CONTRASTING THE COGNITIVE EFFECTS OF GRAPHICAL AND SENTENTIAL LOGIC TEACHING - REASONING, REPRESENTATION AND INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES

Hyperproof is a computer program created by Barwise and Etchemendy (19 94) for teaching logic using multimodal graphical and sentential repre sentations. Elsewhere, we have proposed a theory of the cognitive impa ct of assigning information to different modalities. The theory predic ts that Hyperproof's devices for graphical abstraction will play a piv otal role in determining learning outcomes. Here, the claims are teste d by a controlled comparison of the effects of teaching undergraduate classes using Hyperproof and a traditional syntactic teaching method. The results indicate that there is significant transfer from the logic courses to a range of verbal reasoning problems. There are also signi ficant interactions between theoretically motivated pre-course aptitud e measures and teaching methods, and these interactions influence post -course reasoning performance in transfer domains. As well as being th eoretically significant, the results provide support for the important practical conclusion that individual differences in aptitude should b e taken into account when choosing a teaching technique.