In this article we report 3 experiments demonstrating that a simple booklet containing self-explanation training, designed to focus students' attention on logical relationships within a mathematical proof, can significantly improve their proof comprehension. Experiment 1 demonstrated that students who received the training generated higher quality…

A comparison of the proof validation behavior of beginning undergraduate students and research-active mathematicians is explored. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they validated purported proofs. The main findings are that (a) contrary to previous suggestions, mathematicians sometimes appear to disagree about the validity of even short…