Elaboration and knowledge acquisition

Abstract

Three experiments that explored the effects of different types of elaboration on knowledge acquisition are presented. The materials used were adapted from Stein and Bransford (1979) and were designed to simulate conceptual relationships encountered by people working in an unfamiliar domain. These materials were supplemented with elaborations that were designed to increase the distinctiveness of the memory trace, increase the distinctiveness of the memory trace while maintaining a high level of associative relatedness to key concepts, or reduce the arbitrariness of relationships among key concepts. The results replicate and extend previous research by showing that elaborations that reduce the arbitrariness of relationships facilitate both cued recall and recognition performance but that other types of elaborations appear to have little effect on performance. The implications of these results for theories of elaboration and knowledge acquisition are discussed. © 1984 Psychonomic Society, Inc.