The effects of lesson screen background color on declarative and structural knowledge Abstract This experimental investigation replicates previous investigations of the effects of left margin screen background color hue to signal lesson sections on declarative knowledge

This experimental investigation replicates previous investigations of the effects of left margin screen background color hue to signal lesson sections on declarative knowledge and extends those investigations by adding a measure of structural knowledge. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to receive one of four computer-based lesson treatments that consisted of color or no color lessons crossed with color or no color structural knowledge and declarative knowledge posttests. A disordinal interaction was observed, lesson color had a significant positive effect on the structural knowledge posttest (effect size d = 0.41) but had a non-significant effect on the declarative knowledge posttest (d = -0.17). A memory context effect was not observed. Designers of screen-based instructional materials should consider the commonsense notion that screen background color hues that signal lesson sections will tend to more strongly overlay the lesson organization onto the learner’s memory organization. Lesson screen color... 3 The effects of lesson screen background color on declarative and structural knowledge One common screen design convention is to use a navigation area, or panel, that is distinctly colored along the left column margin of the screen to set it apart from the rest of the screen (Nielsen, 2000). This navigation panel is commonly used on web sites, knowledge management systems, and web-based instructional modules to give the user a sense of where he/she is within the broader organizational framework. It can serve other useful functions as well, such as setting the tone of each section, improving the appearance and organization of the screen, and displaying the navigation hyperlinks. This investigation considers the effects on memory of using different background hues in the left margin area to signal lesson sections. In this investigation, we make a distinction between foreground color that signals important lesson content and background color that provides context to situate that content. For example, the term “aorta” in a text passage on the human circulatory system can be highlighted with a red hue at every occurrence of the term and in accompanying diagrams. Using foreground color in this way signals this concept’s multiple presences within a screen and across multiple screens. This type of foreground color coding may utilize an innate attentional ability of humans and other species to combine dispersed information instances at an implicit level into a single set (Halberda, Sires, & Feigenson, 2006). Most research on screen color has considered the instructional effects of foreground color to direct attention to associated content instances or to highlight important content, but there is less research on the effects of background screen color. Lesson screen color... 4 Though results are mixed, foreground color in instructional texts and visuals yields small to moderate positive effects on recall and comprehension of the color-tagged item specific content (Dwyer & Moore, 1994, 2001; Lamberski & Dwyer, 1981, 1983; Misanchuk, 1992; Pett & Wilson, 1996). However there is likely to be a difference between the effects of foreground color-coding strategies that typically have item-specific effects (but could have relational effects if so designed), compared to background colorcoding strategies that tend to have broader relational effects (Poindexter & Clariana, 2006; Smith, 1988). In the memory literature, a background color band like this in a screen display is classified as an incidental context variable (Smith & Vela, 2001) that is extra-item since it is not a direct part of the to-be-remembered content, local on a continuum of local to global, and nonverbal (Mori & Graf, 1996). This screen design approach cuts across several related theoretical approaches regarding the effects of context on learning (e.g., Baddeley, 1999). Tulving and Thomson’s (1973) encoding specificity principle would predict that background lesson color supports posttest retrieval of lesson content when the posttest color matches the lesson color. As a side note, over seventy years ago Dulsky (1935) reported that lesson-posttest color matching did have this effect and further, that intentionally mismatching lesson and posttest background colors actually suppressed recall of lesson content (recognition was not considered). Thus not only can matching lesson and posttest color support posttest retrieval; there is some evidence that mismatching color can hinder posttest performance. When considering memory-context effects, it is also valuable to consider the nature of the memory task. Paired-associate learning investigations have shown that Lesson screen color... 5 global context cues, such as a colored left margin, typically have a significant effect on recall tasks but that context cues have no substantive impact on recognition tasks (Godden & Baddeley, 1980; Jacoby, 1974, 1983; Kintsch, 1970; McCormack, 1972; Smith, Glenberg, & Bjork, 1978; Weiss & Margolius, 1954). The outshining hypothesis (Smith, 1994) proposes that lesson content and lesson context information are both encoded during the lesson task, but the context memory does not participate during posttest retrieval if the content memory ‘outshines’ the context memory activation level. Because a recognition posttest item contains more pertinent information than its complementary recall item (e.g., the item prompt and the correct response), a recognition posttest item would provide a stronger retrieval cue (e.g., more overlap between the item and the memory trace) so the content memory outshines the context memory (Smith, 1988). Thus the outshining hypothesis would predict that background color would more likely affect recall than recognition. Several previous investigations have considered the effects of left margin background color hue on recognition and cued recall measures of declarative knowledge with mixed results (Clariana, 2004a, 2004b; Prestera, 2003; Prestera, Clariana, & Peck, 2005). Contrary to the outshining hypothesis, Clariana (2004a) found that lesson-test color matching had no effect on a cued recall posttest (e.g., using fill in the blank factual items) but significantly inhibited performance on a recognition posttest (i.e., using multiple choice factual items). Similarly, Prestera et al. (2005) reported that lessonposttest color matching relative to intentional color mismatching had a non-significant (but negative) effect for both cued recall and recognition paraphrased items (d = -0.31 and d = -0.28, ns). These two studies suggest that lesson background color may have a Lesson screen color... 6 negative rather than positive effect on declarative knowledge outcomes, especially for recognition posttests. Again, contrary to the outshining hypothesis, Prestera (2003) reported no significant differences for lesson color for cued recall posttest measures (i.e., fill in the blank factual and conceptual items), but posttest memory of the lesson color scheme was significantly better for females relative to males. Similarly, Clariana (2004b) reported that the lesson color scheme was significantly better remembered at posttest under recognition tasks relative to cued recall. These studies suggest that background color does not conform to the outshining hypothesis, at least as it relates to its effects on declarative knowledge. So far, our working premise is that extra-item local nonverbal context elements, at least in this case with colored left margins, have an effect on the organization of participant’s knowledge. Simply stated, when color is present on the screen, the resulting memory organization is different than when color is not present. In a review of context dependent memory, Smith (1988) states that previous studies have consistently shown that “environmental context information can act as an organization cue” (p. 26). Such organization or structure is the essence of knowledge (Anderson, 1984). Knowledge structure (also called structural knowledge) refers to how information elements are organized in memory and may be a facet of declarative knowledge (Mitchell & Chi, 1984) but Jonassen, Beissner, and Yacci (1993) go even further to hold that structural knowledge is a distinct type of knowledge. An individual’s structural knowledge has an effect on other measures of learning that may be positive, neutral, or negative depending on how the memory organization relates to the other measures of learning. For example, more coherent knowledge structure is believed to be important for higher-order learning Lesson screen color... 7 outcomes such as forming inferences, comprehension, and problem solving (Jonassen & Wang, 1992) but has unanticipated and sometimes negative effects on lower-order learning outcomes (Clariana & Marker, 2007).Thus, besides the possible effects of background color hues on declarative knowledge, we are even more interested in context effects on knowledge structure, specifically the organization of the lesson content in the participant’s memory. How can memory organization that might result from the lesson topic color scheme be measured? Clariana and Marker (2007) used a computer-based sorting task called ALA-Mapper to measure the effects of learner-generated lesson headings on knowledge structure. They proposed that memory of related lesson topics will be more often clustered together for participants who generate lesson headings relative to those who do not. Their results showed that the headings group outperformed the no headings control group on the structural knowledge sorting task, d = 0.32, but, unexpectedly, the headings group scored lower than the control group on the declarative knowledge cued recall fact-level posttest, d = -0.35, a disordinal interaction. This present investigation replicates our previous research on the effects of lesson background color on recognition and cued recall declarative knowledge, and extends those studies by including the posttest measure of structural knowledge from Clariana and Marker (2007). In addition, color is included or not at posttest in order to consider a lesson-posttest color ‘matching’ alternate hypothesis. Based on the findings of our previous investigations of screen background color, we propose that a disordinal interaction like that observed by Clariana and Marker (2007) will occur. Specifically, color-associated lesson terms will be more often clustered together relative to the no Lesson screen color... 8 color lesson as measured by the structural knowledge sorting task posttest and lesson color relative to no lesson color will have a small negative effect (or no effect) on a declarative knowledge posttest using recognition and cued recall formats. Effect sizes for the recognition and cued recall posttest will be provided to further account for any observed differences. Though declarative and structural knowledge outcomes are both of interest, we are especially interested in the effects of left margin background color on structural knowledge. Method