Meredith McKague | University of Melbourne (original) (raw)

Papers by Meredith McKague

The locus of impairment in English developmental letter

Simon De Deyne (simon.dedeyne@unimelb.edu.au)a Álvaro Cabana (acabana@psico.edu.uy)b Bing Li (521... more Simon De Deyne (simon.dedeyne@unimelb.edu.au)a Álvaro Cabana (acabana@psico.edu.uy)b Bing Li (52163200020@stu.ecnu.edu.cn)c Qing Cai (qcai@psy.ecnu.edu.cn)c Meredith McKague (mckaguem@unimelb.edu.au)a a School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia b Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay c Speech, Language and Neuroscience Group, NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China

Frontiers in Education, Jul 9, 2018

Instructors are increasingly using computer-based educational technologies to augment their cours... more Instructors are increasingly using computer-based educational technologies to augment their courses. As answering quizzes has been shown to be one of the most effective learning strategies, a growing number of computer-based learning aids use quizzing. So which of these learning aids should instructors recommend to their students? These learning aids typically either present the student with a number of potential answers and require that they recognize the correct answer (i.e., a multiple-choice quiz) or else they might require the student to recall the answer without assistance (i.e., a free recall quiz). Numerous lab-based studies have shown that recall-based quizzes promote more learning and result in higher performance in a subsequent exam/test than recognition-based quizzes. In the present study, we investigated to what extent this finding holds in an actual university setting with two commercially-available learning aids. We found that while both types of learning aid proved to be effective, we could find no evidence that the recall-based learning aid was more effective than the recognition-based learning aid. In light of this, we discuss possible reasons why the laboratory findings did not readily translate to an actual university setting and make practical recommendations for what sort of computer-based learning aid instructors should incorporate into their university courses.

Student Success

This article reports and extends on an emerging initiative presetned at the 2018 STARS Conference... more This article reports and extends on an emerging initiative presetned at the 2018 STARS Conference (Auckland, New Zealand). Many universities are invested in student mental health, but solutions can be hindered by concerns about the fit, cost, effectiveness, or sustainability of diverse initiatives. We argue that university staff looking to support student wellbeing should first consider how their specific university contexts can support or diminish wellbeing, and then design initiatives that will fit within supportive systems. This argument is embedded within dynamic systems theory, which considers how relationships between systems can lead to widespread change when any single system changes. We draw on our own experience so far of preparing and developing a whole-of-curriculum approach to wellbeing to demonstrate that a dynamic systems approach means addressing the needs of multiple stakeholders and remaining flexible to changes within surrounding systems.

Journal of Memory and Language

A critical constraint on models of item recognition comes from the list strength paradigm, in whi... more A critical constraint on models of item recognition comes from the list strength paradigm, in which a proportion of items are strengthened to observe the effect on the non-strengthened items. In item recognition, it has been widely established that increasing list strength does not impair performance, in that performance of a set of items is unaffected by the strength of the other items on the list. However, to date the effects of list strength manipulations have not been measured in the source memory task. We conducted three source memory experiments where items studied in two sources were presented in a pure weak list, where all items were presented once, and a mixed list, where half of the items in both sources were presented four times. Each experiment varied the nature of the testing format. In Experiment 1, in which each study list was only tested on one task (item recognition or source memory), a list strength effect was found in source memory while a null effect was found for item recognition. Experiments 2 and 3 showed robust null list strength effects when either the test phase (Experiment 2) or the analysis (Experiment 3) was restricted to recognized items. An extension of the Osth and Dennis (2015) model was able to account for the results in both tasks in all experiments by assuming that unrecognized items elicit guess responses in the source memory task and that there was low interference among the studied items. The results were also found to be consistent with a variant of the retrieving effectively from memory model (REM; Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997) that uses ensemble representations.

Psychology Learning & Teaching

Testing can do more than just determine what a student knows; it can aid the learning process, a ... more Testing can do more than just determine what a student knows; it can aid the learning process, a phenomenon known as the testing effect. There is a growing trend for students to create and share self-assessment questions in their subject, as advocated by the contributing-student pedagogy (CSP). For subjects with large enrolments, this process can be facilitated by educational technology. PeerWise is an example of such technology. It is free, web-based software that allows students to author, share, answer, and provide feedback on multiple-choice quizzes in a collaborative and constructivist fashion. While it is popular, it is unclear to what degree it facilitates student learning. To evaluate its effectiveness, we introduced PeerWise into a second-year psychology subject. We measured the extent to which it increased scores in the final exam. We found that PeerWise did significantly increase exam scores, so was a useful learning aid.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Journal of Neurolinguistics, 2016

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, Jan 18, 2016

Masked transposed-letter (TL) priming effects have been used to index letter position processing ... more Masked transposed-letter (TL) priming effects have been used to index letter position processing over the course of reading development. Whereas some studies have reported an increase in TL priming over development, others have reported a decrease. These findings have led to the development of 2 somewhat contradictory accounts of letter position development: the lexical tuning hypothesis and the multiple-route model. One factor that may be contributing to these discrepancies is the use of baseline primes that substitute letters in the target word, which may confound the effect of changes in letter position processing over development with those of letter identity. The present study included an identity prime (e.g., listen-LISTEN), in addition to the standard two-substituted-letter (2SL; e.g., lidfen-LISTEN) and all-letter-different (ALD; e.g., rodfup-LISTEN) baselines, to remove the potential confound between letter position and letter identity information in determining the effect ...

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 13546805 2012 676311, May 10, 2012

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or s... more This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Language and Cognitive Processes, Jun 3, 2010

Some psycholinguistic theorists contend that lexical representations are intrinsically phonologic... more Some psycholinguistic theorists contend that lexical representations are intrinsically phonological, and that visual word recognition requires the matching of orthographic information to core phonological representations, while others postulate that in skilled readers orthographic and phonological representations attain a more equivalent status. We provide evidence for the latter position, showing that an automatically accessible orthographic representation for a phonologically familiar word

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2016

This thesis aims to systematically investigate the cognitive mechanisms thought to be involved in... more This thesis aims to systematically investigate the cognitive mechanisms thought to be involved in letter position processing and its development. Chapter describes the theoretical framework upon which this thesis is based, as well as the motivation for the studies reported in Chapters 2 through 5. Chapter 2 reports on a study that uses the masked transposed-letter (TL) priming task to track the development of letter position coding in children learning to read (ages 7-12 years) as well as skilled adult readers. This study extends on previous research by disentangling changes in letter position coding from changes in letter identity. The results suggest that letter position coding becomes increasingly refined as reading develops. Chapter 3 investigates whether changes across development in sensitivity to letter position manipulationssuch as those reported in Chapter 2are driven by lexical development. This hypothesis is tested by investigating whether lexical skills influence

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 13546805 2012 670503, May 10, 2012

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014

Many children with reading difficulties display phonological deficits and struggle to acquire non... more Many children with reading difficulties display phonological deficits and struggle to acquire non-lexical reading skills. However, not all children with reading difficulties have these problems, such as children with selective letter position dyslexia (LPD), who make excessive migration errors (such as reading slime as "smile"). Previous research has explored three possible loci for the deficit - the phonological output buffer, the orthographic input lexicon, and the orthographic-visual analysis stage of reading. While there is compelling evidence against a phonological output buffer and orthographic input lexicon deficit account of English LPD, the evidence in support of an orthographic-visual analysis deficit is currently limited. In this multiple single-case study with three English-speaking children with developmental LPD, we aimed to both replicate and extend previous findings regarding the locus of impairment in English LPD. First, we ruled out a phonological output ...

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2004

Journal of Research in Reading, 2008

Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set o... more Skilled readers were trained to recognise either the oral (n=44) or visual form (n=40) of a set of 32 novel words (oral and visual instantiation, respectively). Training involved learning the &#x27;meanings&#x27; for the instantiated words and was followed by a visual lexical decision task in ...