Resumen de Using methods from cognitive psychologyto elucidate mental processes
The Decoding the Disciplines paradigm has provided instructors and scholars of teaching andlearning with an effective framework within which to increase student learning. Decoding wasoriginally limited to those elements of learning that could be captured through a systematic intellectualconversation with an expert (the decoding interview, which makes explicit the implicit knowledge ofexperts). In this paper I will describe how tools from cognitive psychology can be used to supplementthe decoding interview. Cognitive psychologists employ a variety of methods to explore unobservablemental processes. For example, an analysis of eye fixations while people are asked to glean informationfrom an image can provide insight into the cognitive processes underlying the interpretation of thatimage. In the current study we analysed a decoding interview and eye movement recordings whilefaculty and students interpreted graphical data. The goal of this study is to identify ways to improvestudents’ ability to communicate clearly about data. Results from a decoding interview revealed keyelements of graphs and implicit mental operations that are important for interpretation of graphicaldata and could be made explicit for students. Eye movement recordings of both students and facultyduring the verbal interpretation of graphical data revealed that faculty are more confident in theirexpertise and outperformed students in their description of data. While there are significant individualdifferences in eye fixation patterns, faculty make more fixations and fixate longer on aspects of thegraphs that carry the most important information. Data from both introspection and eye movementrecordings revealed that implicit mental processes are involved in the interpretation of graphs byexperts. This could be explicitly articulated to students to help them understand and communicatemore clearly about graphical data.
