Identifying General Cognitive Abilities Involved in Argument Comprehension and Evaluation
Abstract
Zusammenfassung. Personen, denen die notwendigen Fähigkeiten für die korrekte Bewertung von Argumenten fehlen, ziehen ein Leben lang daraus Nachteile. Forschungsbefunde zeigen, dass einfache Tutorien für viele Studierende (ca. 30 %) keinen Nutzen bringen. Wir berichten Daten zur Frage, wie sich durch allgemeine Fähigkeiten (z. B. Vokabelwissen, Leseverständnis, analytisches Schlussfolgern) das Erlernen der Argumentevaluation vorhersagen lässt. In Studie 1 konnte gezeigt werden, dass – obwohl alle drei kognitiven Fähigkeiten einige Aspekte von Argumentverständnis und Evaluationsfähigkeit vorhersagen – das Vokabelwissen sowohl die Argumentationsfähigkeit und nicht durch das Wissen um die Bedeutung einer spezifischen Aussage, die in der Aufgabe gestellt wurde, erklärt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen auf, dass der gezielte Einsatz von Vokabelwissen und allgemeiner lexikalischer Qualität diesen Studierenden, die nicht von einem einfachen Tutorium profitieren, helfen könnte.
Abstract. Individuals who lack the necessary skills for accurate argument evaluation will be at a significant disadvantage throughout their lives. Research has shown that simple tutorials are not effective for many students (about 30 %). The current research examines how general abilities (e. g., vocabulary knowledge, reading comprehension, and analytical reasoning) predict learning to evaluate arguments. Study 1 showed that, although all three cognitive abilities predicted some aspects of argument comprehension and evaluation skills, vocabulary knowledge positively predicted both baseline argumentation skills and improvement from exposure to a tutorial. Study 2 found that this relationship between vocabulary knowledge and argument evaluation skill is partially mediated by general vocabulary ability and cannot be accounted for by knowledge of the meaning of the specific predicates used in the argument task. The results suggest that targeting skilled use of vocabulary knowledge and overall lexical quality may help students who do not learn from a simple tutorial.
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