Understanding the mechanisms of learning: findings from behavioural and psychometric studies

Abstract

Intentional learning refers to goal-directed or motivated acquisition of knowledge, skills, or understanding, which plays an important role in people’s daily life. However, much less is understood about the psychometric properties of finer grained factors such as the type and complexity of intentional learning. Moreover, it also remains unclear about the role of personality and other cognitive abilities in intentional learning. Thus, I first reviewed relevant literature in intentional learning, and then built conceptual models about intentional learning, highlighted the theorical reasoning regarding why personality and cognitive performance are related to intentional learning, and proposed hypotheses in Chapter 1. Then I validated a short version of the Big Five and applied them in people with psychiatric and neurological conditions in Chapter 2. Next, I developed nine internet-based intentional learning tasks that can capture factors including the type (i.e., instruction-based, observational, and model-based) and the complexity (i.e., easy, complex, and model-based) of intentional learning in Chapter 3. Finally, I investigated how personality and cognitive performance are related to intentional learning. I identified the gap in the literature and the need for psychometric and behavioural investigations of intentional learning in Chapter 1. I found that the short form of the Big Five is a valid measure of personality and can applied to psychiatric and neurological conditions with it being more sensitive to psychiatric conditions comparing to neurological conditions in Chapter 2. In addition, all nine intentional learning tasks I developed has psychometric properties that can be differentiated according to what and how people learn in Chapter 3. Finally, personality and cognitive performance are related to intentional learning, However, these associations were small and diverse, which may indicate that intentional learning should be treated as a separate set of constructs. These studies provide psychiatric and behavioral insights into the mechanisms of intentional learning and suggested that intentional learning is not a unitary concept but is consisted of many factors.