🗣️ Prompt Flexibility
Self-explanation is enabling various prompts like "why" questions, while elaboration with interrogation necessitates giving "why" the fact is true as an answer only.
🎯 Learning Focus
Self-explanation lays emphasis on personal meaning of the material and relating it to prior knowledge; on the other hand, elaboration interrogation centers its focus on why the facts make sense.
📊 Effectiveness Evidence
It has been determined through research that self-explanation is a great deal better than elaborative interrogation for the retention of scientific facts among college students by means of cued recall and recognition tasks.
🔄 Processing Depth
Self-explanation is making explanations that combine new ideas with the old ones; on the contrary, elaborative interrogation is finding links via specific questions about reasons.
⏰ Timing Application
Self-explanation is most effective during the active learning phase; the explaining while working with the material is more helpful than the after-the-fact explanations in developing comprehension.
🧩 Practical Flexibility
Self-explanation is suitable for different content areas and learner levels; elaborative interrogation is more effective with known facts that need to be clarified through cause and effect and rationale.
🧠 Cognitive Mechanism
Self-explanation is the process of making personal meanings and hence building new neural pathways; on the contrary, elaborative interrogation is associative memory enhancement through systematic “why” questioning relating to existing knowledge.