Individual Differences in Concept Learning: Persistence from Laboratory to Classroom 

Speaker: Mark McDaniel
Washington University in St. Louis, USA

March 22, 2023
11:15 AM - 1:00 PM U.S. Eastern Time 

Abstract
We, along with others, have found that individuals vary in whether they rely on abstraction (e.g., rule-learning) or exemplar learning for acquiring and representing laboratory concepts.  In this talk, I describe our findings that reveal that a particular learner’s tendency (relying primarily on abstraction or exemplar learning) can persist across very different concept-learning laboratory tasks.   Next, I examine whether this individual difference, based on a laboratory concept learning assessment, extends to complex, authentic learning in science classes.  Based on our experiments in chemistry and biology classes I build the case that these individual differences are present in classroom learning and have important consequences.  For instance, we find that abstraction learners perform better than exemplar learners on transfer exam questions but not retention questions (McDaniel et al., 2018; McDaniel et al., 2023).  This pattern holds after accounting for general ability; indeed, individual differences in general ability do not produce a similar interaction (i.e., high ability performance advantages are not seen primarily on transfer questions).  These research findings highlight the importance of a fundamental individual difference in cognitive functioning, revealed on basic laboratory learning tasks, that accounts for critical differences in student learning in science courses.  Instructional implications may be discussed. 

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