Participants
Participants were recruited at the Seoul National University College of Medicine. Among 139 individuals, 48 were female. Twenty-three participants who failed to follow the directions were excluded from the study. Therefore, only the data from the remaining 116 participants were analyzed ( = 19.22, = 0.79).
Material
The participants were instructed to study a 4-page-long written material. The study methods varied depending on their assigned groups. The subject matter dealt with the relationship between youth’s cognitive development and musical skills. This subject was chosen because it is less likely to be affected by background knowledge since related courses are not provided to the medical school students. In addition, it was convenient to devise final test questions and the writing tasks based on the topic as the material covered diverse concepts and theories. We were also able to refer to an already existing set of test questions on this topic, verified and used in the National Teacher Certification Examination in Korea.
Experiment Procedure
According to our experimental design, participants were randomly assigned to either of the three groups: the SS group, the EW group, and the AW group. For the SS group, participants were instructed to study the written material by themselves for 25 minutes. For the writing groups, participants were instructed to write a half-page long essay on the given material for 25 minutes. Specifically, the EW group was instructed to summarize the given text, while the AW group was instructed to make their arguments based on what they learned. The EW group was told to write more than three paragraphs, the total length of over a half-page. The group had to summarize various stages in youth’s cognitive development, which was mainly handled in the learning material. The AW group was instructed to write an argumentative essay. The length of the writing required was identical to the EW group. The participants were ordered to pretend that they were an elementary school music teacher, and must propose a music class based on the cognitive development theories introduced in the given material. There were four theories they could choose from, and they had to explain why the theory they chose was better than the others. Following the study session, participants were asked to solve the Remote Associates Test, which also served as a filler task, for 15 minutes. Finally, they were given 20 minutes to complete a final test on the learning materials.
Remote Associates Test (RAT)
Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a test commonly used to assesses creativity.27,28 This goes in context with the last cognitive process of higher-order thinking, creation.12 To see how the creation process of higher-order thinking is related to writing and final performance, fifteen questions were selected from the question pool published by Mednick.29,30 The student being tested has to think of a fourth word that is somehow related to three words given and all questions have one definite answer.
Measurement of Academic Performance
Final test questions were comprised of rote-memory type and transfer type items. Although most of the questions required the participants to write a short or narrative answer, these items had definite answers and guidelines to evaluating students’ performance. Furthermore to rule out any subjective evaluation by the experimenters, the raters’ agreement for transfer items was measured by Intraclass correlation. The coefficient value showed high agreement among the three raters (ICC(3, k) = .930). The ten rote-memory type items asked direct factual information on the given material and were worth 13 points. There were four transfer type items, which required the students to think a step further and apply what they learned to new situations. These items required not only an overall comprehension of the given material but also application of it to different situations, which were worth 16 points. Thus, the maximum score students could achieve was 29 points.
Writing Scores
To analyze the effect of writing, we scored their essays based on the writing performance criteria proposed by Lumley31. Specifically, we rated students’ writing based on three criteria. First, we rated whether the writing is cohesive and clearly organized (3 points). Second, whether the writing is appropriate to the task and materials given (2 points), and is easily comprehendible (2 points). Third, whether all aspects of presentation conventions including spelling, punctuation, layout are handled skillfully (3 points). The maximum writing score was 10 points in total.
Statistical Analysis
To examine the effect of different study conditions on academic performance, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), linear regression analysis, and correlation analysis were performed. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 23 software (SPSS, Chicago, L, USA) and R (3.6.2. version; R Foundation, Vienna, Austria). The statistical significance for all tests was set as α < 0.05.