Effect Of Working Memory Capacity On Collaborative Worked-example Learning Of Primary School Students

Individual learning and collaborative learning are two effective forms of knowledge acquisition.Compared with individual learning,collaborative learning contributes to the complex knowledge learning and learners ability to solve complex problems.Previous theories on collaborative learning have emphasized that working memory is the core factor of collaborative learning.At present,no research has directly explored the effect of working memory capacity on collaborative worked-example learning.Based on this,chosen primary school students as participants two experimental studies were designed.To investigate the effects of learning forms and working memory capacity on worked-example learning “equation word problem” of primary school students,132fourth-grade primary school students were chosen as participants in Experiment 1,This experiment adopted a 2(learning form: individual worked-example learning and collaborative worked-example learning)×2(working memory capacity: high working memory capacity and low working memory capacity)between-subjects factorial design.The results showed that in terms of mental effort,the participants with high working memory capacity(hereinafter referred to as “high capacity”)significantly higher mental effort in individual worked-example learning than collaborative worked-example learning.There was no significant difference in mental effort between individual worked-example learning and collaborative worked-example learning among participants with low working memory capacity(hereinafter referred to as “low capacity”).In terms of working memory resource depletion,participants with high capacity showed no significant difference between individual worked-example learning and collaborative worked-example learning,while participants with low capacity showed no significant difference between individual worked-example learning and collaborative worked-example learning.In the near and far transfer test,the results of the participants with high capacity in collaborative worked-example learning were significantly higher than that of individual worked-example learning,while those with low capacity had no significant difference in individual worked-example learning and collaborative worked-example learning.To investigate the effect of group working memory capacity(hereinafter referred to as “group capacity”)and individual working memory capacity(hereinafter referred to as “individual capacity”)on primary students’ collaborative worked-example learning of “equation word problem”,180 fourth-grade primary school students were chosen as participants in Experiment 2,This experiment adopted a 2(group working memory capacity: high capacity group and low capacity group)×2(individual working memory capacity: high capacity individual and low capacity individual)between-subjects factorial design.The results showed that in terms of mental effort,there was no significant difference in mental effort between subjects with high capacity and low capacity participants in the high capacity group and low capacity group.In terms of working memory resource depletion,the working memory resource depletion of participants with high capacity participants in high capacity group was significantly lower than low capacity group.There was no significant difference in working memory resource depletion between the two working memory capacity with low capacity participants.On the near transfer test,there was no significant difference between the participants with high and low capacity in the two types of group.On the far transfer test,participants with high capacity performed significantly better in the high capacity group than low capacity group,and there was no significant difference in the performance of the low capacity participants between the two groups.According to the results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2,the following conclusions were drawn:(1)There is a working memory resources depletion in primary school students’ math worked-example learning.(2)In terms of learning tasks with higher complexity,students with high capacity paid less mental effort in collaborative worked-example learning and had better learning effect.Low capacity students did not get better scores from collaborative worked-example learning.(3)The group capacity and individual capacity have important effects on the collaborative worked-example learning effect.On more complex learning tasks,students with higher capacity were more likely to benefit a lot from the high capacity heterogeneous collaborative group.