ArticleNPJ science of learning2025
Do it yourself: discerning the effects of self-directed activity on conceptual learning.
Article in NPJ science of learning, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Can you learn better by doing something yourself (DIY) or by watching somebody else do it? We present a new approach to examine this perennial question in research on learning and instruction. In a science learning task, children aged 5 to 7 years (N = 95) either generated predictions themselves (active condition) or observed the predictions of a fictitious other child (yoked condition) before seeing the outcome. Unlike previous yoked designs, we first emulated responses from a Bayesian learner. Critically, these responses were then individually matched to each yoked child given their unique prior beliefs at the start of the experiment. This novel approach allowed us to discern the effects of DIY on conceptual learning much more clearly than before. We found that actively generating predictions led to deeper conceptual understanding than observing another's matched predictions, and that this advantage of DIY was associated with an increased experience of agency.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.