Chapter 8 Reflection

1. Chapter 8 discusses general knowledge and semantic memory. There were 4 approaches to classifying new information from what we already know. The feature comparison model compares the new stimulus to a list of features and characteristics. The prototype approach compares the new stimulus to a specific prototype in long-term memory. The exemplar approach compares new stimulus to prior established examples. The network approach links the new stimulus to a variety of previous knowledge through a net system. The chapter also talks about schemas and scripts, which are already known general knowledge that can sometimes aid us or cause problems with learning new information.
2. I thought it ties in with everything else that we have learned but it shows how we can take our general knowledge and apply it in order to take in new info. I also thought that it tied into chapter 2 and the approaches such as the feature analysis theory and the recognition components theory in regards to the 4 approaches of the semantic memory.
3. I felt that there were a lot of details in this chapter. I had to continuously stop and re-read to understand it. The questions that were raised by the leaders really helped to organize the new information into a hierarchy type of system for me.
4. The prototype example is used a great deal in upper level math when we are graphing and translating graphs. Schemas helped me to realize that students have difficulty understanding because of what already exists in their long-term memory.
5. The author has provided proof as related to research in this chapter but I think that it would have been more helpful to provide more or better examples to explain the approaches and schemas/scripts. I felt that the author did a better job in previous chapters to explain using examples and to engage the learning process.
6. It is important to understand how we code and compare new stimulus to our pre-existing knowledge. This can help teachers to understand how our cognitive processes work in order to possibly organize new material into these types of approaches to help students better understand the material.
7. I use the prototype approach just about everyday in my Calculus class. When we look at an equation and picture a graph the parent graph is the prototype and all transformations of it form the graph. For example an absolute value equation forms a v-shaped graph. The parent graph of y = the absolute value of x would be the prototype because it is v-shaped and is centered at the origin. Other absolute value equations are all v-shaped graphs but differ in some way like a wider or narrower v-shape, moving up, down, left, right, or even flipped upside down. All transformations show characteristics of the prototype in that they all have a vertex and the sides have opposite slopes of one-another so we can classify these graphs in the absolute value category.
8. As I mentioned earlier, I found this chapter difficult to understand so I think more examples would have helped. I was also working on my workshop at the same time so I might have been a little distracted or involved in a divided attention task. I also think that depending on what new information that we are learning we use each of the 4 different approaches instead of just 1 specific approach.