Effects of Stem Encoding and Linking on Knowledge Integration in College Students: The Roles of Self-Paced Learning and Integration Cues

This study examined how college students link separate but related pieces of information and self-derive new knowledge that was not directly taught, a process referred to as knowledge integration. In Experiment 1, college students learned the materials either at a self-paced or fixed-paced rate. The results showed that self-paced learning improved both stem fact recall and self-derivation performance, and that stem fact recall significantly predicted self-derivation performance. In Experiment 2, all college students learned the materials at a self-paced rate. When the learning materials contained related interfering information that belonged to the same thematic domain as the target stem facts but could not be used for self-derivation, self-derivation performance significantly decreased. However, providing brief integration cues before learning effectively reduced this adverse effect. These findings suggest that successful self-derivation is associated not only with stem fact accessibility but also with the linking of relevant information. From an educational perspective, allowing learners to control their own learning pace and providing brief cues about the relationships among related pieces of knowledge may help learners autonomously construct new knowledge from what they have already learned.