Knowledge Structure Instantiation: Implications for Measurement and Transfer
Stephen M. Fiore, Randall L. Oser, Haydee Maria Cuevas · Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting · 2000
Personnel in the military and in industry must deal with an ever expanding array of complex systems. Increasingly, interaction with these systems requires higherlevel cognitive processes involving the integration of differing types of knowledge (e.g., declarative, visual-spatial)., As such, complex decision making relies on the effective utilizatibn of conceptually-linked knowledge structures (e.g., Nichols, Chipman, & Braman, 1995). We argue that, by making abstract concepts associated with complex tasks more explicit, training systems can encourage the acquisition of integrated knowledge (e.g., Glaser, 1989). In this study, we used two approaches to an interactive tutorial (hypertext with or without diagrams) to investigate how this impacted learners acquisition of complex systems. We hypothesized: 1) diagrams would facilitate performance on a transfer task requiring the integration and application of the acquired knowledge; 2) diagrams would have no impact when only declarative knowledge was measured; and, 3) presentation of diagrams would increase the likelihood participants would relate task-relevant concepts in a card sort task.