Tangibles in the balance: A discovery learning task with physical or graphical materials

An assumption behind much work on the use of tangibles for learning is that there are individual cognitive benefits related to the physical manipulation of materials. However, previous work that has shown learning benefits in using physical materials often hasn't adequately controlled for the covariates of physicality. In this paper, we describe a study where we compared the effects on adults' discovery learning on a balance beam task of using either physical or graphical materials and with either control or no control over the design of experiments. No effects were found of either the type of learning material or the level of control over the experimental design.