No abstract

Conducted 2 experiments to test the hypotheses that (a) when Ss read 5 passages each containing information on 3 related psychological concepts and completed a posttest containing recognition and application questions, the differences between Ss provided with behavioral objectives and those provided with nonbehavioral objectives would be nonsignificant for recall questions but significant for application questions; and (b) that providing Ss with behavioral objectives during study should improve posttest performances on items Ss judge unimportant but should not influence performance on items Ss judge important. 80 undergraduates (including 24 controls who completed the posttest only) were Ss in Exp I, and 87 undergraduates (including 27 controls) served in Exp II. Results are the reverse of the predictions of the 1st hypothesis and support the 2nd hypothesis. It is concluded that the perceived importance of an item of information determines whether behavior objectives will be helpful during training.

No abstract

In order to understand how epistemological beliefs (beliefs about knowledge and learning) influence mathematical problem solving, over 700 college students completed a domain general and a domain specific (mathematical problem-solving) beliefs questionnaire. In addition, they completed two mathematical tasks, one that assessed cognitive depth and the other problem solving. Mathematical and general epistemological belief factors emerged from a single exploratory factor analysis. Furthermore, students with high mathematical background showed consistency between domain general and domain specific epistemological beliefs, whereas, students with less mathematical background were significantly different between the two levels of belief specificity. Comparisons among path analyses revealed indirect effects of general epistemological beliefs and direct effects of domain specific epistemological beliefs on mathematical performance.

No abstract