Visual representations of information are prevalent in many academic domains, and students must learn how to interpret and use these visual representations. How do students acquire this representational competence? Past work has focused on the role of explicit instruction. In this work, we consider another route for acquiring representational competence in the domain of biology. We argue that students develop representational competence with diagrams based on experience with diagrams with specific features. In two studies (Study 1 N = 161, Study 2 N = 195), we presented undergraduates with a lesson on metamorphosis with either a linear or circular depiction of the ladybug life cycle, two common arrangements for this type of diagram. We then assessed students’ life cycle drawings and their preferences for different features of life cycle diagrams. This brief exposure to diagrams with a particular feature led to changes in participants’ self-constructed diagrams and in their preferences for the specific diagrammatic features to which they were exposed. Our studies suggest that people develop representational competence, at least in part, by tracking the features present in the visualizations they see in their environments.

信息的视觉表示在许多学术领域都很普遍，学生必须学习如何解释和使用这些视觉表示。学生如何获得这种表征能力？过去的工作主要集中在明确指令的作用上。在这项工作中，我们考虑了另一种在生物学领域获得表征能力的途径。我们认为，学生根据具有特定特征的图表的经验来发展图表的表示能力。在两项研究中（研究 1 N  = 161，研究 2 N = 195)，我们给本科生上了一堂关于变态的课，用线性或圆形描绘瓢虫生命周期，这是这种图表的两种常见安排。然后，我们评估了学生的生命周期图以及他们对生命周期图不同特征的偏好。这种对具有特定特征的图表的短暂接触导致参与者自行构建的图表发生变化，并改变了他们对所接触的特定图表特征的偏好。我们的研究表明，人们至少部分地通过跟踪他们在其环境中看到的可视化中存在的特征来发展表征能力。