2018 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 1-10
Learners sometimes fail to apply a rule to its case examples, even when they have formed the rule representation after they were taught the rule. This study revealed that learners who formed a rule representation were divided into two types (Type 1 and Type 2) and that the Type 2 tended to fail in rule application. University students (N=74) were informed of the rule, “metal conducts electricity”, with the statement on a case example, “copper conducts electricity”. Then those who formed the rule representation were identified (N=29). Among them, 18 participants (62%, Type 1) could form case representations, such that when informed material A was a metal they could form the case representation that “A conducts electricity,” whether they knew the name of A or not. The other 11 participants (38%, Type 2) could form case representations about the metals whose name they knew, but could not do so about metals whose name they didn’t know. There were no differences in performance between the two types when they solved rule application tasks regarding metals whose name they knew, whereas Type 2 scored lower than Type 1 for metals whose name they didn’t know. The results suggested that in order to apply a rule to a wide range of case examples, it was important for learners to understand that case examples of a rule were equally subjected to the rule, regardless of the familiarity of the name (known or unknown). In this article, we named the ability mentioned above “understanding of logical structure of rule and case examples”
