Аннотация:The purpose of our work was to identify differences in the way information is processed in visually presented graphical chemistry tasks in experts and novices. It was assumed that experts solve problems faster and make fewer errors, using fundamentally different cognitive strategies. Cognitive strategies were identified through the analysis of eye movement patterns.
In total, 35 people took part in the experiment, 18 of them were novices (undergraduate chemistry students) and 17 experts (specialists in chemistry, with work experience of 15 years and more). The study consisted of two stages. First, the subjects were asked to read a text describing a chemical process, then, using information from the text and the answers, they had to solve the problems in the form of graphs: fill empty cells in the circuits; indicate errors; swap individual elements to maintain the correct structure of the chemical process. Time was unlimited both at the stage of reading the text, and at the problem solving stage.
Expert chemists were significantly faster in solving graphically presented tasks. In addition, it was found that eye movements of the experts were characterized by longer fixation duration and shorter saccadic amplitude, which indicates deeper cognitive processing. Novices solve problems slower using less effective strategies, which is manifested in shorter fixations and high-amplitude saccades. Significant distinctions were found in amount of correct answers in task solving graphs: experts have more correct answers. Differences in indicating errors graphs weren’t detected.