Analytic Assistance: Effects of Example Selection, Subjects’ Age and Syntactic Complexity

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to 1) investigate the impact of syntactic complexity on analytic assistance; 2) extend the research on analytic assistance to younger subjects; and 3) determine the relative importance of analytic assistance (definition or strategy questions), when compared to a new, possibly more effective, example-only comparison group. An analysis of results for fifth grade subjects in Experiment 1 showed a direct relationship between the use of analytic assistance and concept acquisition, replicating results from earlier studies using different procedures for constructing the example-only treatment. Results with younger subjects in Experiment 2 were mixed. Like fifth graders, third graders performed equally well with a definition and with strategy questions. In contrast, more second graders learned the concept when provided with strategy questions than with a definition. In Experiment 3, differences between groups with the syntactically varied definitions were significant.