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Maike Tibus

[Person] [Project]

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Maike Tibus, Dipl. Psych.

Short Vita

1980:

Born in Braunschweig (Germany)

1999-2004:

Study of Psychology at the TU Braunschweig,

RWTH Aachen, Université Paris 13

2000-2004:

Scholarship from the Foundation of German Economy

(Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft)

11/2004:

Graduation at the RWTH Aachen (Germany), passed

with distinction.

Thesis: "Persönlichkeitsmerkmale und Handlungs-

strategien als Erfolgsfaktoren ost- und

westdeutscher Unternehmer"

["Personality traits and action strategies as

critical factors for success among East and West

German Entrepreneurs"]

Since 03/2005:

PhD Student at the Knowledge Media Research

Center in Tübingen, Research Group: Knowledge

Acquisition with Cybermedia

Since 04/2006:

PhD student of the VGK (without financial funding)

Contact

Phone: ++49 (0) 7071 979-203
FAX: ++49 (0) 7071 979-115
email: m.tibus@iwm-kmrc.de
WWW: My homepage

Institut für Wissensmedien - Knowledge Media Research Center
Konrad-Adenauer-Str. 40
D-72072 Tübingen (Germany)

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Ph.D. Project

Topic: "Inferenzprozesse bei expositorischem Film" (working title)
            "Inference processes within expository film" (working title)

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Dr. F. W. Hesse (Tübingen), Prof. Dr. S. Schwan (Tübingen), Prof. Dr. R. Plötzner (Freiburg)

Start of the Ph.D. project: 04/2006

Summary

Films are assumed to be cognitively processed in a shallow manner which in turn leads to a less coherent mental representation (Salomon, 1984). But past studies comparing retention in video, text and audio express conflicting results (Wetzel, Radtke & Stern, 1994). Furthermore, a direct analysis of elaboration processes during film perception is lacking.
Hence, this study aims at closing this gap by examining inference processes as prototypical elaborated learning strategies (Graesser, Millis & Zwaan, 1997).
This study focuses on global backward inferences. According to Graesser, Le ón and Otero (2002) backward inferences establish coherence on a local and global level which in turn is necessary to establish an appropriate mental model of the content. Differences in inference processes and knowledge acquisition between an audiovisual and an audio version of an educational movie in the domain of German after-war-history were analyzed.
In a two-group design (N=66) subjects saw either the movie or heard an audio play with the same audio trace as in the movie. As an unobtrusive method to measure inferences, subjects had to press the spacebar whenever they generated backward inferences.
Due to its lower informational demands, a greater number of inferences was expected in the audio condition, which in turn should also lead to a better performance in the consecutive knowledge test, mediated by a positive relationship between number of inferences and knowledge test.
These expectations were only partly confirmed. Whereas the audio presentation indeed led to a higher generation of global backward inferences, no substantial correlation between number of inferences and knowledge test scores was found. Furthermore, participants in the video condition outperformed participants in the audio condition in a knowledge subtest measuring near-transfer performance. That means that a model assuming a simple relationship among type of medium, number of inferences and knowledge acquisition can not be supported. Further elaboration is needed. Therefore additional analysis will be reported that take type as well as filmic position of inferences into account on a more detailed level.

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Last update 28 Sep 2006
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