| How to achieve efficient memory or learning has always been one of the key scientific issues in educational psychology,cognitive psychology and even neuroscience.In recent years,the generative drawing strategy has attracted much attention due to its seamless integration of multiple components,i.e.,motoric,elaborative,and pictorial components.Numerous theoretical and empirical studies relating to generative drawing have been conducted in the areas of word memory and text learning.Nevertheless,there are still some basic but important problems to be deeply explored,and the role of drawing medium is a blank field of generative drawing research.On account of the influence of handwriting,paper-and-pencil medium has always been the most common drawing medium.Delightingly,advances in digital technology have brought diversity of choices for drawing medium.Along with the development of touchscreen technology,touchscreen devices characterized by gestural interactivity and multimodality have quickly grown in popularity,which makes touchscreen-based finger drawing a new kind of drawing mode.Touchscreen-based finger drawing frees the individual's fingers from paper or electronic stylus and directly involves one into the generative drawing activity.There are potential mechanisms of cognitive processing for touchscreen-based finger drawing,that is,it may affect cognitive aftereffects through influencing the individual's sensorimotor experience and investment of cognitive resources.Although providing significance for further understanding of the role of generative drawing strategy,previous research still has several limitations that should be acknowledged.First,the potential value of touchscreens in generative drawing has not been explored.Second,the effect of drawing medium has not been attached enough importance and in particular,there is a lack of media comparison research for generative drawing.Third,the components of generative drawing,especially in a touchscreen environment,need to be further examined and analyzed.Fourth,no direct evidence has been provided for the potential mechanisms of cognitive processing for touchscreen-based finger drawing.Taking these circumstances seriously,a study-test paradigm was adopted in the present work with the combination of behavioral,eye-tracking and fNIRS measurements.Five empirical studies composed of 11 experiments were conducted step by step with the impacts of touchscreen-based finger drawing on word memory and text learning in the digital era as the core issue.In the first exploratory study,effectiveness of touchscreen-based finger drawing itself was tested through a behavioral experiment.Participants for Experiment 1 were 31 college students and a set of concrete words were used as experimental materials.In a within-subjects design,the independent variable was encoding type with touchscreen-based finger drawing as an experimental condition,both doodling and silent reading as control conditions.The purpose of the first study was to investigate performance differences among experimental and control conditions related to word recognition as well as encoding-type source memory.In the second study,three behavioral experiments were conducted to examine media comparison superiority of touchscreen-based finger drawing in word memory.Participants for this study were totally 123 college students(41 in Experiment 2a,35 in Experiment 2b,and 47 in Experiment 2c).The materials and design were the same as Experiment 1 with touchscreen-based finger drawing as an experimental condition,paper-and-pencil drawing(Experiment 2a)or stylus drawing(Experiments 2b and 2c)as a contrast condition,and silent reading as a control condition.The main purpose of the second study was to investigate performance differences between experimental and contrast conditions related to word recognition(Experiments 2a and 2b),encoding-type source memory(Experiment 2a),encoding-position source memory(Experiment 2b)as well as free recall(Experiment 2c).Both ecological validity and level of difficulty were further improved in the third study and two behavioral experiments were conducted to examine media comparison superiority of touchscreen-based finger drawing in text learning.Participants for this study were totally 86 college students(46 in Experiment 3a and 40 in Experiment 3b).Academic(Experiment 3a)or fictitious(Experiment 3b)concepts consisting of terms and their associated definitions were used as text learning materials with touchscreen-based finger drawing as an experimental condition and paper-and-pencil drawing as a contrast condition.The main purpose of the third study was to investigate performance differences between experimental and contrast conditions related to definition retention as well as term source memory.Based on the above studies,two behavioral experiments were conducted in the fourth study to further examine and analyze the components of touchscreen-based finger drawing.Participants for this study were totally 68 college students(35 in Experiment 4a and 33 in Experiment 4b).The materials and design were the same as Experiment 1 with(external)touchscreen-based finger drawing as an experimental condition,non-external touchscreen-based finger drawing(Experiment 4a),mental imagining(Experiment 4a)or touchscreen-based tracing(Experiment 4b)as contrast conditions,and silent reading(Experiment 4b)as a control condition.The main purpose of the fourth study was to investigate performance differences among experimental and contrast conditions related to word recognition as well as encoding-type source memory to respectively verify the existence of motoric(Experiment 4a)and pictorial(Experiment 4b)components of touchscreen-based finger drawing.Finally,in the fifth study,three experiments using eye tracking or fNIRS were conducted to examine the potential mechanisms of cognitive processing for touchscreen-based finger drawing.Participants for this study were totally 109 college students(34 in Experiment 5a,31 in Experiment 5b,and 44 in Experiment 5c).Complex texts(Experiments 5a and 5b)or simple words(Experiment 5c)were used as experimental materials with touchscreen-based finger drawing as an experimental condition,stylus drawing as a contrast condition,and silent reading(Experiment 5c)as a control condition.The main purpose of the fifth study was to investigate differences between experimental and contrast conditions related to text learning performance and distribution of visual attention(Experiments 5a and 5b),as well as word memory performance and activation of brain regions(Experiment 5c).Specifically,results from the above five studies showed that:(1)Touchscreen-based finger drawing could effectively facilitate word recognition,source memory and free recall performance,increase response sensitivity,partially speed up the responses,and improve level of motivation.(2)Touchscreen-based finger drawing could facilitate word recognition and source memory performance,partially increase response sensitivity,partially speed up the responses in a better way than paper-and-pencil drawing and stylus drawing;however,no similar results were found on free recall and motivation.(3)Touchscreen-based finger drawing could better facilitate memory retention of complex text materials than paper-and-pencil drawing and stylus drawing;however,no similar results were found on accuracy and response speed of source memory as well as motivation.(4)Non-external touchscreen-based finger drawing could facilitate word recognition performance,increase recognition response sensitivity,and speed up the recognition responses in a better way than mental imagining;however,it did not show higher motivation and even partially hinder source memory.In addition,measures for external touchscreen-based finger drawing were superior to non-external touchscreen-based finger drawing.(5)Touchscreen-based finger drawing could facilitate word recognition and source memory performance,increase response sensitivity,speed up the responses in a better way than touchscreen-based tracing;however,no similar results were found on motivation.(6)Touchscreen-based finger drawing could increase more fixation counts(rather than longer fixation time)in the task-related regions and more transition counts between the task-related regions than stylus drawing.In addition,both fixation counts in the task-related regions and transition counts between the task-related regions were positively correlated with memory retention under the condition of touchscreen-based finger drawing(rather than stylus drawing).(7)Both touchscreen-based finger drawing and stylus drawing significantly activated contralateral primary somatosensory cortex,bilateral premotor cortex and supplementary motor area.Though weaker activation of contralateral primary somatosensory cortex was found for touchscreen-based finger drawing than stylus drawing,the activation scope seemed to be broader for touchscreen-based finger drawing,that is,it simultaneously activated contralateral M1 and homolateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.The activation intensity of contralateral M1 was positively correlated with response sensitivity of source memory under the condition of touchscreen-based finger drawing(rather than stylus drawing).Taken together,these results indicate that touchscreen-based finger drawing not only is robustly effective,but also shows media comparison superiority over paper-and-pencil drawing and stylus drawing on both word memory and text learning.Indeed,touchscreen-based finger drawing involves motoric and elaborative components,and externalization is one of the contributing factors,which lay a foundation for the media comparison superiority.On the one hand,the media comparison superiority of touchscreen-based finger drawing originates from a mechanism of sensorimotor processing,that is,the individual performs better through touchscreen-based finger drawing because of extensive engagement of the sensorimotor system which is related to finger movement or tactile sense.On the other hand,the media comparison superiority of touchscreen-based finger drawing may also originate from a mechanism of elaborative processing,that is,the individual performs better through touchscreen-based finger drawing because of increased investment of cognitive resources which is related to optimization of visual attention distribution. |
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