Learning From Errors in Education

Learning From Errors

• Traditional views on errors in learning: Errors were considered harmful and should be avoided during learning.
• Early research on errors in learning focused on avoiding errors during learning activities.
• More recent research on errors in learning identifies the following effects: Generation effect, Pretesting effect, and Hypercorrection effect.
• A common lay view suggests avoiding errors to prevent negative consequences.
  • But committing errors in low-stakes situations can, surprisingly, be beneficial leading to better learning in high-stakes situations.

Traditional Learning Theorists

• Theorists believed errors were bad.
• Answers that are incorrect are strengthened in memory. They believed that this meant errors were more likely to be repeated.
• This led to errorless learning approaches focusing on avoiding errors.
• Incorrect answers were often ignored.

Proactive Interference

• Proactive interference occurs when old memories interfere with the acquisition and retrieval of new memories.
• Errors can interfere in storing correct information in memory, making it more likely that error will be recalled instead of the correct information.
• One should expect errors to be repeated in a final assessment.

An Alternative Perspective

• Carefully controlled experiments challenge the errorless learning view.
• Engaging errors can promote active and deep learning.
• Feedback is essential.

The Generation Effect

• The Generation effect is when people remember information they've generated better than information they've just read.
• Example experiment found that participants who generated answers in a sentence completion tasks instead of reading them remembered better than those who just read the answer in reading only condition.

The Generation Effect - Example

• In the generation effect example, two executives were shown different prompts.

The Generation Effect - A Classic Study

• The study by Kane and Anderson (1978) shows generation producing better recall than simply reading the answers.
• Similar results with undetermined sentences show better recall even if the wrong answer was generated.
• Incorrectly generated answers do not harm the learning process.

The Generation Effect - Summary

• The generation effect is the phenomenon where people remember generated information better.
• This understanding suggests that active recall is important and encourages students to generate answers themselves instead of reading answers.

The Pretesting Effect

• Pretesting involves answering questions before studying a material.
• Kornell et al. (2009) found that pretesting leads to better learning, even when initial guesses were incorrect.

The Pretesting Effect - Kornell et al. (2009)

• Participants studied weakly related pairs of words.
• There was no prior exposure to the answers before pretesting.
• Participants' initial guesses were mostly incorrect.

Kornell et al. (2009) Results

• Testing improved learning even when answers were incorrect.
• Errors fostered learning.
• Many studies replicated the findings.
• Participants often believe they learn better from reading instead of generating, but this is a metacognitive illusion.

Search Set Theory

• Producing guesses causes activation of related concepts.
• Partial activation of the correct answer allows it to be encoded better.
• Predictions suggest pretesting may only be beneficial for related word pairs where the target will be part of the search set.

Set Search Theory - Grimaldi & Karpke (2012)

• Similar experiment design to Kornell, but used weakly related and unrelated pairs.
• Pretesting improved recall for related pairs and not unrelated pairs.
• "Shot in the dark" guesses didn't improve recall.

Increased Motivation to Learn - Seabrooke et al. (2019)

• Participants ranked their motivation to learn information they had guessed correctly as higher than information they hadn't guessed.

Summary of Theories

• Several theories exist for the pretesting effect.
• Most theories have consistent evidence, but more research is needed.
• Theories aren't mutually exclusive.

Confidence in Errors: The Hypercorrection Effect

• The hypercorrection effect occurs due to confidence in generated answers (and errors).

Question Prompt (2)

• What is the driest place on Earth?

Butterfield and Metcalfe (2001)

• Participants answered questions and rated their confidence.
• Feedback was given after each answer.
• A 5-minute retention interval was used.
• High-confidence errors were corrected more frequently than low-confidence errors.

Surprise and Attention - Butterfield and Metcalfe (2006)

• Participants completed a hypercorrection task and a soft tone detection task.
• Participants missed more tones if there was feedback after a high-confidence error compared to low.
• Indicates that the feedback captured attention more when high-confidence errors occurred.

Take-Home Message for Undergraduates

• Don't be afraid to answer questions.
• Correct answers benefit from effort in generating them.
• Incorrect answers can lead to better recall if you carefully review your answers.

Summary (What Have We Covered?)

• Traditionally, learning theorists viewed errors as harmful.
• Controlled experiments show errors can be beneficial.
• Generation Effect, Pretesting Effect, and Hypercorrection Effect demonstrate this.

Independent Study Activity (1)

• Define proactive interference
• Provide a real-life example.
• Recall key details of the Kane & Anderson (1978) study.

Independent Study Activity (2)

• Choose one theory and explain it briefly.

Independent Study Activity (3)

• Describe the methodology and results of studies by Butterfield and Metcalfe (2006) related to hypercorrection effect.

This quiz explores the evolving views on errors in learning, contrasting traditional beliefs with contemporary research. It discusses how errors can actually enhance memory and learning in various contexts, shedding light on effects such as the Generation effect, Pretesting effect, and Hypercorrection effect. Understand how embracing mistakes can lead to better outcomes in education.