Contrasting the cognitive effects of graphical and sentential logic teaching: Reasoning, representation and individual differences

Abstract

Hyperproof is a computer program created by Barwise and Etchemendy (1994) for teaching logic using multimodal graphical and sententid representations. Elsewhere, we have proposed a theory of the cognitive impact of assigning information to different modalities. The theory predicts that Hyperproof's devices for graphical abstraction will play a pivotal role in determining learning outcomes. Here, the claims are tested by a controlled comparison of the effects of teaching undergraduate classes using Hyperproof and a traditional syntactic teaching method. The results indicate that there is significant transfer from the logic courses to a range of verbal reasoning problems. There are also significant interactions between theoretically motivated precourse aptitude measures and teaching methods, and these interactions influence post-course reasoning performance in transfer domains. As well as being theoretically significant, the results provide support for the important practical conclusion that individual differences in aptitude should be taken into account when ch-ing a teaching technique.