The effects of argumentation goals on recall, causal understanding and reasoning

This research examined the effects of instructing students to use web-based text to prepare for an argument on their recall of the text information, understanding of causal relations in the text, and reasoning in an evaluation essay about theories presented in the text. Instruction to argue was compared with instructions to use text to prepare a summary or study for a recall test. A sample of 120 participants was randomly assigned into three groups: argument group, summary group and study group. The experiment also investigated the relationship of need for cognition to reasoning. The results indicated that the argument group outperformed the other two groups in the quality of reasoning, but did not produce better recall or causal understanding. Need for cognition also predicted the quality of reasoning. These findings have important implications for classroom deployment of argumentation as a learning strategy.