The Effect Confidence has on Adult’s and Children’s Uptake of Feedback

Student Presenter(s)

Megan Matsko

Abstract or Description

Feedback can be used in many contexts and for many different purposes. Feedback is studied for a long time after high confidence incorrect answers, studied for less time after low confidence incorrect and correct answers, and for little time in high confidence correct answers (Webb, Pridemore, Stock, Kulhavy, & Henning, 1997). The study presented participants, both adults and children, with analogical reasoning tasks based on age specific abilities. Participants were then asked for a confidence rating of their answers to the previous question. This study aimed to understand if feedback is beneficial for learning in analogical reasoning tasks for children and adults. This study also investigated if these benefits of feedback change based on the confidence level indicated by the participant. No effect was found between the conditions (all feedback, some feedback, and no feedback) for the adults or children. This is most likely because the overall accuracy was so high which limited the amount of learning that could be done. Additionally, results showed that there was an effect between mismatch confidence and accuracy on the following problem of the same function. Higher accuracy percentages were found on the next questions of the same function when participants correctly matched confidence for adults only. Confidence was hard to analyze and understand in the children’s data because children did not fully understand the confidence rating scale. Therefore, more research should be conducted to find a better rating scale and to better introduction of the rating scale to help children communicate their confidence.

Mentor

Erik Thiessen