Learning the hard way: Need for Cognition influences attitudes toward and self-reported use of desirable difficulties

Weißgerber, Sophia Christin; Reinhard, Marc‐André; Schindler, Simon

doi:10.1080/01443410.2017.1387644

Cited by 20 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…This finding suggests that learners higher in NFC voluntarily invested more cognitive resources on preparation for a test than learners lower in NFC (even when test performance had no actual consequences for their studies). This interpretation is consistent with extant studies demonstrating that learners higher in NFC are more willing to tackle difficult tasks than learners lower in NFC (See et al 2009;Weißgerber et al 2018). We assume that (in addition to establishing mental links between context and target words) they might have tried to explicitly memorize the target words to be prepared for later recall.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Learners low in NFC are 'cognitive misers' (Cacioppo et al 1986;Cacioppo et al 1996) who usually avoid getting engaged in cognitively demanding activities. Consistent with these findings, low NFC learners are found to be less willing to use elaborate learning strategies such as desirable difficulties in self-regulated learning than high NFC learners (Weißgerber et al 2018). In other words, learners low in NFC do not expend more cognitive resources on learning than necessary.…”

Section: Need For Cognition and The Generation Effectsupporting

confidence: 54%

“…1 & 2;Reinhard and Dickhäuser 2009;Verplanklen et al 1992), and thorough processing of learning materials (Sadowski and Gülgöz 1996). Moreover, individuals high in NFC use more efficient learning strategies than learners low in NFC (Cazan and Indreica 2014), they tend to have better self-control during learning (Bertrams and Dickhäuser 2009;Cazan and Indreica 2014), and they are more willing to tackle difficult tasks (See et al 2009;Weißgerber et al 2018).…”

Section: Need For Cognition and The Generation Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effectiveness of Self-Generation During Learning is Dependent on Individual Differences in Need for Cognition.

Schindler

Reinhard

2019

FLR

Self Cite

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Self-generated information is better recognized and recalled than read information. This so-called generation effect has been replicated several times for different types of stimulus material, different generation tasks, and retention intervals. The present study investigated the impact of individual differences in learners' disposition to engage in effortful cognitive activities (need for cognition, NFC) on the effectiveness of selfgeneration during learning. Learners low in NFC usually avoid getting engaged in cognitively demanding activities. However, if these learners are explicitly instructed to use elaborate learning strategies such as self-generation, they should benefit more from such strategies than learners high in NFC, because self-generation stimulates cognitive processes that learners low in NFC usually tend not to engage in spontaneously. Using a classical word-generation paradigm, we not only replicated the generation effect in free and cued recall but showed that the magnitude of the generation effect increased with decreasing NFC in cued recall. Results are consistent with our assumption that learners higher in NFC engage in elaborate processing even without explicit instruction, whereas learners lower in NFC usually avoid cognitively demanding activities. These learners need cognitively demanding tasks that require them to switch from shallow to elaborate processing to improve learning. We conclude that selfgeneration is beneficial regardless of the NFC level, but our study extends the existing literature on the generation effect and on NFC by showing that self-generation can be particularly useful for balancing the learning disadvantage of students lower in NFC.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Need For Cognition and The Generation Effectsupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Need For Cognition and The Generation Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effectiveness of Self-Generation During Learning is Dependent on Individual Differences in Need for Cognition.

Schindler

Reinhard

2019

FLR

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“…Previous studies have shown that NFC acts as a positive predictor of individual academic achievement and work performance by promoting intrinsic motivation for the pursuit of knowledge and extensive cognitive processing (Grass et al, ; Luong et al, ; Neigel et al, ; Weissgerber et al, ; Wu et al, ). We extended existing research and found that NFC showed a positive correlation with creative achievement, which further confirmed the close relationship between NFC and creativity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Creative achievement, a more ecologically valid measure of creativity, has been regarded as the sum of creative accomplishments achieved by an individual during his or her lifetime, which reflects longterm creative behaviors and may be used as a comprehensive indicator to assess individual differences in creative performance in daily life (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005;Chen et al, 2014). To our knowledge, although there is considerable empirical evidence that supports NFC as a powerful predictor of academic achievement (Bertrams & Dickhaeuser, 2009;Grass et al, 2017;Luong et al, 2017;Neigel, Behairy, & Szalma, 2017;Weissgerber, Reinhard, & Schindler, 2018) and one study showed that NFC is correlated with everyday creative behavior (Dollinger, 2003), no research has directly examined the relationship between NFC and creative achievement. Here, we tested the relationship between NFC and creative achievement in the sciences and arts and further explored whether brain flexibility associated with NFC facilitated creative achievement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain flexibility associated with need for cognition contributes to creative achievement

Zhuang

Liu

et al. 2019

Psychophysiology

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Advances in graph‐theoretic models of networks have made it possible to investigate the topological properties of the human brain across time and space. Brain flexibility is defined as the frequency with which brain regions switch between different functional modules over time and has been shown to correlate with higher‐order cognitive functions. Need for cognition (NFC) refers to a personality trait to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors and usually has a positive effect on diverse cognitive activities (e.g., creativity), which may also be closely related to brain flexibility. Here, we tested whether the flexibility of a large‐scale brain network associated with NFC facilitated creative achievement. Robust correlation analyses showed that NFC correlates with the flexibility of the insula, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the putamen at the node level. Several large‐scale brain networks whose flexibility also correlated with NFC, including the default mode network, salience network, subcortical network, ventral attention network, and control network, imply that higher NFC individuals may exhibit better cognitive abilities, such as executive control, salient detection, spontaneous thought, and motivation function. Interestingly, only global flexibility acted as a mediator in the relationship between NFC and creative achievement, suggesting that the mediating mechanism may involve an interaction between distinct regions or large‐scale networks across the entire brain instead of the functional characteristic of local regions. Together, we demonstrate that the higher NFC is, the more flexible the brain, which may provide a potential insight into the acquisition of creative achievement.

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Metacognition About Practice Testing: a Review of Learners’ Beliefs, Monitoring, and Control of Test-Enhanced Learning

Rivers

2020

Educ Psychol Rev

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Learning the hard way: Need for Cognition influences attitudes toward and self-reported use of desirable difficulties

Cited by 20 publications

References 59 publications

Effectiveness of Self-Generation During Learning is Dependent on Individual Differences in Need for Cognition.

Effectiveness of Self-Generation During Learning is Dependent on Individual Differences in Need for Cognition.

Brain flexibility associated with need for cognition contributes to creative achievement

Metacognition About Practice Testing: a Review of Learners’ Beliefs, Monitoring, and Control of Test-Enhanced Learning

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