Do reflection prompts promote children's conflict monitoring and revision of misconceptions?

We tested whether reflection prompts enhance conflict monitoring and facilitate the revision of misconceptions. German children (N = 97, Mage = 7.20, 56% female) were assigned to a prediction or a prediction with reflection condition that included reflection prompts. Children in the prediction with reflection condition (1) showed greater error-related response times and pupil dilation responses, indicating better conflict monitoring, and (2) performed closer to an optimal Bayesian learner, indicating better monitoring-based control. However, by the end of the study, all children had similar levels of misconception revision. Thus, reflection prompts can enhance learning from anomalous evidence by improving conflict monitoring, but they may need to be repeated often to sustain their beneficial effects.

Daily automated feedback enhances self-regulated learning: a longitudinal randomized field experiment.

The goal of the present study was to investigate the effects of automatically generated, adaptive feedback on daily self-regulated learning (SRL) in an experimental field study. University students reported their application of SRL strategies in the morning and in the evening over the course of 36 days using electronic learning diaries. Students were randomly assigned to the experimental group with feedback (LDF, n = 98) or the control group without feedback (LD, n = 96). Based on their self-reports, students in group LDF received daily written feedback regarding their satisfaction with the study day, adherence to time schedule, procrastination, and effort. This feedback either reinforced students in their study approach (confirmative feedback), encompassed information on learning outcomes or processes (informative feedback), or included feed forward on how to improve learning processes (transformative feedback). Multilevel analysis of daily process data revealed better average goal setting, planning and adherence to time schedule, as well as higher self-efficacy, and satisfaction with the study day in group LDF compared to group LD. Motivation, procrastination and effort were not affected by feedback. In contrast to the process measures, pre-post comparisons of students' self-reported general use of SRL strategies (trait measures) did not reveal any effects of feedback on SRL. Further explorative analyses investigated the effects of confirmative, informative, and transformative feedback on next day's learning behavior, showing that confirmative and transformative feedback had stronger effects on students' satisfaction and procrastination than informative feedback. Transformative feedback, which included specific strategies for moving forward, was effective in improving time management. Results provide theoretical insight into the interplay of feedback and SRL and offer practical implications regarding the design of feedback in a learning context.

Seeing the Error in My "Bayes": A Quantified Degree of Belief Change Correlates with Children's Pupillary Surprise Responses Following Explicit Predictions.

Bayesian models allow us to investigate children's belief revision alongside physiological states, such as "surprise". Recent work finds that pupil dilation (or the "pupillary surprise response") following expectancy violations is predictive of belief revision. How can probabilistic models inform the interpretations of "surprise"? Shannon Information considers the likelihood of an observed event, given prior beliefs, and suggests stronger surprise occurs following unlikely events. In contrast, Kullback-Leibler divergence considers the dissimilarity between prior beliefs and updated beliefs following observations-with greater surprise indicating more change between belief states to accommodate information. To assess these accounts under different learning contexts, we use Bayesian models that compare these computational measures of "surprise" to contexts where children are asked to either predict or evaluate the same evidence during a water displacement task. We find correlations between the computed Kullback-Leibler divergence and the children's pupillometric responses only when the children actively make predictions, and no correlation between Shannon Information and pupillometry. This suggests that when children attend to their beliefs and make predictions, pupillary responses may signal the degree of divergence between a child's current beliefs and the updated, more accommodating beliefs.

Test Anxiety Does Not Predict Exam Performance When Knowledge Is Controlled For: Strong Evidence Against the Interference Hypothesis of Test Anxiety.

Do test-anxious students perform worse in exam situations than their knowledge would otherwise allow? We analyzed data from 309 medical students who prepared for a high-stakes exam using a digital learning platform. Using log files from the learning platform, we assessed students' level of knowledge throughout the exam-preparation phase and their average performance in mock exams that were completed shortly before the final exam. The results showed that test anxiety did not predict exam performance over and above students' knowledge level as assessed in the mock exams or during the exam-preparation phase. Leveraging additional ambulatory assessment data from the exam-preparation phase, we found that high trait test anxiety predicted smaller gains in knowledge over the exam-preparation phase. Taken together, these findings are incompatible with the hypothesis that test anxiety interferes with the retrieval of previously learned knowledge during the exam.

Explicitly predicting outcomes enhances learning of expectancy-violating information.

Predictive coding models suggest that the brain constantly makes predictions about what will happen next based on past experiences. Learning is triggered by surprising events, i.e., a prediction error. Does it benefit learning when these predictions are made deliberately, so that an individual explicitly commits to an outcome before experiencing it? Across two experiments, we tested whether generating an explicit prediction before seeing numerical facts boosts learning of expectancy-violating information relative to doing so post hoc. Across both experiments, predicting boosted memory for highly unexpected outcomes, leading to a U-shaped relation between expectedness and memory. In the post hoc condition, memory performance decreased with increased unexpectedness. Pupillary data of Experiment 2 further indicated that the pupillary surprise response to highly expectancy-violating outcomes predicted successful learning of these outcomes. Together, these findings suggest that generating an explicit prediction increases learners' stakes in the outcome, which particularly benefits learning of those outcomes that are different than expected.

Predicting vs. guessing: the role of confidence for pupillometric markers of curiosity and surprise.

Asking students to generate a prediction before presenting the correct answer is a popular instructional strategy. This study tested whether a person's degree of confidence in a prediction is related to their curiosity and surprise regarding the answer. For a series of questions about numerical facts, participants (N = 29) generated predictions and rated their confidence in the prediction before seeing the correct answer. The increase in pupil size before viewing the correct answer was used as a physiological marker of curiosity, and the increase in pupil size after viewing the correct answer was used as a physiological marker of surprise. The results revealed that the pupillometric marker of curiosity was most pronounced if students were slightly more confident in their prediction than usual, and it was lower for predictions made with either very high or very low confidence. Furthermore, the results showed that high-confidence prediction errors and low-confidence correct responses yielded a pupillary surprise response, suggesting that highly unexpected results evoke surprise, independent of the correctness of the prediction. Together, results suggest that confidence in a prediction plays an important role in the occurrence of epistemic emotions such as curiosity and surprise.

Tackling Scientific Misconceptions: The Element of Surprise.

Misconceptions about scientific concepts often prevail even if learners are confronted with conflicting evidence. This study tested the facilitative role of surprise in children's revision of misconceptions regarding water displacement in a sample of German children (N = 94, aged 6-9 years, 46% female). Surprise was measured via the pupil dilation response. It was induced by letting children generate predictions before presenting them with outcomes that conflicted with their misconception. Compared to a control condition, generating predictions boosted children's surprise and led to a greater revision of misconceptions (d = 0.56). Surprise further predicted successful belief revision during the learning phase. These results suggest that surprise increases the salience of a cognitive conflict, thereby facilitating the revision of misconceptions.

Litsea cubeba fruit essential oil and its major constituent citral as volatile agents in an antimicrobial packaging material.

Food packaging films were coated with polyvinyl acetate (PVA) containing different concentrations of citral or Litsea (L.) cubeba essential oil (EO). Antimicrobial contact trials in style of ISO22916 were performed. Citral coatings achieved bactericidal effects against Escherichia coli (2.1 log) and Staphylococcus aureus (4.3 log) at concentrations of 20%DM. L. cubeba inactivated more than 4 log cycles of both bacteria at a concentration of 20%DM. To determine the antimicrobial activity across the gas phase, a unique method for volatile agents was developed, adapting ISO22196. GC/MS measurements were performed to supplement microbiological tests in a model packaging system with a defined 220 ml headspace (HS). HS-equilibrium concentrations of 1.8 µg/mlAir were found for 20%DM 'citral-coatings, resulting in antimicrobial effects of 3.8 log against of E. coli. Saccharomyces cerevisiae (4.74 log) and Aspergillus niger (4.29 log) were more effectively inactivated by 3%DM and 5%DM coatings. In an application trial with strawberries, simulating a headspace packaging, growth inhibitory effects on the yeast and mold microbiota were found for the 20%DM coatings.