User talk:Adamhampton99/sandbox

“Hypercorrection is the higher likelihood of correcting a general knowledge error when originally certain that the information they understand is accurate as opposed to unsure of the information.[1] For example, a student taking a test on state capitals is certain that Pittsburgh is the capital of Pennsylvania. When the test is returned, the answer has been corrected to Harrisburg. Shocked that the answer was incorrect, the student is more likely to make sure to remember the correct answer than the student who was originally unsure about the answer. The hypercorrection effect is not exploring whether making errors in high stakes situations is good for you. This can quite obviously be understood as not true. The hypercorrection effect is though exploring whether making mistakes early on in the learning process can be beneficial to the learner and their encoding of the material.

 History

The pattern was named "hypercorrection" by psychologists Janet Metcalfe and Brady Butterfield of Columbia University in 2001.[2][3] However, it was originally noticed by Kulhavy (1976) when students who were more likely to correct wrong test answers on a later test were certain that their original response was right.[3] In a study by these same researchers in 2006, Metcalfe and Butterfield, we are even more fully introduced to this hypercorrection effect and its implications. They begin with the presupposition that an error committed with high confidence would require a great deal of effort to overwrite. The finding though, as introduced earlier, was that errors committed with a great deal of confidence were among the easiest errors to correct.

Research

Even though hypercorrection was found in educational research, it is not limited only to the learning environment. General knowledge errors can be learned from books, movies, or television, especially with the natural tendency to believe things are true.[4] An example is the misconception that raindrops are tear-shaped. Understandably, many believe this because of depictions of such raindrops on weather channels. In the past few years, hypercorrection research has focused on the reasons behind it and whether people of all ages exhibit this phenomenon. There has been evidence that surprise or embarrassment of getting the answer wrong has a role in hypercorrection. For example, a person says that scallops come from trees. This person's friends laugh, pointing out that scallops come from the ocean. Embarrassed that the response was incorrect, the person makes sure to remember this fact to avoid embarrassment. Another factor implicated in hypercorrection is more vocabulary or knowledge about answers that the individual was certain about. Recent research has found that subjects are likely to guess or pick the correct answer on retests when they were sure about their response on the original test. This suggests that familiarity with the information may be part of producing the hypercorrection effect. These claims about the hypercorrection effect have also been supported by a study done using brain imaging. Janet Metcalfe, Brady Butterfield, Christian Habeck, and Yaakov Stern (2012) conducted an experiment using fMRI to observe any and all neural correlations of the hypercorrection effect in people. 15 people participated in the experiment; 10 women and 5 men. The experimenters delivered a questionnaire to the participants and recording brain activities using fMRI while correcting incorrect answers. It was discovered that while participants received their correction after committing a mistake, the brain was showing activation of the Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ) which indicates that they were entertaining the original false belief as well as the true belief.

Because the hypercorrection effect is all about our knowledge, knowledge errors, and their effects on our correction of knowledge errors, it seems likely that this effect will have been studied in a genuine classroom setting. This is not true for the most part. This effect has mostly been studied only in typical laboratory type settings. A study done in 2018 is one of the first times this effect has been studied in an authentic educational context. This study was conducted in a certain university’s introductory horticulture class. The students in this class were first presented with questionnaires related to the educational content of that course. They were then presented with the correct answers and were later given a post-test to test the same information in the same way once again. When analyzing the test, the researchers determined that there was a powerful hypercorrection effect present in the results. In analyzing these results, the researchers found that students who had a higher previous knowledge and understanding of the material not only showed a higher confidence in their original answers but exhibited a much more prevalent and more impressive hypercorrection effect of their inaccurate answers. We see from this and our other studies mentioned that a higher general knowledge of the topic seems to also bring along with it a more potent hypercorrection effect.

Janet Metcalfe (2017) explores the effect and possible repercussions of not using this hypercorrection effect to our advantage in the classroom. In an annual psychology review she wrote on this topic; she explains how focusing solely on avoiding errors completely before testing in the classroom may actually be a disadvantageous method of teaching and learning. It should be noted that this claim is made only for neurologically typical students. Metcalfe even goes as far to say that it may actually be a beneficial practice for students in education to commit and correct errors while in low-stakes situations as a method of coming to learn and understand the given material more unshakably.

Hypercorrection & Age

There have been implications that age plays a role because not all people show this effect. Most studies in the past have asked young adults to answer general knowledge questions. Recently, older adults have been tested and have not shown the hypercorrection effect, though this does not provide definitive evidence to state that older adults cannot exhibit this phenomenon. The result for children are not concrete, but some say that the prefrontal cortex is important to hypercorrection. This would be a plausible explanation since elders may have impaired prefrontal cortices and children's may be underdeveloped.” In speaking about the difference in hypercorrection’s effects relative to age, we learn from Metcalfe, Stern, and Eich (2014) that while older adults were seen to do a better job with general accuracy on the tests administered, they had a very low occurrence of the hypercorrection effect while younger adults were shown to display this phenomenon much more frequently.

Recent Developments

The hypercorrection effect has been demonstrated and replicated in several settings and with many different types of participants in recent years. In a recent study by a group of researchers, the hypercorrection effect was tested with participants from the general population but was also demonstrated with a group of children with autism spectrum disorder. The results of this test demonstrated a phenomenon that was not expected by these researchers. Though those tested with autism spectrum disorder had a heavily weakened general metacognitive ability, they did not show any evidence of a weakened hypercorrection effect. The hypercorrection effect, as a result, is seen by many to be completely disconnected from general metacognitive ability and is a phenomenon common among us all.