Recall Of Factual Information Research Articles

Generation of Multiple-Choice Questions From Textbook Contents of School-Level Subjects

Multiple-choice question (MCQ) plays a significant role in educational assessment. Automatic MCQ generation has been an active research area for years, and many systems have been developed for MCQ generation. Still, we could not find any system that generates accurate MCQs from school-level textbook contents that are useful in real examinations. This observation motivated us to develop a system that generates MCQs to assess the student's recall of factual information. Also, the available systems are often domain, subject, or application-specific in nature. Although the MCQ generation task demands a specific setup, we expect a level of generalization can be achieved. In this development, we also focus on this issue. We propose a pipeline for automatic generation of MCQs from textbooks of middle-school level subjects, and the pipeline is partially subject-independent. The proposed pipeline comprises four core modules: preprocessing, sentence selection, key selection, and distractor generation. Several techniques have been employed to implement individual modules. These include sentence simplification, syntactic and semantic processing of the sentences, entity recognition, semantic relationship extraction among entities, WordNet, neural word embedding, neural sentence embedding, and computation of intersentence similarity. The system is evaluated using the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), India, textbooks for three subjects. The quality of system-generated questions is assessed by human experts using various system-level and individual module-level metrics. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system is capable of generating quality questions that could be useful in a real examination.

A Text Structure Analysis of Fourth and Sixth Grade Maltese Textbooks

Reading comprehension is essential for students to be successful in school and active participants of society. The ability to understand text is facilitated by text structures which encourage readers’ ability to locate, organize information, and to recall main ideas. To investigate the presence of text structures, an analysis of four Maltese language textbooks and two social studies workbooks, used in fourth and sixth grade in state schools in Malta, was conducted. Two independent reviewers analysed the books using five criteria: overall book structure, task type, text type, text structure, and reading comprehension strategy. Results showed that whereas narrative texts were the most common text type in fourth grade, more emphasis was placed on expository texts in sixth grade. Most books included cause-and-effect and problem-and-solution text structures. Recall of factual information was the predominant reading strategy, with limited exposure to other crucial strategies such as main idea identification. All textbooks gave importance to tasks that required drawings and games representing the child’s understanding of the text. Results indicated a high level of agreement between the raters’ analysis of Maltese language and social studies texts. This research suggests that texts used in the state school curriculum need to be structured in a way that reflects interventions such as the text structure strategy, to encourage main idea selection thereby facilitating comprehension of text.

Reducing Diagnostic Error in the Intensive Care Unit. Engaging Uncertainty When Teaching Clinical Reasoning.

As medicine continues to advance with improvements in technology, factual information has become more easily available at the bedside. Nevertheless, diagnostic error remains a salient concern for the medical community and public. To address this problem, two fundamental characteristics of the physician remain important: curiosity and the ability to apply critical reasoning to solve problems, often in the setting of imperfect knowledge and uncertainty. Historically, the teaching and recall of factual information, illness scripts, and pattern recognition are emphasized early in medical education. Students are often left with the impression that there is a single correct answer for every question; discussions of uncertainty are rare. Consequently, discomfort with uncertainty is common among doctors. As attention to explicit teaching of clinical reasoning increases, one must consider how to incorporate uncertainty into that teaching and to transform the clinical learning environment to embrace uncertainty. The authors propose the use of several simple methods easily employed in the critical care setting to make uncertainty explicit by changing the language used for expressing differential diagnosis, incorporating probabilities into daily sign-outs, and by implementing inductive reasoning when teaching critical thinking to offer learners a strategy for working through unknown problems; these approaches may normalize uncertainty, improve comfort with it, and reduce the impact of cognitive bias in decision-making. Comfort with uncertainty may result not only in improved clinical experiences for learning by transforming a once negative cognitive experience to a positive one but also in reduced susceptibility to thinking errors.

Effective Use of Multiple-Choice Items in the Mathematics Classroom

Well designed multiple-choice items can provide more than a summative check of knowledge and skills.Mr. Lopez: Why does Principal Smith want us to start every math lesson with five multiple-choice items?Mrs. Boyd: I suppose it helps students get ready for the state test.Mr. Lopez: Yeah, I guess you're right, but I don't like to use multiple-choice items all of the time. I like to check for more than whether or not my students can just execute a procedure.Mrs. Boyd: I know. Me too. I wish there was some way that multiple-choice questions could be used for more than just checking skills.Do you identify with these teachers' situation? Although they recognize the value of having students practice with multiple-choice items, they do not want their assessments to be limited to checking for procedural skills (i.e., the ability to execute algorithms and computational procedures). This common view of multiple-choice items, however, is very limited in scope. The purpose of this article is to offer an expanded view of the use of multiple-choice items in the middle level mathematics classroom. Three uses of multiple-choice items that move beyond a summative check of skill attainment and fit within national standards will be described.Assessment and instructionThis We Believe: Keys to Educating Young Adolescents (National Middle School Association [NMSA], 2010) affirms the need to use a variety of assessments to meet the needs of middle grades students. Similarly, the Assessment Principle in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards suggests the positive impact on learning that results from the use of varied assessments. In the text accompanying the Assessment Principle, the assessments specified include open-ended questions, constructed-response tasks, selected-response items, performance tasks, observations, conversations, journals, and portfolios (NCTM, 2000, p. 23). In this description, however, the view of selected-response, or multiple-choice, items was limited to a check for whether or not students can perform a skill, most likely at the end of an instructional unit (e.g., summative assessment). Similarly, others have indicated that multiple-choice items are appropriate for assessing students' recall of factual information (Marzano, 2000).Since the release of the Assessment Principle, two occurrences have caused us to rethink this narrow view of multiple-choice items. First, with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, increased attention has been given to the role end-of-the-year tests play in daily school interactions. Teachers naturally want their students to be successful on these standardized tests, which typically consist of multiple-choice items (Burrill, 2005; Marzano, 2000). It only makes sense to practice with these types of items in class (Burrill).Because of the level of accountability that has been attached to test scores, however, our conversations with middle grades teachers such as Mr. Lopez and Mrs. Boyd have revealed that teachers are practicing with multiple-choice items throughout their instruction, not just at the end of a lesson or unit. At the same time, teachers are expected to help their students develop a deeper understanding of mathematics. This, in turn, requires teachers to assess student understanding throughout their instruction to make the best instructional decisions (NCTM, 2000; NMSA, 2010; Tomlinson, 2001; Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2009). It is the emphasis on throughout their instruction for both the use of multiplechoice items and assessing student understanding that prompts us to rethink the role of multiple-choice items in the mathematics classroom.The second occurrence since the release of the Assessment Principle is the introduction of personal responses systems (commonly referred to as clickers). These devices make it possible for a teacher to pose a multiple-choice question to the whole class and have students respond individually by choosing a response on the handheld clicker. …

Teacher question and student response with regard to cognition and language use

In the current study, we focus on teacher-student discourse in Pre-K science activities, with particular attention to teacher questioning. Videotaped classroom observations and teacher interviews served as the corpus of data. Overall, teachers asked mostly closed-ended questions, but used more open-ended questions when experiments were being conducted. During experiments, teachers’ questions were aimed at prediction and reasoning. In contrast, teachers used primarily closed-ended questions when science skills were being practiced and during science book readings, when their questions were oriented toward recognition and recall of factual information. The effects of the teachers’ questions can be seen in the students’ responses. When questions were open-ended, students employed a more varied vocabulary and more complex sentence structures. When teachers’ questions were oriented toward prediction and reasoning, students practiced these higher level cognitive skills in responding. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for teaching practice in early childhood science education.

Developmental Changes in Attention and Comprehension Among Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Changes in visual attention and story comprehension for children (N = 132) with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison peers were examined. Between the ages of 7 and 9 (Phase 1) and approximately 21 months later (Phase 2), children viewed 2 televised stories: 1 in the presence of toys and 1 in their absence. Both groups of children showed developmental increases in visual attention and stable group differences over time. Deficits in comprehension among children with ADHD, however, increased over time. Whereas comparison children's recall of factual and causal information increased over time in both viewing conditions, children with ADHD showed no developmental improvement in recall of factual information in the toys-present condition and no improvement in recall of causal relations in either viewing condition.

The Effects of the Paired Associates Strategy (PAS) on the Recall of Factual Information by Postsecondary Students With Learning Disabilities

.Despite the success of independence-oriented interventions such as strategy instruction (SI) in secondary populations, very little research has examined the effectiveness of SI at the postsecondary level. Thus, we sought to determine if one form of SI, the Paired Associates Strategy (PAS), improved the recall of factual information by postsecondary students with learning disabilities. Results suggest that PAS, in a modified format, was generally effective in increasing recall of information by all 5 participants. However, recall of information did not maintain. In addition, student perception varied regarding the usefulness of the strategy and its application to other situations. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

Evaluating the Usability of a Web-Based Stress Management Course

College students must continually deal with the pressures of deadlines, exams, and major life changes. Such stress can affect physical and emotional health, productivity, and lead to self-destructive coping mechanisms. Teaching students effective stress management skills is critical to their success and well-being. To help meet that educational need a Web-based stress management course entitled Stress and Self Care was developed. The objective of the first phase of the project was to examine the usability and acceptability of an eight-lesson prototype. College students from four universities participated in a pilot to provide formative evaluation. In addition, one student group was tested on recall of factual information contained in the first lesson. They showed significant recall of material at posttest compared to pretest. Overall the prototype was determined to be an effective strategy in terms of usability and acceptability.

Comprehension of Televised Stories by Preschool Children With ADHD

Investigated visual attention to and story comprehension of televised stories in 4- to 6-year-old children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison children. Half of the children in each group watched the program with toys in the room, and the other half watched without toys. Visual attention to the television was recorded, and story comprehension was assessed by performance on cued recall questions. All children attended significantly less when toys were present, but the difference when toys were present was greater for children with ADHD. The groups did not differ on recall of factual information when toys were absent. When toys were present, the comparison children showed no decrement in performance on factual questions, whereas the performance of children with ADHD was significantly worse. On questions testing causal connections, the children with ADHD performed more poorly than comparison children regardless of whether toys were present. Implications of these results for understanding and treating the academic and social difficulties of children with ADHD are discussed.

Identifying Critical Learner Traits in a Dynamic Computer-Based Geometry Program

The effects of students' working memory capacity, preference for amount of instruction, spatial problem-solving ability, and school mathematics grades on 2 achievement measures were investigated, along with recall of factual information and conceptual understanding after controlling for ability. Eighth-grade students were assigned to dyads and worked through 16 activities in The Geometer's Sketchpad, a dynamic geometry program. Learners who reported a relatively low preference for amount of instruction scored higher than their high-preference counterparts on the conceptual understanding test items. Students with relatively high mathematics school grades scored higher than students with lower grades on the factual recall test items but not on the conceptual understanding items. That low achievers in school mathematics performed relatively better in these nontraditional mathematics activities is an encouraging finding for mathematics educators and designers of open-ended learning environments.

Remembering science: The recall of factual information as a function of the presentation mode

AbstractTwo studies are reported on the recall of ‘scientific’ factual material as a function of the medium or channel of communication through which it was presented. Programmatic research by authors of this paper using widely different stimulus materials on different subject samples has indicated that, compared to information received through audiovisual or audio‐only channels, stimulus ‘material’ received through print is best remembered. In the first study subjects either saw part of an actual television science programme in the audiovisual medium, heard it in the audio‐only medium or read a transcript in the print medium. As predicted, subjects who read the transcript remembered most details in both cued and free recall. In the second study a ‘talking‐head’ video was made of the reading of a comparatively easy and difficult scientific extract of comparable length. Subjects randomly assigned to one of six groups either saw audiovisually, heard in audio‐only, or read the print extract of either extract, and were then tested on free and cued recall. Again, material that was read was recalled best, though there were also a number of interesting medium by content interactions. These results are discussed in terms of the literature on the comprehension and recall of factual material.

THE EFFECTS OF AGE ON RECALL OF INFORMATION FROM A SIMULATED TELEVISION NEWS BROADCAST

The recall of factual information from a news broadcast was assessed in 267 adults who were young, middle‐aged, or elderly. Participants listened to a 6‐min simulated news program, and at the conclusion of the program were asked 25 factual questions related to the content of the broadcast. A significant age effect was noted, with older adults recalling less information than the younger‐aged groups. Performance on this task positively correlated with a measure of prose recall and self‐reports of everyday memory. Results suggest that a computer‐simulated task may be a useful medium for assessing everyday memory performance.

The Effect of "Organizing Word-Visuals" in Increasing College Students’ Recall of Factual Information

The Effect of "Organizing Word-Visuals" in Increasing College Students’ Recall of Factual Information

Obsessional Personality Disorder and Remembering

Patients suffering from obsessional personality disorder (anankasts) have been described as possessing 'superior memories', because of the detailed precision of their accounts. At the same time, such classical phenomena as doubt, checking and rumination imply faulty recall. This paradox is discussed, and some predictions drawn from a hypothesis regarding the cognitive charactteristics of obsessional disorder. Findings are presented which indicate that, by comparison with matched psychiatric controls, anankasts do not excel in the long-term recall of factual information or meaningful anecdotal material. But they show the following mnemonic features: (a) Superiority of immediate memory span, reflecting high levels of attention. (b) Superior recall of ambiguous anecdotal material, reflecting a tendency to the pointless 'rehearsal' of such material. (c) Weak redintegration in personal reminiscence. It is suggested that anankasts' doubts about their remembering refer not so much to the correctness of what is being recalled as to the quality of the recalling itself.

AN INVESTIGATION OF LEVEL I AND LEVEL II COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN THE LEARNING AND RECALL OF FACTUAL AND INFERENTIAL INFORMATION

Summary. This study relates Jensen's dual‐process theory of cognitive functioning to the performance of 10–11 year‐old children on the learning of both factual and inferential information. Using Digit Span and Raven IQ scores, a total of 84 children was divided into four groups, scoring high and/or low on Level I (associative) and Level II (conceptual) abilities respectively. The performance of these groups was then compared on short‐term recall of factual and inferential listening comprehension items and on longer‐term recall of factual and inferential items in a test based on a prepared social studies lesson. It was hypothesised that conceptual ability would have the stronger relationship to performance on inferential items, but that associative ability would facilitate performance on factual items. Some evidence was found for the facilitative effect of high associative ability on recall of factual information in the social studies test but not in listening comprehension. Conceptual ability was by far the stronger determinant in the recall of both factual and inferential information. These results suggest that Jensen's dual‐process theory has not yet demonstrated its utility in the area of school learning.

Effect of sentence interrelation and scrambling on the recall of factual information.

Effect of sentence interrelation and scrambling on the recall of factual information.