Abstract
Background. Standard adaptive learning systems treat student errors as binary signals — correct or incorrect — and adjust instructional difficulty accordingly. This correctness-binary paradigm, dominant since Bayesian Knowledge Tracing was formalised by Corbett and Anderson (1995), conflates mechanistically distinct cognitive processes under a single label: 'wrong'. The cognitive and learning sciences distinguish, at minimum, Recall Failure, Partial Knowledge, Confabulation, and Interference — error types that arise from different memory mechanisms, carry different diagnostic information, and respond to different instructional interventions. Objective. This pre-registered randomised pilot trial pursues two interrelated aims: (i) to test whether error-taxonomy-aware adaptive learning — in which the cognitive type of each incorrect response governs subsequent question selection and targeted Hindi-language remediation — produces superior 2-week delayed retention compared to correctness-only adaptive learning and standard classroom instruction; and (ii) to introduce and validate the Confusion Fingerprint Index (CFI), a novel individual-difference construct capturing each learner's characteristic distribution of cognitive error types. Method. Ninety students (Classes 6–8; ages 11–14 years) enrolled in three government junior high schools in the Kanpur Dehat district, Uttar Pradesh, India, will be randomly assigned — stratified by school and class level — to error-taxonomy-aware Cognivia adaptive learning, correctness-only Cognivia adaptive learning, or standard classroom instruction. Paper-based NCERT Science assessments — a pre-test, an immediate post-test, and a 2-week delayed retention test — constitute the primary and secondary outcome measures. Expected contribution. This study constitutes the first pre-registered empirical test of cognitive error taxonomy as a real-time adaptive sequencing signal, the first validation of the Confusion Fingerprint as a retention-predictive individual-difference construct, and the first pre-registered randomised adaptive learning trial conducted with rural, Hindi-medium, government-school learners in India — a population of approximately 250 million children that is structurally absent from the extant evidence base.