Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Questions asked during acquisition of a complex skill reflect the types of knowledge that learners require at different stages. Questions that learners ask themselves may serve to generate incomplete conceptual frames that can be used to guide explanation of future events. Question asking data collected from students learning to use a spread sheet program suggest that learners initially require knowledge about plans and the structure of the skill domain.Next they require knowledge about the structure of tasks that they will be performing. Finally they concentrate on plan refinement. Models of skill acquisition and explanation-based learning should incorporate mechanisms for monitoring levels of knowledge in several distinct domains and dynamically altering strategies for knowledge acquisition within these domains.