge deficiencies can make items appear to have more discriminatory power than is actually the case. The authors recommend that “none of the above” should not be used as an option in multiple-choice items.

Early reading success and its relationship to reading achievement and reading volume: replication of ‘10 years later’

Cunningham and Stanovich reported a longitudinal investigation over 10 years that examined the unique influence of exposure to print in explaining individual differences on various measures of reading achievement and declarative (general) knowledge. The present study replicated their investigation with a larger number of participants and additional measures of literacy and language skills. Fifty-four 1st graders were administered reading, spelling, vocabulary, IQ, and listening comprehension measures and then followed to the end of 10th grade. At the end of 10th grade, they were administered an IQ test and measures of reading comprehension, language ability, general knowledge, and exposure to print. Results showed that 1st grade reading skills were a strong predictor of 10th grade outcomes. Second and third-grade reading skills were predictive of individual differences in print exposure even after 10th grade reading comprehension and language ability had been partialed. Individual differences in print exposure also predicted differences in the growth of reading ability, word decoding, spelling, vocabulary, and listening comprehension throughout the elementary grades. Findings confirm the powerful, long-term benefits of providing children with a fast start in reading and support the reciprocal nature of strong reading skills and engagement in reading and reading-related activities.

Adjusting medical school admission: assessing interpersonal skills using situational judgement tests

Today's formal medical school admission systems often include only cognitively oriented tests, although most medical school curricula emphasise both cognitive and non-cognitive factors. Situational judgement tests (SJTs) may represent an innovative approach to the formal measurement of interpersonal skills in large groups of candidates in medical school admission processes. This study examined the validity of interpersonal video-based SJTs in relation to a variety of outcome measures. This study used a longitudinal and multiple-cohort design to examine anonymised medical school admissions and medical education data. It focused on data for the Flemish medical school admission examination between 1999 and 2002. Participants were 5444 candidates taking the medical school admission examination. Outcome measures were first-year grade point average (GPA), GPA in interpersonal communication courses, GPA in non-interpersonal courses, Bachelor's degree GPA, Master's degree GPA and final-year GPA (after 7 years). For students pursuing careers in general practice, additional outcome measures (9 years after sitting examinations) included supervisor ratings and the results of an interpersonal objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), a general practice knowledge test and a case-based interview. Interpersonal skills assessment carried out using SJTs had significant added value over cognitive tests for predicting interpersonal GPA throughout the curriculum, doctor performance, and performance on an OSCE and in a case-based interview. For the other outcomes, cognitive tests emerged as the better predictors. Females significantly outperformed males on the SJT (d = -0.26). The interpersonal SJT was perceived as significantly more job-related than the cognitive tests (d = 0.55). Video-based SJTs as measures of procedural knowledge about interpersonal behaviour show promise as complements to cognitive examination components. The interpersonal skills training received during medical education does not negate the selection of students on the basis of interpersonal skills. Future research is needed to examine the use of SJTs in other cultures and student populations.

Creating illusions of knowledge: Learning errors that contradict prior knowledge.

Most people know that the Pacific is the largest ocean on Earth and that Edison invented the light bulb. Our question is whether this knowledge is stable, or if people will incorporate errors into their knowledge bases, even if they have the correct knowledge stored in memory. To test this, we asked participants general-knowledge questions 2 weeks before they read stories that contained errors (e.g., "Franklin invented the light bulb"). On a later general-knowledge test, participants reproduced story errors despite previously answering the questions correctly. This misinformation effect was found even for questions that were answered correctly on the initial test with the highest level of confidence. Furthermore, prior knowledge offered no protection against errors entering the knowledge base; the misinformation effect was equivalent for previously known and unknown facts. Errors can enter the knowledge base even when learners have the knowledge necessary to catch the errors.

Investigating the Effect of Visually/Textually Input-based Treatment on Evaluation and Potency Dimensions of Deep Vocabulary Knowledge by Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners

This study evaluates the potentially relative effectiveness of visual/textual input-based treatment on the acquisition of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. After administrating a CELT test and a general vocabulary knowledge test (for the intermediate) sixty participants out of one hundred from the intact intermediate classes. These sixty participants were randomly assigned to two groups: control and experimental each comprising of thirty participants. During the intervention, adjectives which describe the characteristics of people were highlighted (bolded or capitalized). In fact they were taught through visual/textual enhancement to the experimental group, whereas the students in the control group received no specific instruction. Later, the two groups took a posttest of awareness of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge. The results indicated that visually/textually enhanced input teaching has a statistically significant influence on the awareness of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n2p89

Latino School Concentration and Academic Performance among Latino Children

ObjectiveTo examine the effects of the concentration of Latino students in elementary schools on Latino first graders’ test scores, and to determine if the effects vary by children's nativity status.MethodsWe use generalized estimating equations (GEE) on a sample of Latino first graders from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten Class of 1998 (ECLS‐K).ResultsFor math and reading, Latino concentration in schools improves students’ first grade test scores for Latino children of immigrants, but it has no effect for Latino children of U.S.‐born parents. For general knowledge test scores, Latino concentration has no effect for children of immigrants and has a deleterious impact on the scores of children of U.S.‐born parents. We also show no effect of Latino concentration on the scores of white children of U.S.‐born parents.ConclusionsThe results suggest that Latino concentration in elementary schools promotes educational outcomes for children from Latino immigrant families, but Latino families headed by U.S.‐born parents do not benefit from coethnic concentration, which is in accordance with expectations derived from assimilation theories.

The Effect of Teaching Vocabulary through Semantic Mapping on EFL Learners’ Awareness of the Affective Dimensions of Deep Vocabulary Knowledge

This study focused on the effect of teaching vocabulary through semantic mapping on the awareness of two affective dimensions, evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge as well as the general vocabulary knowledge of EFL students. Sixty intermediate EFL female adult learners participated in this study; they were chosen among 90 students through Prelemenary English test and a general vocabulary knowledge test. They were thus randomly divided into two group, experimental and control, each consisting of 30 students. As for the treatment, modifiers describing peoples’ characteristics were taught in the text and through semantic mapping, whereas these words were taught by usual vocabulary instruction in control group. At the end, students took a vocabulary achievement test and a test of awareness of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge. A t-test was run to analyze the data from the vocabulary achievement test. Results showed that teaching collocations has great influence on the students` general vocabulary knowledge. To see if the independent variable had significant effects on awareness of evaluation and potency dimensions of deep vocabulary knowledge, a MANOVA was run revealing that teaching vocabularies through semantic mapping significantly improved learners` awareness of the two dimensions.