1. Chapter 7 discusses mental imagery relating analog code v. propositional code. The analog code theory says that the information about an image is stored as an image. the propositional code theory says that we store images as language. The chapter also talks about imagery as related to size and shape and interference with imagery. The second part of the chapter focuses on cognitive maps for instance when we need to find a new classroom at SIUE we use a cognitive map of the campus.
2. This chapter is related to chapter 5 with long term memory and how we store our mental images. It is also related to chapter 4 when we take the stored mental image from long-term memory to working memory in order to use it. I think that once the image appears in working memory whether it was stored as an image or language, it is converted to a picture using the visuospatial sketchpad. Similarly auditory sounds are brought to working memory and is used through the phonological loop.
3. I did have a question about how chapter 4 relates to chapter 7. In chapter 4 it mentions that it is difficult to be completing a visual task and at the same time have an auditory interference. Chapter 7 says that interference occurs when there are 2 visual tasks happening at the same time or 2 auditory tasks happening at the same time. Does it occur in both cases then or is the interferences of working memory as opposed to long-term memory?
4. We use visual and mental imagery in math constantly especially in my calculus class. It is interesting to understand how the mental and actual image can interfere with each other. I think that I will be more aware of this in my classroom.
5. I think that for the most part the author gives several examples of studies that have been done to show proof. As I was reading about the alignment heuristic, the book said that they asked students where Rome was in relation to Philadelphia. The study said that people are accustomed to thinking things are in a straight line but what if they asked people that really have no background in Geography. How would this studies results show this result?
6. This is important to understand how our mental images can differ from the actual image. I found it very interesting when the book described analog code and propositional code. I think that I agree with what Pylyshyn explained. I thought about a computers memory when I was reading the book. He said that yes we are able to see these mental images but he thinks that they are stored as language in our long term memory and then can be pulled out of long term and formed into an image. There would be a lot more room for info, as with a computer, if things are stored as text and then using the visuospatial sketchpad we can convert them to a mental image.
7. I use mental imagery as compared to the actual image as we are doing transformations of graphs in Calculus. I give the students a parent graph starting at the origin of a function such as a parabola. By manipulating the equation by +, -, etc. the parabola moves and chages shape. My students practice making a mental image of the new parabola and then we check our results using a graphing calculator.
8. My only question about the books examples of studies is that they don't go into detail with the number of participants and how many times the study was completed, etc. I am sure that the references go into more detail about it. Most of the time good researchers will say what their limitations are in a study because no study is perfect. I assume that the actual researcher has done this but we would have to look further into the references listed in the book.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Memory strategies/Metacognition Ch 6 and 13
1. Chapter 6 talks about the memory strategies that adults use such as the key word method, the method of loci, and mnemonic strategies such as chunking, hierarchy, first letter technique, and the narrative technique. It also talks about metacognition and metamemory which are your knowledge of you cognitive abilities and how you learn. Chapter 13 basically examines the differences in age groups and the memory strategies used in each of the groups. It also talks about metacognition from young children to older adults.
2. It fits in with what we have learned with working and long term memory because we are able to access what works for us individually in order to take the info from working into long term memory and then be able to retrieve the info when needed.
3. I though that it was very interesting to read about the research that was done on infants and young children. Would it help people to learn and retain more info in the future if we taught them memory strategies at 2 - 4 years old? Would this age of children be able to understand the memory strategies if we worked on it? Children are like sponges, I wonder if this would make a difference. The government has been putting a great deal of money towards preschool programs so I guess we will see the results down the road.
4. I don't believe that all of my high school students understand their study strategies. I think that they sometimes continue to do the same strategy without trying others. I think that this also depends on the level of motivation that the students have. I talk to students before their math tests about the way that they can study. For example, I tell them to practice the concepts that they are having trouble with. The book talks about this in chapter 13. I don't think that this age of students really understand their own cognitive abilities and strengths (Metacognition). I also talk to the students before taking state tests like the ACT. We talk about strategies to take multiple choice tests. In my last blog, I talked about offering a study skills class to students that are at-risk. We do not always have time to talk about study strategies with the other curriculum that we have to cover but it is something that would definitely benefit the students.
5. There are several studies that the author has done on college students. I think that it would have been interesting to study young adolescents also. Chapter 13 seems like it only studied infants, young children, children between 6-9, college students, and elderly people. They skipped the ages of 11-18 and adults between 25 and 65. It would be interesting to see this research also. I thought the reasearch with infants would have been more interesting if they looked at the difference between premature babies and babies that went full term.
6. It is important to learn the memory strategies that help us to individually learn. As teachers I think that we should put emphasis on this when we have extra classtime because it can make a positive impact on student achievement.
7. As I mentioned earlier, I think that a study skills class would benefit students for the future. I think that the freshman level in high school is a critical time because of the adjustment to high school. By understanding their metacognition skills and trying different memory strategies could benefit them for the rest of their high school years and would make them more successful in the future in any avenue that they decide to pursue.
8. It is interesting that the studies have not included high school students. I think that if we can educate teachers in middle school and high school to talk to their students about memory strategies and metacognition we would be more successful and maybe we would see huge improvements on assessments and the level that the students can recall concepts that they have learned.
2. It fits in with what we have learned with working and long term memory because we are able to access what works for us individually in order to take the info from working into long term memory and then be able to retrieve the info when needed.
3. I though that it was very interesting to read about the research that was done on infants and young children. Would it help people to learn and retain more info in the future if we taught them memory strategies at 2 - 4 years old? Would this age of children be able to understand the memory strategies if we worked on it? Children are like sponges, I wonder if this would make a difference. The government has been putting a great deal of money towards preschool programs so I guess we will see the results down the road.
4. I don't believe that all of my high school students understand their study strategies. I think that they sometimes continue to do the same strategy without trying others. I think that this also depends on the level of motivation that the students have. I talk to students before their math tests about the way that they can study. For example, I tell them to practice the concepts that they are having trouble with. The book talks about this in chapter 13. I don't think that this age of students really understand their own cognitive abilities and strengths (Metacognition). I also talk to the students before taking state tests like the ACT. We talk about strategies to take multiple choice tests. In my last blog, I talked about offering a study skills class to students that are at-risk. We do not always have time to talk about study strategies with the other curriculum that we have to cover but it is something that would definitely benefit the students.
5. There are several studies that the author has done on college students. I think that it would have been interesting to study young adolescents also. Chapter 13 seems like it only studied infants, young children, children between 6-9, college students, and elderly people. They skipped the ages of 11-18 and adults between 25 and 65. It would be interesting to see this research also. I thought the reasearch with infants would have been more interesting if they looked at the difference between premature babies and babies that went full term.
6. It is important to learn the memory strategies that help us to individually learn. As teachers I think that we should put emphasis on this when we have extra classtime because it can make a positive impact on student achievement.
7. As I mentioned earlier, I think that a study skills class would benefit students for the future. I think that the freshman level in high school is a critical time because of the adjustment to high school. By understanding their metacognition skills and trying different memory strategies could benefit them for the rest of their high school years and would make them more successful in the future in any avenue that they decide to pursue.
8. It is interesting that the studies have not included high school students. I think that if we can educate teachers in middle school and high school to talk to their students about memory strategies and metacognition we would be more successful and maybe we would see huge improvements on assessments and the level that the students can recall concepts that they have learned.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Chapter 5 Reflection
1. This chapter explains how our long term memory works. This chapter focuses on the episodic memory. The depth of processing is important in what is moved to our long term memory. The deeper that we are processing by relating what we have previously learned can help us remember the material in depth. It is easier to remember something if the context matches how we learned the info. We are also more able to remember something if our mood matches the mood when we learned something. The Pollyanna principle says that we remember positive memories more accurately than negative memories. The end of the chapter talks about expertise with memory, flashbulb memory, characteristics of amnesia patients, and memories of eyewitness testimonies.
2. How does it fit in with what we have previously learned? Last chapter we learned about working memory. Long term memory does work with working memory. This chapter shows how we use our long term memory skills to commit what is in working memory to long term memory. Knowing how our memory works can help us to develop our memory tasks to hold more information. It can also help teachers to understand how our students learn and process information.
3. This chapter mentions that we remember information more if we can relate it to our life and make it meaningful. My question is related to teaching. When I teach Algebra 2 to my regular and lower level juniors it is hard to make it meaningful to them. I try to make it exciting and we do have fun in class. I still find it hard to always make it a priority in their life.
4. I think understanding how the brain works helps us to become better teachers. It is important to make sure that the context of the assessment matches the context of the way the info was taught. I was thinking about how the book mentioned depressed people think. I know that my students are dealing with issues in the home and I can understand why Algebra 2 might not be the most important topic in their life. I would think that it would be difficult for students that are depressed to learn anything in depth because they are combated by continuous negative memories. I try to make class fun in order to help depress those thoughts for some kids.
5. The author has mentioned many studies that have been done over time to explain the theories. I could relate how I learn to the depth of processing approach and the self reference effect. When I am in a meeting I try to relate everything to something that I already know. If I did not do this, I don't think that I would take in as much info. I am not sure that my self reference effect was quite as advanced in grade school as it is now. I rarely ever daydream anymore when listening to speakers or when I am having a conversation with someone. This was not always the case in grade school.
6. Understanding long term memory is important because if we can understand how it works we can help people to enhance their skills for better performance in their place of work.
7. When would I actually use this – I think that I will talk about recall and recognition in the classroom. Recognition is identifying what concepts were taught earlier. Recall asks students to reproduce what they have previously learned. On assessments it is important to include both recall and recognition. If students are able to recall a concept, then they will understand the info in more depth than simply recognizing it. I use this method when I ask students to explain how to do a problem in words. If they can reproduce or recall the process in their own words they will have more success on mastering the topic.
8. I think that if we had more time at the high school, it would benefit students to talk about the brain's activities and how they can improve their memory strategies to improve success. We are thinking about implementing a study skills class where some of this info could be used to help students.
2. How does it fit in with what we have previously learned? Last chapter we learned about working memory. Long term memory does work with working memory. This chapter shows how we use our long term memory skills to commit what is in working memory to long term memory. Knowing how our memory works can help us to develop our memory tasks to hold more information. It can also help teachers to understand how our students learn and process information.
3. This chapter mentions that we remember information more if we can relate it to our life and make it meaningful. My question is related to teaching. When I teach Algebra 2 to my regular and lower level juniors it is hard to make it meaningful to them. I try to make it exciting and we do have fun in class. I still find it hard to always make it a priority in their life.
4. I think understanding how the brain works helps us to become better teachers. It is important to make sure that the context of the assessment matches the context of the way the info was taught. I was thinking about how the book mentioned depressed people think. I know that my students are dealing with issues in the home and I can understand why Algebra 2 might not be the most important topic in their life. I would think that it would be difficult for students that are depressed to learn anything in depth because they are combated by continuous negative memories. I try to make class fun in order to help depress those thoughts for some kids.
5. The author has mentioned many studies that have been done over time to explain the theories. I could relate how I learn to the depth of processing approach and the self reference effect. When I am in a meeting I try to relate everything to something that I already know. If I did not do this, I don't think that I would take in as much info. I am not sure that my self reference effect was quite as advanced in grade school as it is now. I rarely ever daydream anymore when listening to speakers or when I am having a conversation with someone. This was not always the case in grade school.
6. Understanding long term memory is important because if we can understand how it works we can help people to enhance their skills for better performance in their place of work.
7. When would I actually use this – I think that I will talk about recall and recognition in the classroom. Recognition is identifying what concepts were taught earlier. Recall asks students to reproduce what they have previously learned. On assessments it is important to include both recall and recognition. If students are able to recall a concept, then they will understand the info in more depth than simply recognizing it. I use this method when I ask students to explain how to do a problem in words. If they can reproduce or recall the process in their own words they will have more success on mastering the topic.
8. I think that if we had more time at the high school, it would benefit students to talk about the brain's activities and how they can improve their memory strategies to improve success. We are thinking about implementing a study skills class where some of this info could be used to help students.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Chapter 4 Reflection
1) Chapter begins by explaining some of the previous research done on working memory. The magic number 7 +-2 was found by Miller about a century ago. Then it talks about the regency effect and the serial position model by Brown Peterson and Peterson. Atkinson and Shiffrin's model says that unless new info is repeated we will lose the info in about 30 seconds. People use rehearsal to improve memory. Schweickert/Boruff talks about pronunciation time where we can remember short syllable words with more accuracy. The term proactive interference shows that people have trouble learning new material because previously learned material interferes with the new material. A newer working memory approach was researched by Baddeley and Hitch. This says that the working memory has several parts working together. These parts are the phonological loop which stores sound for a limited amount of time, the visuospatial sketchpad which contains the visual and spatial components, the central executive that is the manager which I was most interested in, and the most recent episodic buffer which acts as a store house for info from the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and the long term memory.
2) This fits into what we have previously learned in respect to attention. For example, the central executive can use selective attention to ignore certain information and to focus on something else. In opposition to the text I think that the central executive can complete more than one task at a time because of its job description. This may cause a decrease in accuracy if it has to divide the attention between tasks.
3) I think that I am clear on everything so far. I do have to continue reviewing the previous chapters in order to apply it and also to shift the info from working to long term memory as described in the rehearsal model of Atkinson/Shiffrin.
4) I can apply this to my own teaching as I understand how the brain takes in new info it will help me to better understand what my students are experiencing in class. I also did more research on the central executive and found that the central executive is damaged in Ahlzeimer's patients. They have trouble focussing on tasks and getting the job completed. I wondered if this would be similar to the brain deficiencies of my ADD and ADHD students since this is a similar problem of theirs. The link on this info is http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010945208702077 .
5) I was intereested in the proof of the central executive. I did not agree with the text about the central executive not completing more than 1 task simultaneously. I used this as my question as a leader this week. I did more research and Smith and Jonides 1999 lists tasks of the central executive. Most were similar to the text but they also mentioned that it can switch swiftly between tasks so maybe this is why it seems that it can do more than one thing at a time. Maybe in reality it is not but instead switching quickly between tasks which makes it seem that it is completing them simultaneously.
6) It is important to understand how the working memory works so that we can improve our memory strategies, develop research on common diseases such as Ahlzeimer's, and as a teacher it can help us to understand how students learn to better meet their needs.
7) I had mentioned how I could use this in the classroom in #4 above also. I also think that it is important to understand how working memory comunicates with long term memory as new info comes in. I believe info must be passed back and forth between the two. We will learn more about this in the next chapter.
8) I think that it was useful to google the central executive when I wasn't sure if I agreed with the book. I think that it is important to look at what other researchers have said about the theories as well. I tell my Calculus students to question things that I say if it doesn't fit in with what they believe. I think that this type of continuous questioning helps to keep the info interesting to bring more into long term memory.
2) This fits into what we have previously learned in respect to attention. For example, the central executive can use selective attention to ignore certain information and to focus on something else. In opposition to the text I think that the central executive can complete more than one task at a time because of its job description. This may cause a decrease in accuracy if it has to divide the attention between tasks.
3) I think that I am clear on everything so far. I do have to continue reviewing the previous chapters in order to apply it and also to shift the info from working to long term memory as described in the rehearsal model of Atkinson/Shiffrin.
4) I can apply this to my own teaching as I understand how the brain takes in new info it will help me to better understand what my students are experiencing in class. I also did more research on the central executive and found that the central executive is damaged in Ahlzeimer's patients. They have trouble focussing on tasks and getting the job completed. I wondered if this would be similar to the brain deficiencies of my ADD and ADHD students since this is a similar problem of theirs. The link on this info is http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0010945208702077 .
5) I was intereested in the proof of the central executive. I did not agree with the text about the central executive not completing more than 1 task simultaneously. I used this as my question as a leader this week. I did more research and Smith and Jonides 1999 lists tasks of the central executive. Most were similar to the text but they also mentioned that it can switch swiftly between tasks so maybe this is why it seems that it can do more than one thing at a time. Maybe in reality it is not but instead switching quickly between tasks which makes it seem that it is completing them simultaneously.
6) It is important to understand how the working memory works so that we can improve our memory strategies, develop research on common diseases such as Ahlzeimer's, and as a teacher it can help us to understand how students learn to better meet their needs.
7) I had mentioned how I could use this in the classroom in #4 above also. I also think that it is important to understand how working memory comunicates with long term memory as new info comes in. I believe info must be passed back and forth between the two. We will learn more about this in the next chapter.
8) I think that it was useful to google the central executive when I wasn't sure if I agreed with the book. I think that it is important to look at what other researchers have said about the theories as well. I tell my Calculus students to question things that I say if it doesn't fit in with what they believe. I think that this type of continuous questioning helps to keep the info interesting to bring more into long term memory.
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