The protocol paper
The pre-registered study, written before any data.
Does Knowing Why a Student Fails Matter More Than Knowing That They Did? The Confusion Fingerprint Index: Cognitive Error Taxonomy as an Adaptive Learning Signal in Learners
Pre-registered protocol paper, EdArXiv, 2026 · CC BY 4.0. Reported per SPIRIT 2013; the trial is to be reported per CONSORT 2010 and its pilot and feasibility extension, with the intervention described per TIDieR.
On authorship, in the paper's own words: this protocol is solo-authored at the preprint and pre-registration stage to establish priority on the construct (the Confusion Fingerprint Index) and the trial design. The empirical phase is to be conducted under formal institutional supervision, and the results manuscript may carry additional co-authorship. The Cognivia platform, the CFI construct, and this protocol are the intellectual contribution of the sole present author. It is a registered design, not a result: no efficacy outcome is claimed.
The literature it builds on
Established science, cited to the primary paper.
Cognivia's phenomena are not new; its contribution is turning them into a live, per-learner measurement. The core references, with the full annotated list on the evidence page:
- Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). Über das Gedächtnis. Duncker & Humblot. The forgetting curve.
- Murre, J. M. J., & Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. A modern replication.
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. Retrieval beats re-reading.
- Wixted, J. T., & Carpenter, S. K. (2007). The Wickelgren power law and the Ebbinghaus savings function. Psychological Science, 18(2), 133–134. The shape of decay.
- Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1992). A new theory of disuse. In From Learning Processes to Cognitive Processes (Vol. 2, pp. 35–67). Erlbaum. Storage vs. retrieval strength.