Effects of Cooperative Script Manipulations on Initial Learning and Transfer

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
When two people study cooperatively, their expectations, roles, and prior exposure to the information to be discussed can potentially affect retention. In addition, a cooperative experience has the potential to facilitate subsequent individual study. Four cooperativestudy scripts were employed to test their effects on initial recall and on transfer to an individual task. As partners, students read and studied two passages. In Group 1, partners each read one passage only and then taught the material to each other. They did not expect to be able to read their partner's passage, although they were later given time to do so. Group 2 was identical to Group 1, except that partners in Group 2 expected the extra reading time. In Group 3, partners cooperated in reading both passages by alternating summarizer and listener roles four times within each passage. In Group 4, partners played summarizer and listener roles only once, at the end of each passage. All participants later studied a third passage individually (the trbsfer task). Recall tests revealed that those using a teaching script (Groups 1 and 2) outperformed those using a cooperative learning script (Groups 3 and 4) on the initial task but not on the transfer task. Furthermore, playing a teacher role significantly improved recall. Frequency of summarization and expectancy manipulations were not found to be significant factors.