Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

510

Date

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Psychology

Concentration

Experimental Psychology

Committee Chair

Arthur Graesser

Committee Member

Rick Dale

Committee Member

Randy Floyd

Abstract

Learners frequently experience uncertainty about how to proceed during learning. These experiences cause learners to enter a state of cognitive disequilibrium and its affiliated affective state of confusion. Cognitive disequilibrium and confusion have been found to frequently occur during complex learning and provide opportunities for deeper learning. In the current thesis, a learning environment that induces confusion was investigated. In the environment, learners engaged in a dialogue on scientific reasoning with an animated pedagogical agent. Confusion was induced through false feedback provided by the tutor agent (e.g., when learners responded correctly and were told their response was incorrect). Self-reports of confusion during the training session indicated that false feedback was an effective method for inducing confusion. False feedback was also found to increase learners’ ability to apply this knowledge to new and novel situations, under certain conditions. Implications for the design of learning environments are also discussed.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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