Cognitive Mechanisms of Learning

6The Role of Prior Knowledge in Constructing a Representation of a Problem

When a person encounters a new situation, it is highly likely that the knowledge which they possess from prior experiences will play an important role; this is true for all three of the learning situations presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. In the research presented in Chapter 3, this prior knowledge factor was controlled by using problems which subjects had never encountered, but which were linked to a domain of knowledge which they clearly understood. Many of the research projects presented in Chapter 4, in relation to concept learning, highlighted the importance of prior knowledge in solving concept identification problems. However, research specifically addressing this question is most likely to be found in the field of problem-solving.

In this section, we shall present research highlighting the importance of the domain of knowledge in which a problem-solver constructs their representation of the problem. It comprises three sections presenting three different methodological approaches, each casting a different light on the role of prior knowledge. The experimental method described in section 6.1 consists of giving different isomorphic versions of the same princeps problem to different groups of subjects, then comparing their performance. These differences in performance are interpreted in terms of a more or less appropriate representation of the problem situation. In the latter case, success in the ...