Conceptual overlap among texts impedes comprehension monitoring.

For decades, research on metacomprehension has demonstrated that many learners struggle to accurately discriminate their comprehension of texts. However, while reviews of experimental studies on relative metacomprehension accuracy have found average intra-individual correlations between predictions and performance of around .27 for adult readers, in some contexts even lower near-zero accuracy levels have been reported.

The effects of generating examples on comprehension and metacomprehension.

Teachers and students often report using examples to support learning. Research has shown benefits of viewing provided examples and generating examples during declarative concept learning; however, there is less work showing clear benefits when learners generate their own examples on comprehension measures while students are attempting to learn from expository science texts. The present study tested whether generating examples would be useful for improving comprehension and comprehension monitoring in the context of an undergraduate science course.

Mental counters as an online tool for assessing working memory capacity.

Working memory capacity (WMC) describes an individual's ability to focus their attention in the face of interference which allows them to actively maintain and manipulate information in immediate memory. Individual differences in WMC predict a wide range of psychological constructs. The development of online measures can enable data collection from broader, more diverse samples than those typically collected in person in laboratory settings.

Forgetting of competing solutions as a consequence of analogical problem-solving attempts.

Three experiments used a paradigm based on Retrieval-Induced Forgetting research to test for the competition from non-useful sources of information in cross-domain analogical transfer. This was accomplished by presenting people with texts introducing multiple candidate solutions prior to attempting the Radiation problem, and later testing memory for the texts. In Experiment 1, viable and unviable candidate solutions that varied in surface and structural similarity were presented in their own story contexts.

First-in-human study of the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of ALPN-101, a dual CD28/ICOS antagonist, in healthy adult subjects.

ALPN-101 (ICOSL vIgD-Fc) is an Fc fusion protein of a human inducible T cell costimulatory ligand (ICOSL) variant immunoglobulin domain (vIgD) designed to inhibit the cluster of differentiation 28 (CD28) and inducible T cell costimulator (ICOS) pathways simultaneously. A first-in-human study evaluated the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics (PK), and pharmacodynamics (PD) of ALPN-101 in healthy adult subjects. ALPN-101 was generally well-tolerated with no evidence of cytokine release, clinically significant immunogenicity, or severe adverse events following single subcutaneous (SC) doses up to 3 mg/kg or single intravenous (IV) doses up to 10 mg/kg or up to 4 weekly IV doses of up to 1 mg/kg.

What causes the insight memory advantage?

Prior research indicates that solutions accompanied by an Aha! experience are remembered better than those missing this feeling of epiphany. The question for the present studies was whether this insight memory advantage for problem solutions is modulated by the affective component of insight (the strong feelings that typically accompany the Aha! experience), or by the cognitive component (the restructuring or representational change that occurs during insightful problem solving). In both studies, participants viewed a set of magic trick videos to generate solutions for how each trick was done, and memory for the generated solutions was tested after a week delay.

Need something different? Here's what's been done: Effects of examples and task instructions on creative idea generation.

Creative idea generation involves search and retrieval of memory. There is a default tendency to rely too heavily on familiar or easily accessible information during idea generation, especially in tasks such as the alternate uses task (AUT) that involve generating novel uses for common objects. Knowing which obvious ideas to avoid may be important in creating more original ideas.

Both attentional control and the ability to make remote associations aid spontaneous analogical transfer.

Given the widespread belief that analogical processing is an important mechanism for creative problem solving, despite the rarity of spontaneous transfer in laboratory studies, a critical direction for future research is to address which abilities may allow for the spontaneous analogizing between distant (superficially dissimilar) sources and targets. This study explores the role of individual differences in attentional control and the ability to make remote associations and their possible combined effects on spontaneous analogical transfer. Participants attempted to solve Duncker's radiation problem after having been exposed to a distant source as part of an earlier task.

The effects of comprehension-test expectancies on metacomprehension accuracy.

A set of four experiments assessed the effects of establishing a comprehension-test expectancy (in contrast to a memory-test expectancy) on relative metacomprehension accuracy. Typically readers show poor relative metacomprehension accuracy while learning from text (i.e.

When is literal meaning inhibited? Evidence from nonsense in the metaphor-induced lexical forgetting paradigm.

A common feature of metaphoric language processing is a conflict between literal and figurative aspects of meaning. A consequence of this is the need to select the most appropriate meaning among competing associates when we encounter such phrases. The goal of the present experiments was to adapt the "impossible" retrieval approach of previous retrieval-induced and problem-solving-induced forgetting (RIF; PSIF) studies to test for the use of inhibitory mechanisms during metaphor comprehension.

Closing the gap: connecting sudden representational change to the subjective Aha! experience in insightful problem solving.

Two hallmarks of insightful problem solving are thought to be suddenness in the emergence of solution due to changes in problem representation, and the subjective Aha! experience. Although a number of studies have explored the Aha! experience, few studies have attempted to measure representational change. Following the lead of Durso et al.

Leveling the playing field: Grounding learning with embedded simulations in geoscience.

Although desktop simulations can be useful in representing scientific phenomena during inquiry activities, they do not allow students to embody or contextualize the spatial aspects of those phenomena. One learning technology that does attempt to combine embodiment and grounded experience to support learning in science is Embedded Phenomena. The objective of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of a classroom-based Embedded Phenomena activity for learning in geoscience, and to investigate whether individual differences in spatial skills had an impact on the effectiveness.

What about False Insights? Deconstructing the Aha! Experience along Its Multiple Dimensions for Correct and Incorrect Solutions Separately.

Unlabelled: The subjective Aha! experience that problem solvers often report when they find a solution has been taken as a marker for insight. If Aha! is closely linked to insightful solution processes, then theoretically, an Aha! should only be experienced when the correct solution is found. However, little work has explored whether the Aha! experience can also accompany incorrect solutions ("false insights").

Improving metacomprehension accuracy in an undergraduate course context.

Students tend to have poor metacomprehension when learning from text, meaning they are not able to distinguish between what they have understood well and what they have not. Although there are a good number of studies that have explored comprehension monitoring accuracy in laboratory experiments, fewer studies have explored this in authentic course contexts. This study investigated the effect of an instructional condition that encouraged comprehension-test-expectancy and self-explanation during study on metacomprehension accuracy in the context of an undergraduate course in research methods.

Baseball fans don't like lumpy batters: Influence of domain knowledge on the access of subordinate meanings.

Two experiments investigated the effects of domain knowledge on the resolution of ambiguous words with dominant meanings related to baseball. When placed in a sentence context that strongly biased toward the non-baseball meaning (positive evidence), or excluded the baseball meaning (negative evidence), baseball experts had more difficulty than non-experts resolving the ambiguity. Sentence contexts containing positive evidence supported earlier resolution than did the negative evidence condition for both experts and non-experts.

Forgetting the literal: The role of inhibition in metaphor comprehension.

In order for a person to comprehend metaphoric expressions, do metaphor-irrelevant aspects of literal information need to be inhibited? Previous research using sentence-verification paradigms has found that literal associates take longer to process after reading metaphorical sentences; however, it is problematic to infer inhibition from this research. Moreover, previous work has not distinguished between familiar and novel metaphor processing. To test more directly for when inhibition may be required during metaphor processing, we performed 3 experiments using a metaphor-induced lexical forgetting paradigm.

Anomalous Evidence, Confidence Change, and Theory Change.

A novel experimental paradigm that measured theory change and confidence in participants' theories was used in three experiments to test the effects of anomalous evidence. Experiment 1 varied the amount of anomalous evidence to see if "dose size" made incremental changes in confidence toward theory change. Experiment 2 varied whether anomalous evidence was convergent (of multiple types) or replicating (similar finding repeated).

Learning about the internal structure of categories through classification and feature inference.

Previous research on category learning has found that classification tasks produce representations that are skewed toward diagnostic feature dimensions, whereas feature inference tasks lead to richer representations of within-category structure. Yet, prior studies often measure category knowledge through tasks that involve identifying only the typical features of a category. This neglects an important aspect of a category's internal structure: how typical and atypical features are distributed within a category.

Drunk, but not blind: the effects of alcohol intoxication on change blindness.

Alcohol use has long been assumed to alter cognition via attentional processes. To better understand the cognitive consequences of intoxication, the present study tested the effects of moderate intoxication (average BAC between .071 and .

Primary ovarian teratoma and GCT with intra-abdominal metastasis in a dog.

This report describes the simultaneous occurrence of an ovarian teratoma and a granulosa cell tumor (GCT) with intra-abdominal metastasis in a 1.5 yr old female Doberman pinscher. At surgery, a 20 cm, smooth, intact mass associated with the left ovary and multiple 1-2 cm irregular masses in the broad ligament were found.

Cues to solution, restructuring patterns, and reports of insight in creative problem solving.

While the subjective experience of insight during problem solving is a common occurrence, an understanding of the processes leading to solution remains relatively uncertain. The goal of this study was to investigate the restructuring patterns underlying solution of a creative problem, and how providing cues to solution may alter the process. Results show that both providing cues to solution and analyzing problem solving performance on an aggregate level may result in restructuring patterns that appear incremental.

Uncorking the muse: alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving.

That alcohol provides a benefit to creative processes has long been assumed by popular culture, but to date has not been tested. The current experiment tested the effects of moderate alcohol intoxication on a common creative problem solving task, the Remote Associates Test (RAT). Individuals were brought to a blood alcohol content of approximately .

Test expectancy affects metacomprehension accuracy.

Background: Theory suggests that the accuracy of metacognitive monitoring is affected by the cues used to judge learning. Researchers have improved monitoring accuracy by directing attention to more appropriate cues; however, this is the first study to more directly point students to more appropriate cues using instructions regarding tests and practice tests.

Aims: The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the accuracy metacognitive monitoring was affected by the nature of the test expected.