Declarative and Procedural Knowledge in Skill Acquisition: An Aptitude — Treatment Interaction Framework for Training

<p>Previous research has shown that incidental exposure to second-language collocations in reading texts can produce gains in declarative collocational knowledge. However, there is little evidence that incidental exposure leads to the acquisition of procedural collocational knowledge. One key study that investigated these two areas was Sonbul and Schmitt (2013). They found that advanced non-native speakers gained substantial declarative knowledge of low-frequency technical collocations after three exposures in two incidental reading conditions in one treatment session; typographic enhancement of the collocations produced more correct answers than no enhancement. However, the researchers found no evidence of procedural collocational knowledge in a primed lexical decision task. Experiment 1 in this thesis was a conceptual replication and extension of Sonbul and Schmitt (2013). In a counter-balanced learning and experimental condition, 62 advanced adult ESL speakers were exposed to nine occurrences of 15 low-frequency technical collocations in 500-word texts in three sessions on two consecutive days. (input flooding). Three incidental learning treatments were implemented: reading-only (typographically unenhanced), bolding-only and bolding-plus-glossing. Collocational knowledge was assessed in two tests of declarative knowledge: a cued-recall (gapfill) test and a form-recognition (multiple-choice) test. Procedural collocational knowledge was operationalised as a priming effect in a primed lexical decision task. The results of the immediate cued-recall and form-recognition post-tests corroborate Sonbul and Schmitt’s findings: multiple encounters with the collocations produced substantial declarative collocational knowledge, and more declarative knowledge was produced through exposure to typographically-enhanced collocations (with and without glosses) than to typographically-unenhanced collocations. Procedural knowledge was found, but, unexpectedly, only in the reading-only treatment. Experiment 2 focused on non-technical lexical (verb + noun) collocations and grammatical (preposition + noun) collocations. Two incidental learning conditions were used: bolding and no-bolding. Seventy-eight intermediate-to-upper-intermediate-level adult native speakers of Chinese were exposed to six occurrences of each of 48 non-technical English collocations as they read twelve 170-word treatment texts on two consecutive days. The immediate post-test session comprised a gapfill (cued-recall) test, for measuring declarative knowledge, and a self-paced reading task, for measuring procedural knowledge. The results show an increase in declarative knowledge in both learning conditions. Bolding produced more declarative knowledge of preposition + noun collocations than no bolding; however, bolding was no more effective than no bolding for verb + noun collocations. In the self-paced reading task, the absence of bolding of verb + noun collocations led to a tendency towards the development of procedural knowledge, but this was not the case for the typographically enhanced verb + noun collocations. For preposition + noun collocations (both unbolded and bolded) no evidence of procedural knowledge was found. The findings of both experiments indicate that input flooding of collocations in incidental learning conditions can produce declarative collocational knowledge, and that typographic enhancement may lead to more declarative knowledge than lack of typographic enhancement. Repeated exposure to typographically-unenhanced collocations in reading contexts may produce procedural knowledge of collocations more quickly than exposure to typographically-enhanced collocations. These findings indicate that declarative and procedural knowledge of MWUs are dissociated in the sense that they follow different developmental paths. In a teaching context, I predict that the knowledge of collocations may be acquired incidentally through the use of texts such as graded readers which contain multiple instances of collocations.</p>

It appears that there are resemblances in the organization of memory and the visual system, although the functions of these faculties differ considerably. In this article, the principles behind this organization are discussed. One important principle regards the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge, between knowing that and knowing how. Declarative knowledge is considered here not as an alternative kind of knowledge, as is usually the case in theories of memory, but as part of procedural knowledge. In our view this leads to another approach with respect to the distinction. Declarative knowledge has occupied more attention in (cognitive) psychological research than can be justified on the basis of the importance of procedural knowledge for behavior. We also discuss the question whether there are other brain faculties that reflect the same organizational characteristics. We conclude with some speculations about the consequent role of consciousness in such a tentative model.

Knowledge Representation Methods for Dairy Decision Support Systems

To determine whether youth athletes with an “average” (regional), “high” (sub-elite), and “very high” (elite) level of performance differ with respect to their self-assessed tactical skills, 191 youth field hockey players (mean age 15.5 years, s = 1.6) completed the Tactical Skills Inventory for Sports (TACSIS) with scales for declarative (“knowing what to do”) and procedural (“doing it”) knowledge. Multivariate analyses of covariance with age as covariate showed that elite and sub-elite players outscored regional players on all tactical skills (P < 0.05), whereas elite players had better scores than sub-elite players on “positioning and deciding” (P < 0.05) only. The sex of the athletes had no influence on the scores (P > 0.05). With increasing level of performance, scores on declarative and procedural knowledge were higher. Close to expert performance, declarative knowledge no longer differentiated between elite and sub-elite players (P > 0.05), in contrast to an aspect of procedural knowledge (i.e. positioning and deciding), where elite players outscored sub-elite players (P < 0.05). These results may have implications for the development of talented athletes.

The potential of Virtual Reality (VR) in enhancing learning and training is being widely explored. The relationship of immersion, as one of the core technical features of VR, with knowledge types has not been fully explored. This study aims to investigate how VR immersion levels (high vs. low) affect the acquisition of declarative and procedural knowledge, as well as related cognitive and affective factors. A 2 × 2 mixed design was adopted, with 64 college students who had no VR experience and no background in professional medical knowledge being randomly assigned to either a high-immersion group (using HTC Vive Pro headsets) or a low-immersion group (using desktop monitors). Participants completed learning tasks on thyroid and related diseases (declarative knowledge) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (procedural knowledge), followed by knowledge tests and self-report questionnaires to measure presence, motivation, self-efficacy, cognitive load, and emotional states. Results showed that high immersion significantly improved learning outcomes for both types of knowledge with large effect sizes. In both knowledge domains, high immersion also enhanced presence, intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and positive emotions. However, cognitive load was reduced only for declarative knowledge, and no significant effects were observed for self-regulation. These findings highlight the differential impact of VR immersion on knowledge acquisition and provide insights for optimizing VR-based educational interventions.

‘High-quality talk’ is a fundamental principle of many approaches to teaching grammar. However, relatively few studies have attempted to characterize this talk with attention to the ways in which classroom dialogue might engender metalinguistic thinking. This paper explores how the concepts of procedural and declarative metalinguistic knowledge may be applied to classroom discourse in order to identify the problems and potentials of grammatical ‘Metatalk’. The data is drawn from observations of functionally-oriented grammar lessons in 17 classrooms across England. This opportunity sample was drawn from the intervention group of a randomized control trial, all of whom were working within a pedagogical model which embeds attention to grammar as a resource for meaning-making within the teaching of writing. Given the impact of effective teacher-student dialogue on student learning, studies such as this are valuable for illuminating how classroom talk operates within the teaching of grammar for writing. The findings particularly reveal the role of teacher-guided talk during collaborative writing activities in facilitating bi-directional transfer between declarative and procedural metalinguistic knowledge.

Professional handball coaches management of players' situated understanding during official games

In this study, we investigated the effects of students’ participation in a collaborative, project-based engineering design course on their domain knowledge, interests, and strategic processing. Participants were 70 college seniors working in teams on a design project of their choosing. Their declarative, procedural, and principled knowledge, along with their domain interest and their interest in select roles within that domain were tested at the outset of the semester and at its conclusions. Findings indicated that this course contributed to a rise in students’ declarative knowledge, but not their procedural or principled knowledge of engineering design. Further, there was no significant change in students’ personal interest in the domain over the semester, and their role interests were not associated with their demonstrated knowledge in the field at posttest. Implications for the perceived effectiveness of learning environments consisting of peer collaboration and relevant problems on students’ academic development are considered.

Skilled behaviour in real-world contexts often relies on a combination of both declarative and procedural learning. However, precisely how declarative and procedural knowledge interact is not yet fully understood. Previous findings have shown that procedural and declarative learning may interact or compete at the systems level during encoding, consolidation, and retrieval, but beyond this, it is not known whether declarative and procedural representations themselves interact. The goal of the current study is to investigate whether procedural and declarative knowledge can contribute simultaneously to categorization response selection behavior. We designed a stimulus set in which information learned by each system sometimes supports different responses, and created trials in the test phase that are designed to maximize such divergence. Participants were instructed to use a completely diagnostic, verbalizable, shape-based rule to categorize exemplars, receiving feedback after each trial. However, unbeknownst to participants, the categories also differed probabilistically in their color distributions. Participants used both color (learned procedurally) and shape (learned declaratively) to categorize exemplars, responding more quickly when both sources indicated the same category judgement, and more slowly when they conflicted. Debriefing confirmed that most participants were unaware of the color distributions. These results show simultaneous trial-level contributions from both declarative and procedural memory systems. Our findings represent a novel form of interaction between the two systems and have implications for domains beyond the laboratory, such as decision-making and classroom instruction.

This paper describes a methodology for applying expert systems to the task of executing process plans as a control mechanism for the factory floor. This methodology includes an architecture for representing both declarative and procedural knowledge. Declarative knowledge describes the state of the factory floor and the process plan operations that can be performed on parts on the factory floor (e.g., machining and assembly operations). Declarative knowledge is represented using both facts and schemata. Procedural knowledge identifies when and how process plan operations are to be executed. Procedural knowledge is represented using data-driven rules with an asynchronous event handling capability. Rules that determine when process plan operations can be performed embody largely domain-independent scheduling knowledge. Rules that determine how to execute process plan operations require domain-dependent knowledge about particular operations. Both of these types of rules also require information about the current state of the factory floor. A context graph mechanism is included in the methodology to represent temporal precedence constraints among process plan operations (i.e., the structure of a context graph indicates process plan operation precedences). Contexts are also used to represent a part configuration relative to a process plan operation. A prototype expert system based on the methodology presented in this paper has been developed using the Automated Reasoning Tool (ART).

Background and Study Aim. Tactical knowledge, both declarative and procedural, is an essential component of cognitive development in youth soccer. The aim of this study is to describe and analyze the declarative and procedural tactical knowledge of youth football players from a professional club in southern Chile. Material and Methods. The Soccer Offensive Tactical Knowledge Test and Procedural Tactical Knowledge Test were the instruments used in the study to assess declarative tactical knowledge (game principles and decision making) and procedural knowledge (execution based on the tactical strategy in a 3x3 reduced-field). Assessments of functional differences could be evaluated due to the representation of players from various positions in the sample. Results. The results indicated superior performance in off-ball procedural skills (JSB: 4.19 ± 1.64) but poor performance in off-ball marking (MJSB: 3.56 ± 2.09), illustrating limitations in defensive anticipation and positional reading. Defenders performed better than midfielders and forwards in all procedural dimensions (p &lt; 0.05), indicating an internalization of tactics in a functional way according to their positional roles. At the declarative level, operational principles–based knowledge among the participants was found to be relatively higher (8.57 ± 2.63), while decision making was found to be lower in this study (5.94 ± 2.28), indicating a deviation from theory to practical execution. No significant differences were found by position in this type of knowledge. Conclusions. The finding of a partial dissociation between declarative and procedural learning, as confirmed earlier in related work, has implications for the methodological design of coaching at the U13 and U14 levels. It indicates why emergent-based methodologies that support the interweaving of tactical thought and action to enable adjusted and effective learning in grassroots football are urgently needed.

Acquisition and transfer of declarative and procedural knowledge by memory-impaired patients: A computer data-entry task

Cognitive skills are concerned with analysis, interpretation and decision making required for performing procedural tasks. Since much of this process runs inside a human mind, the development of cognitive skill may largely rely on self-explanation as a mechanism for forming better procedures by clustering elementary operations and pushing them to the subconscious level. The paper describes possible categorisation of learning resources to match the different phases of skill acquisition. It discusses an implementation of a cognitive apprenticeship-based learning environment ‘Byzantium’ and an independent feedback on its use in real classroom. Its generic design philosophy is described, together with a commentary that places Byzantium in the tradition of Gordon Pask's adaptive teaching machines and conversational tutorial systems.

People gain a deep understanding when they receive worked-out examples in initial cognitive skill acquisition. This is, however, only true when the following guidelines are considered: prompt or train self-explaining examples (guideline of self-explanation elicitation); provide principle-based, minimalist, and example-related instructional explanations as help (help guideline); design examples so that the relations between different representations can be easily detected (easy-mapping guideline); make salient the examples' structural features that are relevant for selecting the correct solution procedure (structure-emphasizing guideline); and facilitate the isolation of meaningful building blocks in worked-out procedures (meaningful building-blocks guideline). Furthermore, series of examples with successively faded worked-out steps should be employed in order to structure the transition from example study to problem solving in later phases of skill acquisition.

Learning from examples is a very effective means of initial cognitive skill acquisition. There is an enormous body of research on the specifics of this learning method. This article presents an instructionally oriented theory of example-based learning that integrates theoretical assumptions and findings from three research areas: learning from worked examples, observational learning, and analogical reasoning. This theory has descriptive and prescriptive elements. The descriptive subtheory deals with (a) the relevance and effectiveness of examples, (b) phases of skill acquisition, and (c) learning processes. The prescriptive subtheory proposes instructional principles that make full exploitation of the potential of example-based learning possible.