FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS - EFFECTS OF PRINCIPLES AND EXAMPLES

Two experiments examined whether people's success using general instructions for operating a device (a word processor) would be improved if the instructions were supplemented with principles or examples. The principle explained relevant internal workings of the word processor. Its inclusion aided initial performance and later transfer, presumably by helping the learner to explain a difficult step. The example was predicted to reduce ambiguities and therefore, start-up time; its presence aided initial performance but appeared to have no effect on transfer. Besides demonstrating that general instructions can be improved through examples and principles, the studies suggest that a learner can access features of the initial instruction-based representation when faced with a novel task, even after executing a procedure a number of times.