Contrasting the cognitive effects of graphical and sentential logic teaching: Reasoning, representation and individual differences

Abstract Hyperproof is a computer program created by Barwise and Etchemendy (1994) for teaching logic using multimodal graphical and sententid representations. Elsewhere, we have proposed a theory of the cognitive impact of assigning information to different modalities. The theory predicts that Hyperproof's devices for graphical abstraction will play a pivotal role in determining learning outcomes. Here, the claims are tested by a controlled comparison of the effects of teaching undergraduate classes using Hyperproof and a traditional syntactic teaching method. The results indicate that there is significant transfer from the logic courses to a range of verbal reasoning problems. There are also significant interactions between theoretically motivated precourse aptitude measures and teaching methods, and these interactions influence post-course reasoning performance in transfer domains. As well as being theoretically significant, the results provide support for the important practical conclusion that indivi...