The purpose of this study was to explore how students with high- and low-prior-knowledge employed multiple representations in argumentation evaluation and generation tasks. The argumentation performance and eye-movement behaviors of 96 college students in these tasks were investigated. The number of participants who proposed complex argumentation levels and the argumentation accuracy was higher in the high-prior-knowledge group than in the low-prior-knowledge group. Moreover, the high-prior-knowledge group demonstrated greater eye-movement transitions between representations compared with the low-prior-knowledge group. Both groups had greater transitions in the generation task than the evaluation tasks. The high-prior-knowledge group distributed attention to representations with more flexibility, revealing that they were more aware of the task requirements and more able to employ multiple representations for arguments. In the argumentation evaluation tasks, the high-prior-knowledge group performed referencing behaviors in the reading sequences between representation text and equation and between representation table and figure, whereas the low-prior-knowledge group was inclined to look back and forth between representation text and table. In the argumentation generation task, the two groups displayed similar reading sequences. It indicated that learners with higher knowledge may perceive the similarity between homogeneous representations and constrained interpretations of the complex representations by using easier representations, or further integrated representations to achieve deeper understanding, which then improved their argumentation performance. The implications of instructions for improving learners’ argumentation skills in a multirepresentational display are discussed.

中文翻译：

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具有多种表示形式的高，低优先级学生科学论证的眼动研究

这项研究的目的是探讨具有高优先级和低优先级知识的学生如何在论证评估和生成任务中采用多种表示形式。调查了96名大学生在这些任务中的论证表现和眼动行为。提出复杂论证水平和论证准确性的参与者数量在高优先级知识组中高于低优先级知识组。此外，与低优先级知识组相比，高优先级知识组在表示之间的眼动变化更大。与评估任务相比，两组在生成任务中的过渡都更大。优先级较高的小组将注意力集中在表示上，具有更大的灵活性，揭示他们更了解任务要求，并且更有能力采用多种表示形式进行论证。在论证评估任务中，高优先级知识组在表示文本与方程之间以及表示表与图形之间的阅读顺序中执行引用行为，而低优先级知识组倾向于在表示文本之间来回浏览和桌子。在论据生成任务中，两组显示了相似的阅读顺序。它表明，具有较高知识的学习者可能会通过使用更简单的表示或进一步集成的表示来获得更深的理解，从而认识到同类表示和复杂表示的受约束解释之间的相似性，然后改善了他们的论证表现。讨论了在多代表显示中提高学习者的论证技能的指示的含义。