What Mediates the Self-explanation Eeect? Knowledge Gaps, Schemas or Analogies?

Several studies have found that learning is more e ective when students explain examples to themselves. Although these studies show that learning and self-explanation co-occur, they do not reveal why. Three explanations have been proposed and computational models have been built for each. The gaplling explanation is that self-explanation causes subjects to detect and ll gaps in their domain knowledge. The schema formation explanation is that self-explanation causes the learner to abstract general solution procedures and associate each with a general description of the problems it applies to. The analogical enhancement explanation is that selfexplanation cause a richer elaboration of the example, which facilitates later use of the example for analogical problem solving. We claim that, in one study at least, gap lling accounts for most of the self-explanation e ect.