The contributions of studying examples and solving problems to skill acquisition

There is little doubt that examples play a major role in acquiring a new skill. How examples improve learning, however, is subject to some debate. Recently, two classes of theories have been proposed to explain why examples are such an effective manner of learning. Example Generalization models suggest that problem solving rules are acquired while studying examples. Knowledge Compilation models, on the other hand, suggest that examples are useful because they guide future problem solving, where the necessary rules are created.;Two experiments in the domain of LISP programming contrasted these models. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the activity associated with analogical source problems (subjects studied examples or solved problems) and the order of problems (sources interleaved with similar targets or all the sources blocked together, followed by a block of targets). Experiment 1 showed that separating target problems from source examples hindered learning because source examples could not be remembered to guide problem solving. Also, if sources are not accessible or remembered during problem solving, learning occurs best when the sources are problems to be solved, rather than examples. These results suggest that in order for an example to be most effective, the knowledge gained from the example must be applied to solving a new problem.;In Experiment 2, we manipulated the activity of source problems and the access of sources (whether subjects had access to the source problem while solving the target problem). In addition, Experiment 2 used a different learning environment that scaffolded and facilitated subjects' syntactic problem solving, an important aspect of learning LISP. Subjects that had access to previous sources were more efficient at solving problems than subjects who did not have access to sources, suggesting that the memory of past problems is an important aspect of learning how to solve future problems. More surprisingly, subjects who solved source problems learned more than subjects who studied source examples, a reversal of Experiment 1. It is hypothesized that the extra scaffolding that was provided in Experiment 2 allowed the subjects to be more productive while solving problems and learn more than subjects who studied examples.