Constructionist Theory Case Study

Constructionist theory is one of the adequate psychological theories that account for text comprehension utilized to describe processes involved for generation of inferences when readers construct a situation model of what text is about. Since situation model is a mental representation of people, setting, actions, and events that are mentioned in a explicit clauses or that are filled in inferentially by world knowledge.

Constructionist theory makes decisive predictions about the classes of inferences that are constructed –online during the comprehension passage. McKoon and Ratcliff (1992) have concluded that constructionist theories assume that a complete, lifelike cognitive representation is constructed and that virtually all classes of inferences

Bartlett, 1932; Head, 1920; Piaget, 1926) which was inspired mainly by cognitive psychology (e.g., Rumelhart, 1975) and the early Gestalt psychology of the 1920s. It was also a great help to the studies done in the realm of artificial intelligence. Barlett (1932) considered schema as “memory structures abstracted from idiosyncratic experiences” which play a significant role in the processes of narrative comprehension and recall (Hakemulder, 2006). Schema theory thus shed light on the way of people goes through their everyday experiences by providing “explanation for facts from human cognitive adaptability to the use of definite reference in specific circumstances” (Stockwell, 2006, p.

The knowledge elicitation system is a tool for capturing an expert’s understanding of how hostile forces conduct military operations (Semino, 1997). The assessment system uses the elicited knowledge to infer hostile objectives and plans from a pattern of observables. Demonstration versions of both components have been developed. These systems enable both the knowledge elicitation procedure and the situation assessment algorithms to be tested for validity and for applicability to problems of practical importance. The knowledge elicitation tool is based on the assumption that knowledge used for situation assessment is organized as schemata in the expert’s mind.

Schemata theory is used in this study as a cognitive guidance that tells how individual make inference and what is happening during inferences from the cognitive perspectives. One of the rationales of schemata employing schemata here is based on its basic assumptions that the underlying organization of expert knowledge can have a major impact on the strategy for collecting information from an expert. When expert knowledge is assumed to be organized in terms of productions, then knowledge elicitation focuses on capturing an appropriate set of if-then rules, as has been the case for many existing expert