This study is part of a program of research which works to develop methods for increasing performance with a minimum of direct training. These projects assume that students are not rational agents and not reflective, that their understanding of their cognition is limited and that declarative knowledge typically does not alter scholar performance. Therefore, a battery of tests, surveys, and previous research is assembled to show how better behavior and superior procedural knowledge can be taught without relying on rational decision making, declarative knowledge, or like methods.
By establishing how wary student behavior is effected by cognitive load, this paper demonstrates how procedural learning can occur without descriptive learning. Related work has already been done, though it may frame the results as altering the environment to produce academic performance (Horn, PytlikZillig, Bruning, & Kauffman, 2003; Dempsey, PytlikZillig, & Bruning, 2005; PytlikZillig, Bruning, Horn, & Bodvarsson, 2005). The ultimatum game has been used as a device to show how rational behavior increases through practice, not necessarily rather than increased explicit understanding of concepts (Lusk & Hudson, 2004; Slonim & Roth, 1998).
In this research program, two studies at varying student cooperative behavior, a survey will examine expertise-related behavior, ongoing work focuses on recall behavior, and a theoretical project seeks to divest metacognition from rational agency. This research, and an already conducted experiment on how political orientation can alter cooperation, shows how high level behaviors (how students interact with each other) is altered by seemingly unrelated factors and unrelated with explicit beliefs about punishment. Work on creativity, talent, and expertise, of which a pilot study is already complete led, show while the behavior of expertise within a domain tends to be similar, the experts themselves then to be ignorant of what makes them successful. Additionally, a pre-existing program project of studying and note-taking behavior (Brenton, Kiewra, Whitfil, & Dennison, 1993; Igo, Bruning, McCrudden, & Kauffman, 2003; Titsworth & Kiewra, 2004; Igo, Bruning, & McCrudden, 2005a; 2005b) will be extended. Lastly, the literature of rationality (for example, Moshman, 2005) will be presented in a way that makes it clear how disbelief in the power of descriptive knowledge still allows educational psychologist to keep their well-worn and trusty tool kit.
The purpose of education is to improve performance. While performance boils down to reading and writing ability for some fields, for the mass of students a focus on explicit learning may be misguided. This study, and this research program, therefore seeks ways to improve performance without spending time on declarative knowledge that could be more valuably spent elsewhere.
The Wary Student, a tdaxp research project
2. Cognitive Load
3. Cooperative Behavior
5. The Experiments
7. Main-Effect Results
8. Interaction-Effect Results
10. Future Research