Knowledge and ability factors underlying simple learning by accretion

Abstract

In this study, the relationships between simple learning by accretion and various cognitive ability variables were explored. Computerized tests of five sources of individual differences were administered to a sample of 714 Air Force recruits, along with a trigram-English word paired-associate task, which was presented as a foreign language vocabulary learning task. Subjects were assigned at random to one of three groups: control, semantic elaboration, or interactive imagery. Subjects in the semantic elaboration group were instructed to generate sentences to link the trigram and word in a memorable way. Subjects in the interactive imagery group were given the additional instruction of visualizing the generated sentence. Trigrams (CVCs) varied in meaningfulness across the two lists of eight pairs in the task. Results showed that meaningfulness and strategy had the expected main effects on learning and that strategy interacted with verbal knowledge in initial learning so that learners with more knowledge benefitted more than learners with less knowledge edge. Regression analyses showed that a representative measure from each proposed source made a significant unique contribution to the explained variance in paired-associate learning.