An Elaborative Conception of Learner Differences
William D. Rohwer · 2021
The starting point for an elaborative conception of learner differences is an assumption about the character and organization of memory units. In the elaborative conception, the retrieval of associative information depends on the generation of cues that are germane to previously encoded events. According to the elaborative conception, one of the factors responsible for differences in learning proficiency is elaborative propensity: Persons vary in the explicitness of the indirect prompts required to activate their construction of mental events for encoding associative information. In considering how research on elaboration and learner differences might bear on instructional issues, it is important to acknowledge that many fundamental questions about elaboration itself still remain to be answered. Despite the imposing magnitude of what is not yet known, research to date makes it possible to speculate that elaborative instruction would necessarily take certain factors into account.