Abstracts - Earli

and show structure and relations. However, in previous studies students seemed not to benefit fromdiagrams much. We believe this is related to the way students construct and use the diagrams,focusing on the content of the boxes without paying attention to overall structure. They do not usesecondary notation. Secondary notation is described as extra information you can convey outsideof the formal definition of boxes and arrows. For example, readability can be improved whenrelated boxes are placed close together. In a first study, we investigated whether students whoreceive a short training on secondary notation are able to improve their diagram. A control groupdid not receive the training. Results show that students indeed improved their diagrams. Forexample, experts rated the diagrams after training as qualitatively better than the ones made beforeand the ones made in the control condition. We conclude that secondary notation is relatively easyto learn and may be important for learning. A range of small experiments is now carried out toinvestigate secondary notation of argumentative diagrams further. For example, we investigatehow experts in argumentation construct argumentative diagrams. Results of these studies will alsobe discussed in Budapest.Text concept mapping: The contribution of text mapping to comprehension levelsNurit Nathan, Kaye Academic College of Education, IsraelEly Kozminsky, Ben-Gurion University, IsraelA Text Concept Map (TCM) is a graphic representation of a text that visually and verbally depictsthe text’s main ideas, and the relationships between them. The TCM exposes the rhetoricdevelopment of the text, differentiating between the content and the rhetorical concepts, byrevealing the semantic-logical interrelations between them. TCM reduces the learners’ workingmemory load, and it can be used as a constraining frame that enables the learners to focus more on"high order" thinking during text comprehension. The precise usage of concepts in the TCM, iscongruent with the characteristics of Language of Thinking" (LOT) construct. We assume thatcombining TCM and LOT instruction for studying texts result in improved comprehension,especially at higher thinking levels. We present a study in which we investigated the use of TCMcombined with LOT for studying texts, and its effects on four levels of comprehension (details,inference, application, and opinion) of 112 eight grade students. There is an advantage of thecombined TCM & LOT and TCM interventions for the inference and application levels, comparedto LOT. The meta-cognitive processes performed during TCM and LOT, support their assimilationin the learner’s mind, so he can use them as "standard models", which enable him to "talk" withthe text and with himself.Are good concept maps always better for prior knowledge activation? Interactions of mapcoherence, background knowledge, and levels of understandingJohannes Gurlitt, University of Freiburg, GermanyAlexander Renkl, University of Freiburg, GermanyLucie Faulhaber, University of Freiburg, GermanyTwo experiments were theoretically motivated to examine characteristic affordances of conceptmaps and extending coherence-effects from text-comprehension (McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, &Kintsch, 1996) to prior knowledge activation. Therefore we investigated effects of high- and lowcoherenceprior knowledge activation on cognitive processes and learning success. Low-coherentprior knowledge activation was operationalized by creating-and-labeling-the-lines betweenprovided concepts, high-coherent prior knowledge activation by labeling existing lines in aconcept-mapping task. The first experiment showed that different concept-mapping tasks elicitqualitative differences in prior knowledge activation processes. In the second experiment, we– 640 –