# 3 Paper Essay.
In the article, "Interest,Learning and the Psychological Processes That Mediate Their Relationship" it explains what interest really is in the frame of the human mind. In his article there are three types of interest, individual,situational, and topic.Individual interest is made out to be an individual’s predisposition to certain stimuli( things that affect them), events, and objects.Situational interest is caused by certain aspects of the environment. These include content features like human activity or life themes, and structural features like the ways where tasks are organized and presented.Topic interest, the level of interest triggered when a specific topic is presented, seems to have both individual and situational parts.
Previous studies have established that other mechanisms are needed for interest building in certain areas and can change over time. This recent study investigated relationships between individual, situational, and topic interest and particular parts of the affective and cognitive processes where they influence learning. This study examined how interest triggered by text titles influenced affective responses,persistence, and scores on a test of text comprehension and recall. In addition to traditional self-report ratings, a novel interactive computer program was used to monitor the subjects-student’s reactions as they read the four texts. The study first considers some issues that are important for distinguishing individual, situational, and topic interest and review some of the methodological difficulties that have limited understanding of the ways interest influences learning.
Individual interest has been characterized as a relatively enduring predisposition to attend to certain objects and events and to engage in certain activities. This behavior is put together with a psychological state of positive affect and persistence and tends to result in increased learning. Basically if the person has an interest in writing they will continue to expand their activities so that they can get better at what they are interested in. In the wide realm of schooling, students have not just one individual interest but a network or system of individual interests, some closely related to the goals of classroom learning and others opposite to classroom learning. Specific patterns of individual interests and how they influence student engagement with learning have not been adequately studied . As well as the need to identify students specific patterns of individual interests, it is important to contrive how individual interests at different levels of generality might differentially influence student learning.
Individual interests can be put in two categories : specific domains such as school subjects or specific activities within popular culture. In addition to having individual interest in specific domains and activities, students/subjects may have a more general individual interest in learning. General individual interest in learning is expressed as a desire to acquire new information, to find out about new objects,events, and ideas not restricted to any narrow domain. This can involve looking and finding information about something novel or it may involve seeking new information concerning something the student already knows about.
The psychological state of interest can be made by specific environmental stimuli and is referred to as situational interest and is characterized by focused attention that is similar to the outcome of individual interest, the immediate affective reaction may include a broader range of emotions. Situational interest may involve some negative feelings. There are two distinguished types of factors that contribute to situational interest. The first group includes formal structural characteristics such as novelty, intensity, and ambiguity called "collative variability." The second group consists of content features such as human activity, intensity factors, and life themes. Investigators have argued that situational sources of interest may be specially important for educators dealing with students who do not have preexisting individual interests in their school activities. One example is that a person might become interested in a subject if it deals something with a topic they like.
Topic interest refers to the interest elicited by a word or paragraph that presents the reader with a topic. This form of interest is something to be looked at for educators, because students are often given topics which they have to read or write on.
The experiment had 117 Australian Grade 8 students (mean age 14 years 3 months) and 104 Grade 9 Canadian students (mean age 14 years 7 months)as subjects. Each sample consisted of approximately equal numbers of boys and girls. Both groups had children from predominantly lower middle-class and middle-class background. The Between the Lines computer program presented first a number of interest measures online. This was followed by presentation of a set of four texts. Students responses, more specifically their choice of the order they accessed texts,how long they spent with each text, their feelings (affect) about the texts,and how many parts of each text were accessed, were all recorded automatically. After students finished reading each text, a multiple-choice test gave a measure of learning.
The basic conclusion was that after allowing for the effects of individual interest factors, there was still a large personal variation in the topic interest triggered by the specific text titles. The strongest model linking topic interest and learning suggested that topic interest was related to affective response, affect then related to persistence with the text, and persistence was related to learning.
Previous studies have established that other mechanisms are needed for interest building in certain areas and can change over time. This recent study investigated relationships between individual, situational, and topic interest and particular parts of the affective and cognitive processes where they influence learning. This study examined how interest triggered by text titles influenced affective responses,persistence, and scores on a test of text comprehension and recall. In addition to traditional self-report ratings, a novel interactive computer program was used to monitor the subjects-student’s reactions as they read the four texts. The study first considers some issues that are important for distinguishing individual, situational, and topic interest and review some of the methodological difficulties that have limited understanding of the ways interest influences learning.
Individual interest has been characterized as a relatively enduring predisposition to attend to certain objects and events and to engage in certain activities. This behavior is put together with a psychological state of positive affect and persistence and tends to result in increased learning. Basically if the person has an interest in writing they will continue to expand their activities so that they can get better at what they are interested in. In the wide realm of schooling, students have not just one individual interest but a network or system of individual interests, some closely related to the goals of classroom learning and others opposite to classroom learning. Specific patterns of individual interests and how they influence student engagement with learning have not been adequately studied . As well as the need to identify students specific patterns of individual interests, it is important to contrive how individual interests at different levels of generality might differentially influence student learning.
Individual interests can be put in two categories : specific domains such as school subjects or specific activities within popular culture. In addition to having individual interest in specific domains and activities, students/subjects may have a more general individual interest in learning. General individual interest in learning is expressed as a desire to acquire new information, to find out about new objects,events, and ideas not restricted to any narrow domain. This can involve looking and finding information about something novel or it may involve seeking new information concerning something the student already knows about.
The psychological state of interest can be made by specific environmental stimuli and is referred to as situational interest and is characterized by focused attention that is similar to the outcome of individual interest, the immediate affective reaction may include a broader range of emotions. Situational interest may involve some negative feelings. There are two distinguished types of factors that contribute to situational interest. The first group includes formal structural characteristics such as novelty, intensity, and ambiguity called "collative variability." The second group consists of content features such as human activity, intensity factors, and life themes. Investigators have argued that situational sources of interest may be specially important for educators dealing with students who do not have preexisting individual interests in their school activities. One example is that a person might become interested in a subject if it deals something with a topic they like.
Topic interest refers to the interest elicited by a word or paragraph that presents the reader with a topic. This form of interest is something to be looked at for educators, because students are often given topics which they have to read or write on.
The experiment had 117 Australian Grade 8 students (mean age 14 years 3 months) and 104 Grade 9 Canadian students (mean age 14 years 7 months)as subjects. Each sample consisted of approximately equal numbers of boys and girls. Both groups had children from predominantly lower middle-class and middle-class background. The Between the Lines computer program presented first a number of interest measures online. This was followed by presentation of a set of four texts. Students responses, more specifically their choice of the order they accessed texts,how long they spent with each text, their feelings (affect) about the texts,and how many parts of each text were accessed, were all recorded automatically. After students finished reading each text, a multiple-choice test gave a measure of learning.
The basic conclusion was that after allowing for the effects of individual interest factors, there was still a large personal variation in the topic interest triggered by the specific text titles. The strongest model linking topic interest and learning suggested that topic interest was related to affective response, affect then related to persistence with the text, and persistence was related to learning.
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