Effects of cooperative compare/contrast and review strategies on the acquisition of technical procedures

Abstract

The present study was designed to examine the effects of compare/contrast and review strategies on the acquisition of technical procedures (i.e., intravenous therapy, intramuscular injection). Ninety-three participants were recruited for the experiment. These participants were divided into four groups: (1) cooperative compare/contrast; (2) cooperative review; (3) individual compare/contrast; and, (4) individual review. The experiment required the participants to re-process two previously studied bodies of technical information using one of two strategies (compare/contrast or review) in one of two study conditions (cooperative or individual). The participants completed a number of cognitive style and ability measures that were expected to relate to task performance. The results indicate that the overall conclusions of the present study are that (1) the use of a compare/contrast task can be beneficial in the learning of technical material especially for individuals with low verbal ability; (2) overall, the individual study condition was superior to the cooperative study condition, although the high verbal ability participants benefited from cooperative study; (3) the cooperative compare/contrast group, while effective in the recall of the illustrations on the IM free recall, was not generally superior to the other groups, and, (4) the individual difference measures used in the present experiment were not useful as predictors of performance on the similarities and differences sections of the compare/contrast test, and therefore appear to be unrelated to the compare/contrast ability.