The Effects Of Prior Knowledge And Cognitive Styles On Disfluency Effect

Disfluency effect refers to the phenomenon of increasing learners' perceived subjective difficulty by reducing the perceived fluency of learning materials,thus increasing learners' mental efforts,stimulating learners' analytical thinking and ultimately improving their learning performance.This kind of learning material which can cause the disfluency effect is called disfluency material.However,the lack of fluency in perception brought to learners by disfluent materials may also become the cognitive burden of learners and reduce learning efficiency.In view of the current controversy over the disfluency effect and the possible reasons for the instability of the disfluency effect,such as the lack of a unified operational definition of disfluency materials and the learner's personal characteristics,this study,based on the re-evaluation of disfluency materials,combines eye tracking technology and other behavioral experimental methods,from the perspective of learners' characteristics(prior knowledge level and cognitive style),attempts to explain the instability of the disfluency effect.Before the formal experiment,this study combined the two criteria of difficulty of font recognition and reading experience to evaluate the experimental materials with appropriate fluency and two kinds of difficulty;In the experiment 1,we used the reevaluated experimental materials to examine the influence of the disfluent materials on learning performance;in the experiment 2,we investigated the interaction between the prior knowledge level and the disfluent materials on the basis of the disfluency effect was not validated in the experiment 1.The experiment 3 examined the influence of cognitive style of learners with high prior knowledge on the disfluency effect.Under the conditions of this study,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The fluidity of the disfluent material is suitable.When the individual characteristics of learners are not taken into account,the "disfluent" operation of learning materials does not significantly promote learners' retention and comprehension,and no disfluency effect is observed.(2)The level of learners' prior knowledge has a moderating effect on the nonfluency effect.For low-priori learners,the "disfluent" operation can not significantly promote learning;for high-priori learners,especially when the learning material is difficult,the disfluent material can promote comprehension,which is consistent with the theory of " desirable difficulty".(3)Field-dependent cognitive style learners with high-priori knowledge level are more likely to perceive perceived disfluency,and learners with field-dependent learners have significantly more regression counts on the disfluent text than on the fluent text;the process of reflexion may compensate for the perceptual disfluency in the reading process and promote the retention and comprehension of the material.