Journal of Educational Psychology

Clemens, Nathan H.; Lee, Kejin; Liu, Xiao; Boucher, Alexis; Al Otaiba, Stephanie; Simmons, Leslie

doi: 10.1037/edu0000814pmid: N/A

Significant attention and legislation have been directed to assessment intervention for students with word-level reading disability (WLRD; i.e., dyslexia). Scholars have called for similar attention to prevention-oriented approaches in which intervention is provided to students at risk for WLRD from the earliest grades. Progress monitoring is a key aspect of early intervention, and although numerous measures exist for monitoring kindergarten reading development across foundational skill areas, little evidence indicates which measure(s) provide data that best reflect progress toward successful reading outcomes or significant word reading difficulties. In this study, a sample of 426 ethnically and linguistically diverse kindergarten students, considered at-risk for reading difficulties at the start of kindergarten, were monitored across kindergarten with seven measures that included tests of letter name and sound fluency, phoneme segmentation, word and pseudoword reading, and a computer adaptive test. Students’ word reading skills were assessed at the end of kindergarten and first grade with standardized tests of word reading, pseudoword decoding, and oral reading. Analyses that included latent variable growth modeling (controlling for emergent bilingual status) and latent profile analyses found that growth in letter-sound fluency during the fall of kindergarten, and word reading fluency during the spring, were the most strongly related to subsequent word reading skills and most clearly distinguished a subgroup of students who demonstrated significant word reading difficulties by the end of first grade. These measures may be ideal indices of progress for low-performing kindergarteners and for signaling a need for intervention intensification within a prevention-oriented framework.

Wang, Lisi; Muenks, Katherine; Yan, Veronica X.

doi: 10.1037/edu0000813pmid: N/A

Retrieval practice is an effective strategy to promote long-term retention and learning, but students do not always use it in the most effective ways. Applying various intervention design principles that leverage sociomotivational research, we created an intervention targeted not only at teaching students about the efficacy of retrieval practice, but also at changing their study behaviors. We focused on increasing students’ understanding of how to implement retrieval practice effectively and decreasing their perceived cost of using retrieval practice. We found that our intervention increased students’ procedural metacognitive knowledge (that retrieval practice can be implemented flexibly in various formats) and intended use of retrieval practice, but it did not reduce perceived cost (that engaging in retrieval practice costs too much time and effort), as compared to a traditional retrieval practice intervention. There were also no effects of our intervention on reported use of retrieval practice. Furthermore, results from a structural equation model analysis showed that self-efficacy of procedural metacognitive knowledge was positively associated with students’ intended use of the strategy, whereas perceived cost was negatively associated with their reported use of the strategy. Alleviating perceived cost could be a potential venue for future intervention aimed at encouraging the self-regulated use of retrieval practice.

van den Broek, Gesa S. E.; Gerritsen, Suzanne L.; Oomen, Iris T. J.; Velthoven, Eva; van Boxtel, Femke H. J.; Kester, Liesbeth; van Gog, Tamara

doi: 10.1037/edu0000810pmid: N/A

Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) are popular in vocabulary software because they can be scored automatically and are compatible with many input devices (e.g., touchscreens). Answering MCQs is beneficial for learning, especially when learners retrieve knowledge from memory to evaluate plausible answer alternatives. However, such retrieval may not always occur (e.g., with easy-to-guess answers). Therefore, we tested whether we could optimize MCQs for retrieval practice with a stepwise display, which presents the question before the answer options. This creates an opportunity for cued recall. In an experimental classroom study (N = 75) and three online experiments with adult participants (N = 45, N = 77, and N = 79), participants practiced vocabulary with either standard MCQs or stepwise MCQs: In standard MCQs, a word was presented with three possible translations; in stepwise MCQs, it was shown for 4 s before the translations appeared. In three of the four experiments (Experiments 1, 3a, and 3b), stepwise MCQs enhanced retention significantly compared to standard MCQs, measured by a posttest several days after practice. Benefits of stepwise MCQs were found for different translation directions (Experiments 1 and 3) and both with easy-to-guess answers (noncompetitive answer options, Experiment 1) and hard-to-guess answers (competitive answer options, Experiment 3). However, the effect was most robust for questions with noncompetitive answer options (Experiments 1, 3a, and 3b) and for learners who reported trying to retrieve the answer from memory during the stepwise display (Experiments 1 and 3). Moreover, retention was generally enhanced by competitive, hard-to-guess answer options (Experiments 3a and 3b). Overall, a stepwise display is a promising and easy-to-implement manipulation to optimize MCQs for retrieval practice.

Menendez, David

doi: 10.1037/edu0000812pmid: N/A

During instruction, students are typically presented with new information through several modalities, such as language and images. Students need to attend to these different modalities and integrate the information in both in order to learn and generalize from instruction. Many studies have shown that the features of each modality, such as the use of generic noun phrases or perceptually bland visualizations, influence how much students generalize. However, few studies have manipulated both the linguistic and visual information to examine how students integrate the two modalities and how they generalize when the modalities cue different levels of generalization. Study 1 examines what combinations of linguistic and visual information are common in elementary school science books. Studies 2–6 show that undergraduate students rely primarily on the linguistic information when generalizing. Study 7 reduced the possible split of visual attention by reading out the text for participants and shows that undergraduate students generalize more broadly when the information in either modality promotes generalization, but their effect does not compound. Study 8 shows that elementary school students generalize more broadly when the linguistic information is broad, but the visual information is rich. These results suggest that students across ages use linguistic features similarly to guide their generalizations, but how they integrate the linguistic and visual information changes with age. Based on these findings, I propose the cues to generality hypothesis, as an account of how students use information in lessons to determine how far to generalize.

Yang, Xiaomeng; Wang, Fuxing; Mayer, Richard E.; Hu, Xiangen; Gu, Chuanhua

doi: 10.1037/edu0000823pmid: N/A

The spatial contiguity principle is that people learn and perform better when corresponding printed text and graphics are placed near rather than far from each other on the screen or page. This is a well-established design principle in multimedia learning. However, there is insufficient research to establish the appropriate distance between text and graphics that is conducive for integrative processing. The current study examines a new objective indicator of spatial contiguity based on the characteristics of human visual processing, and hypothesizes that corresponding text and graphic information presented within parafoveal vision promotes integrative processing better than information in peripheral vision. Experiments 1 and 2 asked participants to judge the similarities of two text–picture cards and found that presenting the two cards within parafoveal vision (rather than peripheral vision) led to faster comparison (in both Experiments) and higher scores (only in Experiment 2) for a simple version of the comparison task, but did not lower cognitive load. Experiment 3 found that students who viewed an onscreen multimedia lesson that presented corresponding text–picture information in parafoveal vision (rather than peripheral vision) scored higher on retention and application tests and experienced lower cognitive load measured by a secondary task. Across all three experiments, eye-tracking results showed presenting corresponding text–picture information in parafoveal vision yielded more integrative saccades and longer fixation time on text, indicating that spatial contiguity encourages integrative processing. This study replicates and extends the spatial contiguity effect, and offers a new quantifiable indicator of spatial continuity for the future research.

Rinas, Raven; Kiltz, Lisa; Dresel, Markus; Daumiller, Martin

doi: 10.1037/edu0000809pmid: N/A

Research indicates that university instructors struggle with compromised subjective well-being (SWB) and have faced further challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although studies have found instructors’ achievement goals to be important motivational factors linked to their well-being, longitudinal research is needed to clarify the directionality of these relations over time to advance theory, research, and practice. In the present study, we aimed to contribute to this line of research by investigating bidirectional relations between achievement goals and multifaceted SWB (positive affect, negative affect, job satisfaction, life satisfaction) in 489 German university instructors across a semester (3 months) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Latent cross-lagged panel analysis revealed that instructors’ positive affect and job satisfaction at the semester start positively predicted changes in their mastery approach goals and performance approach goals, and negatively predicted changes in their work avoidance goals. Moreover, a positive reciprocal loop was observed between job satisfaction and performance approach goals. Our findings emphasize the necessity of considering instructors’ achievement goals not only as causes but also as consequences of their well-being when designing future studies and support measures.

Ahmadi, Asghar; Noetel, Michael; Parker, Philip; Ryan, Richard M.; Ntoumanis, Nikos; Reeve, Johnmarshall; Beauchamp, Mark; Dicke, Theresa; Yeung, Alexander; Ahmadi, Malek; Bartholomew, Kimberley; Chiu, Thomas K. F.; Curran, Thomas; Erturan, Gokce; Flunger, Barbara;