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Focus on Learning
Cox et al. (1999) studied college students as they learned syntax through vicarious
exposure to demonstrations of sentence parsing and the construction of syntactic
tree diagrams. Learning was assessed in a pretest-to-posttest design that evaluated
three types of knowledge: identifying syntactic categories, recalling category labels,
and constructing syntactic tree diagrams of new sentences not used in training. Four
intervention groups and a no-intervention control condition were included. In a
dia-
log
condition vicarious learners observed video of a student who engaged in tutorial
dialog with a teacher who simultaneously constructed tree diagrams of four sen-
tences. The tutorial dialog was printed on the screen in a text window to the right of a
video of the tree diagrams as they were dynamically constructed. In a
discourse
con-
dition learners viewed a teacher constructing diagrams on screen, while the teacher's
monolog instructions were presented in the text window. In a
diagram-only
con-
dition, only the dynamic tree diagram constructions from the discourse condition
were presented, with no on-screen text. In a fourth condition, called
text-only
, only
the printed monolog instructions were presented, with no tree diagrams. In the
no-
intervention
control condition only the pretests and posttests were administered.
There was no audio in any of the conditions.
Results revealed that all four intervention groups showed significant learning
gains from pretest to posttest when contrasted with the no-intervention control
condition. The difference between the combined dialog and discourse groups
approached significance when contrasted with the combined diagram-only and text-
only conditions. The authors concluded that, when viewing dynamically constructed
syntactic tree diagrams, vicarious learners' exposure to tutorial dialog was as effec-
tive at producing deep learning as was exposure to carefully crafted monolog
instructions that were combined with those diagrams. It seems clear, then, that
combining either printed tutorial dialog or printed instructional text along with
dynamic animations facilitates vicarious learning relative to presenting only written
instructions or only animations, results also reported in related research reported ear-
lier (Mayer, 2001; Sweller, 1994, 1999). The diagram-only condition also showed
(marginally) improved performance when compared with the text-only condition
but only on test items requiring construction of new tree diagrams. Thus, despite
some evidence to the contrary (Schnotz, Boeckheler & Grozondziel, 1997; Stasko,
Badre, & Lewis, 1993), the authors tentatively concluded that presenting anima-
tions displaying the dynamic processes involved in constructing diagrams, even in
the absence of textual descriptions of those processes, may be effective in promoting
deep learning.
Evidence for the role of vicarious dialog in acquiring the cognitive skill of ask-
ing deep-level reasoning questions (henceforth, deep questions) was presented by
Craig, Gholson, Ventura, Graesser, and TRG (2000).
Asking
deep questions facil-
itates cognitive activities (e.g., Graesser & Person, 1994; Rosenshine, Meister, &
Chapman, 1996) that support comprehension, problem solving, and knowledge con-
struction among both adults and children (Craig et al., 2000; Davey & McBride,
1986; Gavelek & Raphael, 1985; Graesser, Baggett, & Williams, 1996; King, 1989,
