ABSTRACT
It is hypothesized that labels in examples help learners group a set of steps and to try to explain why those steps belong together. The result of these grouping and self-explanation processes might be the formation of a subgoal. It is conjectured that the meaningfulness of the label itself might not be critical in order for the grouping and self-explanation processes to occur. This conjecture is supported in an experiment in which subjects studying examples in probability that had steps labeled transferred to novel problems more successfully than subjects whose examples did not contain labels. Furthermore, subjects who saw less meaningful labels transferred as successfully as subjects studying examples with more meaningful labels. Thus, it appears that the meaningfulness of the label does not seem to affect subgoal formation as much as the presence of a label. This result supports the interpretation that subgoal learning is affected by labels and that labels produce this benefit by helping learners group the steps into a purposeful unit, perhaps through a self-explanation process.
