Psychological aspects of explanations as support for problem solving and learning

Abstract: This thesis will focus on two related issues. The first relates to social psychological aspects ssuch as people's perception of, and attributions regarding humans and computers as experts. The wsecond aspect relates to cognitive psychology,where aspects of understanding and learning are emphasized. In study 1 people's self-confidence were investigated in problem solving situations. It was found that the self-confidence of people did not vary with the origin of the advice but rather with the correctness of their own answers as well as of the advice. The perception of the advice did not differ between the computer and the human situation. The results also showed that explanations related to indeterminate and negative advicewere found to be educationally more valuable than explanations related to positive recommendations. People with lower degree of expertise wanted a broader range of explanations and people with higher expertise preferred concise explanations. Explanatory sketches can b