IDENTIFYING THE BEST SCENARIO FOR USING SCHEMATIC ORGANIZERS AS INTEGRATION TOOLS FOR ALCOHOL-RELATED INFORMATION

The goal of the present study was to examine scenarios for using two s chematic organizers-schematic knowledge maps and conceptual matrices-i n integrating episodic and semantic knowledge about alcohol. Seventy s tudents from undergraduate general psychology classes participated for course credit. Participants were assigned to either a schematic organ izer group or an essay writing group. These groups were subdivided fur ther into two treatment sequences: episodic/semantic and semantic/epis odic. The episodic activity required participants to complete material s using their own alcohol-related experiences, whereas the semantic ac tivity required participants to annotate expert materials. Assessment measures used were consumer-satisfaction questionnaires and free-recal l tests. While no preferences were established for any one scenario, t he episodic activities were rated higher than the semantic activities regardless of integration sequence. The semantic/episodic integration scenario did produce higher recall scores for the expert information.