Abstract
In education, the study of person-situation interaction translates into research on individual differences in student aptitudes for learning under differing instructional conditions. An old and vast literature in educational psychology attests to the fact that individual differences in learner aptitudes predict learning outcomes. But a substantial new body of literature also now demonstrates that aptitude variables often interact with instructional treatment variables in these predictions. These so-called aptitude-treatment interactions (ATI) have important implications for the development of instructional theory and research and for instructional improvement. They provide a powerful new means of testing the construct validity of aptitude constructs and of focusing task analyses of instructional situations. They suggest a systematic approach to the individualization of instruction. More than this, they signal that theories in educational research require constructs woven from an understanding of individual differences in psychological processes as these are influenced by differing situational demands; they prove the need for the unified psychological science envisioned by Cronbach (1957).
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Snow, R.E. (1978). Aptitude-Treatment Interactions in Educational Research. In: Pervin, L.A., Lewis, M. (eds) Perspectives in Interactional Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3997-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3997-7_10
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