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Texte intégral
Journal article

The Power of Imagination and Perspective in Learning From Science Text

    2019
Published in:
  • Journal of Educational Psychology. - 2019, vol. 111, no. 5, p. 793-808
imagination
perspective
multimedia learning
learning strategy
reading strategy
English In 2 experiments, college students read a 4-paragraph text on how the human circulatory system works and were instructed to form a mental image of the events described in each paragraph from the perspective of their own body (first-person perspective group) or from the perspective of a fictitious person facing them (third-person perspective group), or were given no imagination instructions (control group). Students who imagined from a first-person perspective outperformed the control group on solving transfer problems, retaining important material, and not retaining unimportant material in Experiments 1 and 2, confirming the benefits of combining imagination and perspective into a powerful learning strategy. Students who imagined from a first-person perspective outperformed students who imagined from a third-person perspective on solving transfer problems in Experiments 1 and 2, indicating the value of adding first-person perspective to imagination for fostering deeper understanding. Students who imagined from a third-person perspective outperformed the control group on solving transfer problems and on not retaining unimportant material in Experiment 1 (which included specific prompts for which items to include in one's images), whereas they did not perform significantly better than the control group on any measures in Experiment 2 (which did not include specific prompts). This finding suggests that imagination without first-person perspective can be ineffective when there is not support for imagining during learning. These findings have theoretical implications for the role of embodiment in generative learning theory, and practical implications for modifying the imagination principle to recommend imagining from a first-person perspective.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département des sciences de l'éducation et de la formation
Language
  • English
Classification
Education, teaching
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/308432
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