Ask HN: Plural nouns vs. singular nouns when explaining technical concepts

2 points by feiri 3 years ago | 3 comments

This is an awfully pedantic question about pedagogy which I'll illustrate with an example.

I want to explain the concept of "cryptographic keys" to high school/university-level students.

I can imagine approaching this in two different ways:

- "Cryptographic keys are ..."

- "A cryptographic key is ..."

On the surface level, these two openers are barely any different, but I wonder if using the plural version ("XYZ are ...") incurs a greater mental debt on a learner. When a concept is referred to in its plural form, it takes on a much more abstract image when I try to visualize it in my mind, which for me is more difficult to work with. On the other hand, a concept referred to as a singular instance ("An XYZ is ...") collapses down into a single unit, which I think is easier for me to mentally visualize.

I guess in a sense, a plural form concept is to a wall as a singular instance of a concept is to a brick (or at least that's how I imagine it might feel to a learner).

What do you guys think about this, and are there any pedagogy studies about this? I tried finding some online but my Google-fu is failing. Might be time to try ChatGPT.

catchnear4321 3 years ago |

Though I’m interested in such studies as well, assuming they exist, I have to ask why you are interested.

If not purely for knowledge, if you are aiming to prepare some educational material for others, possibly even the example provided, I would suggest you at least not worry about cognitive overhead to quote this degree. If that is what is happening, awareness of it and the desire to reduce it is far more than most educators / mentors / etc have. And that a lot is contextual.

In your example, the burden of being a teenager in high school is far more cognitive overhead to the learner than if the educator is using singular or plural when describing a new concept.

Again, I would be interested in such research as well, and there are applications outside of the classroom. Probably stronger ones.

feiri 3 years ago | |

Thanks for the response!

So yea, you've caught me. I've been ruminating over an idea to make really short (1~2 mins) technical educational videos. They would explain technical concepts from my university courses that I found more challenging than they needed to be. So the majority audience would probably just be university students, but I imagine that the simpler/easier it is to understand, the more effective the material would be, especially since the videos would be so short.

> In your example, the burden of being a teenager in high school is far more cognitive overhead to the learner than if the educator is using singular or plural when describing a new concept.

I hadn't actually thought of this, but that makes a lot of sense to me. For a university student, the cognitive overhead might come predominantly from tight schedules, deadline stress, etc more than they do from any single set of subpar lectures slides.

That said, even if it's not that consequential, I'm still curious how much effect it has. I actually did end up asking ChatGPT for links to studies regarding this, and came back with 3 publications, but the titles and DOI links it provided didn't seem to match up. I couldn't find the first study by keyword either.

It gave me (DISCLAIMER: INACCURATE CITATIONS):

- Jackson, L. A., & Stanovich, K. E. (1986). Conceptual information processing and the use of singular and plural forms by children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(3), 205–213. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.78.3.205

- Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587953

- Hayes, J. R. (1985). Three problems in teaching general skills. Educational Psychologist, 20(1), 43–54. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep2001_4

catchnear4321 3 years ago | | |

Going for a broader conversation with ChatGPT on linguistics, semantics, cognitive load, and contextually education, might be faster than finding papers. It may get you to a point where you can get accurate citations, or at least authors.

The nature of your request makes Google rather unsuitable, unfortunately.

Stay curious, the subject is worthy - there is plenty of room for optimization, even down to the font being used for text. For your described purpose, creating short videos, this may be a case of premature optimization.