Journal of Educational Psychology 1988, Vol. 80, No. 2,167-171 Copyright 1988 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-0663/88/S00.75 Cooperative Procedural Learning: Effects of Prompting and Pre- Versus Distributed Planning Activities Angela M. O'Donnell and Donald F. Dansereau Texas Christian University Richard H. Hall, Lisa P. Skaggs, and Judith G. Lambiotte Texas Christian University Velma I. Hythecker Fort Worth Independent School District Michael D. Young Fort Worth Independent School District The effects of cooperative learning strategy manipulations on the enactment and recall of a medical procedure were examined. Ninety-eight participants completed the two-session experi- ment. Four experimental conditions were used: (a) no-strategy individuals; (b) prompting-only dyads, who did not plan prior to practice; (c) distributed-planning-with-prompting dyads, who intermittently planned how to perform prior to practice; and (d) preplanning-with-prompting dyads, who planned the entire procedure prior to practice. During testing, participants performed and recalled the procedure. Test order was counterbalanced. Distributed planners performed best on a variety of measures, including performance and oral communication of the procedure and attitude towards their partners. No between-groups differences were found for written recall. As expected, written recall of the procedure was enhanced by prior performance and performance was enhanced by prior recall. Theoretical and applied implications of the results are delineated and discussed in terms of prevalent theories of skill acquisition. In the present examination, we explored the effects of cooperative learning strategy manipulations on the enactment and recall of a medical procedure. According to Simon (19 80), procedures are comprised of condition/action sequences. The examination of the participants' recall of the procedure there- fore included an analysis of the separate recall of actions and conditions of the procedure. Activities that help the learner translate procedural text into a procedural enactment were identified. Anderson (1982, 1983) proposed three stages of skill acqui- sition: (a) the declarative stage, (b) the knowledge compilation stage, and (c) the proceduralization stage. During the decla- rative stage, the learner acquires an initial description of the skill. In the knowledge compilation stage, the learner speeds up the performance of the procedure and eliminates errors from the performance. Finally, the learner performs the pro- cedure automatically in the proceduralization stage. The declarative stage was selected for examination in the current experiment, because initial differences are likely to reverberate throughout the later stages. The declarative stage of skill acquisition can be decomposed into two substages: (i) the translation of text into a declarative representation and The research reported here was supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences Grant No. MDA-903-84^C-0323. The views, opinions, and findings are those of the authors and should not be construed as an official Department of the Army position, policy, or decision, unless so designated by other official documentation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Angela M. O'Donnell, who is now at Educational Foundations, R404A Fowler Hall—Kendall Green, Gallaudet University, 800 Flor- ida Avenue Northeast, Washington, D.C. 20002. (ii) the translation of the declarative representation into a first procedural enactment. A recent study (O'Donnell et al., in press) contrasted the effects of differential emphases on these two substages by cooperating pairs of dyads. One group of cooperating pairs (the "planning" group) emphasized the translation of the text into a declarative representation of the procedure by inter- mittently planning how to perform prior to actual practice (approximately every 300 words of a 1,200-word text). The planning group was not allowed access to the instructions or their partners while they planned or practiced the procedure. Dyads in the "prompting*' group did not plan prior to practice and were allowed access to their instructions and their part- ners' knowledge during practice, thus emphasizing the trans- lation of the declarative presentation into a procedural enact- ment. The differential emphases on the two substages of the declarative stage of skill acquisitions produced different effects on written recall and performance. Planning appeared to promote good recall, and prompting appeared to promote good performance. The planning group also recalled more of the conditions of the procedure. The differential emphases during training also seemed to affect the integration of declarative and procedural knowledge in the two groups. Free recall was enhanced by prior perform- ance in both groups, whereas performance was enhanced by prior recall only in the promoting group. These results sug- gested that participants in the promoting group had achieved a better integration of the declarative and procedural knowl- edge, as evidenced by their ability to profit from the cues available in performing or recalling. The goals of the present study were to partially replicate the findings from the study just described and to determine if a group combining planning and promoting activities would reap the advantages available to the two separate groups in 167 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.