Catalysts to Creating Representational Tools and the Benefits for Learning

Abstract

Thirtytwo undergraduates and six graduate students participated in a medical diagnosis task. They received a set of reference cases and diagnosed new patient cases by ordering and considering the results of medical tests. Half of the participants faced a memory burden as they worked on an initial set of ten new patient diagnoses. Participants then taught a confederate how to perform diagnoses. Finally, two new diseases were introduced, and participants diagnosed five new patients. Participants were allowed to take notes throughout the study. Both the memory burden and the teaching demand led participants to create external representations. Representations used for initial diagnosis, but not for teaching, carried over into the final diagnosis set. Results show that creating a representation was initially inefficient, but led to better performance and learning when participants were asked to adapt to new diseases. Also, a much greater proportion of graduate students than undergraduates created representations.