Eine Eye-Tracking-Studie zum diagnostischen Problemlöseprozess: Bedeutung der Informationsrepräsentation für den diagnostischen Problemlöseerfolg

The present study aimed at investigating the potential of eye-tracking for research in vocational education and the relevance of “representing information” for the diagnostic problem-solving success. “Representing information“ was conceptualized as a sub-process of the diagnostic problem-solving process and its quality was measured using total critical fixation durations. It was hypothesized that “representing information” is relevant to the problem-solving success and that successful problem solvers achieve a higher quality in “representing information” than poor problem solvers. Taken together, the results of the study supported this hypothesis. The results, however, also suggested that successful and poor problem solvers do not generally differ in terms of the quality of “representing information”; rather, it is to suppose that quality differences depend on specific requirements of a diagnostic problem. It appeared that quality differences in “representing information” especially are connected to diagnostic problems involving non-routine information collection and requiring a certain degree of mental modeling.