Abstracts - Earli

The effects of learning strategies on learning outcomeViola den Elzen-Rump, University of Duisburg-Essen, GermanyDetlev Leutner, University of Duisburg-Essen, GermanyHelping students to develop effective ways to deal with information is a major goal of educationalsystems. This study aims at clarifying if it is possible to implement cognitive and metacognitivelearning strategies by permanent stimulation and instruction over a long period of time in regularcourses. Participants (N = 1134) are provided into experimental versus control conditions. Studywas conducted primarily to answer the following research question: Do using learning strategies instandard courses improve learning outcomes of reading comprehension? Results reveal that it ispossible to integrate cognitive and metacognitive strategies into standard instructions and that it isbeneficial on long-term comprehension for tenth graders.Is it a tuna or a mackerel? Learning to categorize fishesKatharina Scheiter, University of Tübingen, GermanyGabriele Cierniak, Virtual PhD Program Tübingen, GermanyPeter Gerjets, Knowledge Media Research Center, GermanyA major challenge for students in Biology is to distinguish different species of a given class (e.g.,fishes) and assign them to a category of similar exemplars (i.e., a family). In the current study weinvestigated whether biological classification can be supported by presenting either realistic orschematic pictorial representations of exemplars for each category. Realistic pictures (e.g.,underwater photographs of fishes in their habitat) can be used to train students in coping with thecomplexity they might experience in authentic scenarios. However, they usually contain variousirrelevant information that hinders the detection of category-defining features in the exemplars. Itcan therefore be argued that schematic pictorial representations of exemplars will facilitate theircategorization compared to realistic pictures. In the experiment 24 pictures of different fishes werepresented to students with little prior knowledge, whereby always three fishes belonged to thesame family. As a first independent variable the level of realistic detail of the pictures was varied.As a second independent variable the availability of additional information concerning thecategory-defining features was manipulated. To test the quality of the categories acquired, learnerswere subsequently asked to name the fish family for 48 fishes that (a) they had already seen duringlearning, (b) they had never seen before but that belonged to the learned categories or (c) that didnot belong to any of the categories (distractors). The results showed that there were no differencesbetween the two pictorial representations with regard to their effectiveness for learning. However,while students learning with realistic pictures benefited from being given information on therelevant features, students with schematic pictures showed worse performance when being giventhis information. The latter finding may indicate that for students with schematic pictures thisinformation was redundant and thus interfered with learning.Cognitive development and the labour insertion of mental handicapped peopleTeresa Becerra, University of Extremadura, SpainManuel Montanero, University of Extremadura, SpainManuel Lucero, University of Extremadura, SpainIn this work we aim to describe the evolution of two mental handicapped people in the realizationof activities related with the administrative administration in the Public Administration. An initialevaluation was made to observe cognitive capacities that are necessary in the realization of thoseactivities. Later, several sessions were carried out to develop the deteriorated cognitive capacities– 200 –