SummaryThe present paper reports data from two studies that utilized a card sorting approach to measuring mental model similarity in naturalistic training environments. Results from the ®rst study indicated that higher ranking navy personnel held mental models of teamwork that were more similar to an empirically derived model of expert team performance than lower ranking personnel. Furthermore, comparisons of mental model similarity within groups of high and low ranking trainees and within groups of high and low experience trainees indicated greater similarity between those of higher rank and between those with greater experience. The second study tested the effects of a computer-based training (CBT) strategy that was designed to develop teamwork mental models that were more similar to the`expert model' described in Study 1. Using the same card sorting approach, positive training effects were demonstrated on similarity to the expert model, similarity to other trainees, and consistency.

Within STEM domains, physics is considered to be one of the most difficult topics to master, in part because many of the underlying principles are counter-intuitive. Effective teaching methods rely on engaging the student in active experimentation and encouraging deep reasoning, often through the use of selfexplanation. Supporting such instructional approaches poses a challenge for developers of Intelligent Tutoring Systems. We describe a system that addresses this challenge by teaching conceptual knowledge about basic electronics and electricity through guided experimentation with a circuit simulator and reflective dialogue to encourage effective self-explanation. The Basic Electricity and Electronics Tutorial Learning Environment (BEETLE II) advances the state of the art in dynamic adaptive feedback generation and natural language processing (NLP) by extending symbolic NLP techniques to support unrestricted student natural language input in the context of a dynamically changing simulation environment in a moderately complex domain. This allows contextually-appropriate feedback to be generated "on the fly" without requiring curriculum designers to anticipate possible student answers and manually author multiple feedback messages. We present the results of a system evaluation. Our curriculum is highly effective, achieving effect sizes of 1.72 when comparing pre-to post-test learning gains from our system to those of a no-training control group. However, we are unable to demonstrate that dynamically generated feedback is superior to a non-NLP feedback condition. Evaluation of interpretation quality demonstrates its link with instructional effectiveness, and provides directions for future research and development.

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We describe an approach to dealing with interpretation errors in a tutorial dialogue system. Allowing students to provide explanations and generate contentful talk can be helpful for learning, but the language that can be understood by a computer system is limited by the current technology. Techniques for dealing with understanding problems have been developed primarily for spoken dialogue systems in informationseeking domains, and are not always appropriate for tutorial dialogue. We present a classification of interpretation errors and our approach for dealing with them within an implemented tutorial dialogue system.

The process of perception requires not only the brain's receipt of sensory data but also the meaningful organization of that data in relation to the perceptual experience held in memory. Although it typically results in a conscious percept, the process of perception is not fully conscious. Research on the neural substrates of human visual perception has suggested that regions of limbic cortex, including the medial orbital frontal cortex (mOFC), may contribute to intuitive judgments about perceptual events, such as guessing whether an object might be present in a briefly presented fragmented drawing. Examining dense array measures of cortical electrical activity during a modified Waterloo Gestalt Closure Task, results show, as expected, that activity in medial orbital frontal electrical responses (about 250 ms) was associated with intuitive judgments. Activity in the right temporal-parietal-occipital (TPO) region was found to predict mOFC (∼150 ms) activity and, in turn, was subsequently influenced by the mOFC at a later time (∼300 ms). The initial perception of gist or meaning of a visual stimulus in limbic networks may thus yield reentrant input to the visual areas to influence continued development of the percept. Before perception is completed, the initial representation of gist may support intuitive judgments about the ongoing perceptual process.