Dyadic Learning of Technical Material: Individual Differences, Social Interaction, and Recall

To Examine the Relationships among Individual Differences, Interaction, and Recall, Students Were Paired with Same-Sex Partners to Read and Study a Passage Describing a Piece of Technical Equipment. This Material Included Both Procedural Information ("How-To" Statements) and Structural/functional Information (The Organization and Function of Parts of the Equipment). Both Partners Read the Material, Stopping Periodically to Summarize the Information to One Another. the Verbal Interactions of Each of the Pairs Were Audiotaped. Several Individual Difference Measures Were Administered as Well as Free- and Cued-Recall Tests over the Studied Material. Results Revealed that Verbal Ability and Field-Independence Were Positively Related to the Recall of Structural/functional Information Which Included Pictures of the Equipment. Also, Higher Scores on a Measure of "Deep Processing" (The Ability to Critically Evaluate and Compare and Contrast Information) Facilitated the Recall of Procedural Information. with Regard to Verbal Interaction, It Was Found that Those Verbal Utterances that Were Directly Related to the Content of the Passage Enhanced Recall of the Information Presented Visually. Several Interpretations and Implications of These Results Are Discussed. © 1990.