PSYC4191 Weekly Quiz Flashcards
Under what circumstances did Morris et al. (2005) find that the imagery method of remembering names did not work – and why?
- Morris et al. (2005) find that the imagery method of remembering names did not work under parity conditions (where it was hard to construct these images), Morris et al. (2005) found better memory was found with expanded retrieval (try and recall the name at increasing intervals, without imagery = 24 names) than the imagery method (12 names) (where a no strategy control was 16 names).
- It did not work because it requires a lot of memory stimulation for the participants to be thinking about the word and associate it with a picture. As a result it becomes effortful.
Describe the method of remembering names (with your own example) that was demonstrated by Morris et al. (1978) to lead to 80% correct recall.
Step 1: Search for an imageable substitute for the person’s name. Angelina = Angry+ Lina (or Anger + Lina).
Step 2: Select some prominent feature of the person’s face – and link that feature with the name substitute (e.g. Anger lina had a fight with her neighbours). • This method led to 80% recall (Morris et al., 1978).
What are the limitations of the Pegword system?
- You need to put in a lot of work to remember the pegwords reliably enough. • Also – it’s harder to use for abstract, hard to visualize words (“morality”) than easy to visualize words (“car”).
How does the Pegword system compare with the Method of Loci (Wang & Thomas, 2000)?
The Pegword System was found to be just as effective as the Method of Loci (Wang & Thomas, 2000).
How does the Pegword system work?
- The Pegword system works when you start to associate a number with a word. For instance, Step 1 – memorize the ten pegwords • Step 2 – imagine the first word interacting with “bun”; the second word interacting with “shoe”.
What did De Beni et al (1997) find when they compared the Method of Loci with rehearsal – for both written and orally-delivered essays?
De Beni (1997) showed the Method of Loci was more effective than rehearsal for when a 2000 word passage was read out – but this advantage disappeared if the passage was read (perhaps the visual nature of writing interfered with visual imagery of locations). In other words, when both written and oral- delivered essays are happening both at the same time, there may be some noise interference
What did Bower (1973) find regarding when the Method of Loci was compared to a no-strategy control?
Bower (1973, cited in Baddeley et al., 2015) asked participants to remember 100 words. When they used the Method of Loci, they remembered 72% of the words – but only 28% when they didn’t.
What did Massen et al. (2009) find were the best locations to use in the Method of Loci?
Massen et al. (2009) found that a route to work was found to be better than locations around the home, perhaps because the order of locations is more defined.
What is the Method of Loci and how do you implement it?
Feng Wang’s “memory palace” is an implementation of the Method of Loci. This involves imagining the items to be remembered in specific locations along a familiar route. I would use the rooms in their own homes as locations – and imagine walking in a set route between those rooms, looking at what has been “placed” in each room.
What was memory champion Feng Wang’s method for learning 300 random digits?
- He did this by associating each number from 00 to 99 with an image. • He then constructed a “memory palace” – an imagined mansion with many locations. • Each set of 4 numbers was therefore encoded as 2 images, which were stored in one location in the memory palace (e.g. 6389 – 63 = banana; 89 = monk. Imagine monk splitting banana in a pot (location along his mental route through his palace)
What did Rubin and Kontis (1983) discover using US coins – and what implications does this have?
Rubin and Kontis (1983) discovered using US coins that simple repeated exposure to this thing over and over again. Participants assumed that if they see the coins often enough, they are more likely to remember it but on average people are only remembering about on average 28%. Simple repetition assuming that there is no one making the effort to actually structured what they are learning then it is simply not effective. This effect gets more impressive and complicated as the information gets. People remember less complicated than it is. By looking and using the coins daily, people are unable to remember any of the details.
- Experience does not lead to expertise. Familiarity with the coin does not mean that you are more likely to remember. People got terrible insight to what they know when they are being asked to recall the items that they remember.
To what extent does repetitive exposure lead to learning?
Through repetitive exposure, it does not lead people into remembering even if it is something like currency, people would literally see it every day and not be familiar with it for their whole entire life.
What’s the generation effect?
The generation effect refers to which information is more likely to be remembered if it’s generated by the learner rather than just presented to the learner
What was the most popular method of study, according to Karpicke et al.’s (2009) study?
According to Karpicke et al.’s (2009) study, the most popular method of study is that 57% of the students prefer to re-study the same source over and over again which is the least effective study strategy.
How is the testing effect thought to work?
- The testing effect thought to work by actively retrieving things in your brain that makes you feel hurt which set these memory structure and representation that allows it to be slot into your knowledge. Once you got that retrieval structure, it makes it way easier to access that information because it is your long term memory.
What is the testing effect?
- Testing effect refers to the general finding that long-term memory is improved when the information is retrieved (e.g. tested in a recall quiz).
- Describe the 4-condition experiment by Karpicke & Roediger (2008), comparing testing and presentation methods of learning (methods, results).
Karpicke and Roediger (2008) compared four combinations of testing and presentation (see figure) for foreign language vocabulary (Swahili). In the first condition, participants were continued to test & present all the test items. In the second condition, participants were dropped an item correct and managed to recall 90% of the content then they were continued to be tested on those incorrect items. While in the third condition, participants were given repeated presentation of the items but without the testing. In the last condition, participants were dropped with correct items but they were not tested. Findings revealed that during the learning phase when participant were using different words to study their cumulative proportion of recall gets better across all four trials.
A week later, when the participants were tested for recall, those who were in the S_T and S_{n\ }T condition, they remembered 80% of the Swahili words that were tested in psychology experiment. While those who were in the group that involved testing were much better after a week (no advantage to drop successfully learned words to allow more time on unlearned words.)
What did Pashler et al. (2007) find when comparing a test trial with feedback with an extra learning trial?
Pashler et al. (2007) found that when comparing an extra test trial with feedback was better than an extra learning trial for remembering something.
Give three reasons why students might prefer repeated study strategies over repeated testing strategies
- Students noticed 5 mins benefit of repeated study
- Roediger & Karprike (2006) found that participants would incorrectly thought they would remember more than one week when the results will be replicated later.
- Students prefer repeated study strategies because it is less effortful
Describe the 3-condition testing effect experiment conducted by Roediger & Karpicke (2006) (methods, results, conclusions).
- Roediger & Karpicke (2006) told their subjects to memories a bit of text from three passages. They were split into three different conditions where in the first condition participants were told to read this passage four times (SSSS). While, in the second condition subjects were told to read the text three times and test on the content of the passage once (SSST). In the last condition, subjects were told to read the text once and do recall test three times (STTT). It was found that subjects who were tested for recall in the (STTT) condition had remembered less after five minutes unlike those who were in the (SSSS) had recalled the most. But after one week later, those subjects who were in the (STTT) remembered the most recall than other condition. This shows that there is an increased in retention which is crucial to massive advantage of recall for testing compared to rereading. Although repeated study was best part after 5 mins of learning, repeated testing after a week increases more than 50% of the memory retention despite the thing has been replicated massively.
What does the phrase “desirable difficulties” refer to (Bjork & Bjork, 1992)?
- The phrase “desirable difficulties” refer to (Bjork & Bjork, 1992) is to think a lot which makes your brain to be effortful in retrieving new information so that you will remember it much faster.
What is the key problem with students’ tendency to use less effortful study strategies ?
- The key problem with students’ tendency to use less effortful study strategies is that people have terrible self-insight regarding their actual learning. When people are asked to sit and study the thing, then ask how much they remember while studying. Most people are pretty bad at estimating when they are not good at learning well.
- Students tend to study the lecture slide over and over again with a more passive and less effortful strategy of learning. When they are asked how much they remembered, most of them have poor memory in what they have learnt. Hence, it is considered to less effortful study strategies.
Describe three strategies that may help students understand complex content.
- The first strategy to help students to understand complex content is to start by introducing shallow knowledge then incrementally increased the information to a deep knowledge.
- The second strategy will be to help students to understand complex abstract ideas by providing them with one or more concrete examples. By giving more concrete examples, students are able to draw connection between those concrete examples and derive the more abstract examples from them with a more familiar concrete example from prior knowledge.
- A third strategy is to get students to generate questions about content because this has also been found to aid understanding. For example, Rosenshine et al. (1996) found, in a meta-analysis, that creating questions about a text improved reading comprehension
Why might it be the case that students have to learn shallow knowledge before they can grasp deep knowledge (Willingham, 2009)?
- Based on cognitive load theory, if we learn too many at once, then you are going to overload your short-term memory. All learning has to be incremental. You are trying to introduce one new thing at a time. By embedding all that new stuff into the stuff that people already know the structure begins to overlap which aids in learning. If students were to be introduce to deep knowledge with concepts, then it is likely that their memory will be overloaded. Having students to expose to deep knowledge means that they have got the underlying principles to generalize to other things. Thus, it is highly recommended that students to be taught with shallow knowledge first by explaining using the story telling principles to understand better. It allows students to tap onto something that they have already known. Then, it allows them to get that concept by creating chunks which benefits from storytelling approach. Once, they understand the complexity of the situation then it is an appropriate time to incrementally the level of information that is being delivered to the students at a much complex level.
Why might the causal structure of stories make them easier to remember?
- Because stories have a causal structure so if you remember one bit of the story then you are more likely to remember what happen as a result of that. Everything can access as a memory cues for everything else.
Kim (1999) manipulated level of inference required when reading some text. What did they find?
- Kim (1999) found that when participants were asked to read the story and laid out that there were no inferences and not able to read between the lines to work out what was going on. They rate the story as boring. If you have a bit of text where you had to do so much inference and reading between the lines, participants found it increasingly taxing and boring too. Therefore, Kim (1999) suggested that there should be a medium level of inference is crucial so that it fills in enough gaps to keep it interesting or not so may that they are being overloaded.
Why are good stories easy to remember (Willingham, 2009)?
- Willingham (2009) explained that good stories are easy to remember because they you need to be thinking about the meaning throughout. Memory is the residue of thought that you are thinking all the way through which makes you care about the character because it is a good story. Therefore, memory is the residue of thought and the memory sticks inside your head.
Britton et al. (1983) manipulated the form of text in a written passage and asked participants to rate how interesting the passage was. What did they find?
- Britton et al. (1983) found that the same written passage is written in 2 different version where one of them was using structured storytelling information techniques while the other was a structured information with straight exposition. They found that the actual information that contain both matches. People found that story to be more interesting when they were controlled by other elements of information.
List the principles of storytelling (Willingham, 2009).
- Causality (joining elements with causal links instead of an unrelated list)
- Conflict (some element of struggle, between characters or situations)
- Complications (sufficient nuance to avoid boredom)
- Character (could be conceptual, abstract, or inferred)
What does Willingham (2009) argue that all good teachers have in common?
Willingham (2009) argue that all good teachers have in common is leveraging on a good story telling.
Describe six strategies that could be used to foster the circumstances that encourage thinking in education, according to Willingham (2009).
- Set up problems where you are trying to make the problem to be at the right amount of difficulty. Getting a class where you see a massive range of ability in students. Teacher should put some effort in understanding the level of ability of your student to find out what they know. They should put in effort in testing questions of tiny bit and not too much. Where do I start teaching for this class?
- Questions drive curiosity and not answers. Lecturer should understand the thing that they do when it comes to teaching new information to students because they tend to give massive amount of information to them to remember and being tested during their final exams. The most effective way in teaching students will be to process a series of questions to let students to find out the answers by themselves. By doing this, it improves student’s comprehension and understand the stuff better by actively generating the question.
- Avoid overloading student’s working memory. Because this does not allow students to think and process about stuff. According to cognitive load theory, the most effective way in learning is trying to not provide too much information beyond what the students already know or can handle which results in overload. As a result, they will switch off in learning. When we are trying to deliver new information to students, it should neither be moved at a slow pace because then students will find it boring nor moved at a faster pace because they will then feel that they are left behind and unable to catch up with the lecture content.
- Time the presentation of question. Giving the question means nothing to you because you do not have enough background knowledge to that. For instance, you are being asked “tell me xx theory of xx physics & what it means for this & this where this & this is.” This question has literally mean nothing to you. With more background information of the question, you are able to answer it but for this instance you do not because it does not seem a question that serves a learning tool for you therefore it becomes an obstacle. If you post question so late, then you will miss out on chemical hit. For example, if you know the answer to the question then you are more likely to answer.
- Accept and act on variation in student ability/preparation/prior knowledge when going through any situation or education system. If you are literally teaching 1- on-1, then you are likely to know the variation in student’s level of ability and preparation prior knowledge. Whereas, if you are teaching a class that is heterogenous where you get a variation of student’s ability. You have to think of strategies to deal with the variation.
- Use change to regain attention. If the lesson is being taught too long, then students may start dozing off or wandering around because they do not have that long attention span. For instance, giving questions to test students in actively retrieving information from memory is one of the good ways to not only to keep them engage and regain attention in class but also boost their participation points just simply by attending classes so that they will not attempt to miss any of them.
What does Willingham (2009) argue is the key factor influencing whether people like thinking?
Willingham (2009) argue that the key factor in influencing whether people like thinking is that they are able to nail that sweet spot that gives them a chemical rush.
What happens in the brain when people solve a problem (Willingham, 2009)?
According to Willingham (2009), when people solve a problem, they feel physiologically good about it. This gives their brain to receive a chemical hit of dopamine which allows them to gain a sense of satisfaction with what they are doing.
List three ways the brain minimizes how much thinking we have to do (Willingham, 2009).
- (1) making sure important things like vision and movement don’t require thought (2) biasing us to use memory and other shortcuts where possible
- (3) by allowing us to automate processes that initially require thought so that they only require effortless memory (e.g. expertise development).
Why don’t students like school, according to Willingham (2009)?
- According to Willingham (2009), students dislike school because it forces them to do a lot of thinking. Apart from very specific circumstances, people try to avoid thinking because it is effortful. Instead, we rely on memory and mental shortcuts to avoid thinking about stuff through the day.
What is the educational implication associated with Willingham’s (2009) proposition “Memory is the residue of thought”?
- This is because the implication of designing or training in education is that we are trying to teach people things, relevant meaning does really matter. Willingham (2009) suggested was that teachers will do all sorts of crazy task that tries to grab the attention of their students. Students may basically remember the wrong things. For example, lecturer drags and stands in front of a grand piano in hoping to make you remember Barclay et al. (1974)’s piano experiment. What people remember is that the lecturer drags in a piano and forget what is being dragged into the room for them to remember. The context around remembering turning up in a lecture does not apply in the context of Barclay et al. (1974)’s piano experiment. In other words, if the illustration does not aid your understanding of the subject matter better thus it becomes a form of distraction.
- Attention grab is sufficiently irrelevant when we are trying to help people to remember the actual content. It might be by sticking fancy pictures on your slide and make them look nice. But on the other hand of the premises when we are designing and training for education so part of the process is to actually get people to think about the content that we want them to remember. Thus, try and build that into our design.
Describe Barclay et al.’s (1974) experiment demonstrating how things are linked with their context when encoded in memory (methods, results, conclusion).
- Barclay et al.’s (1974) presented their participants with sentences. For instance, the man lifted the piano. The keyword here is piano. The context is something about the piano is really heavy to be lifted. While in the second example where it says that something about the piano is a musical instrument. Later on, participants were given a recall where they were asked about their memory on the keyword “piano.” They were given a cue of something very heavy or something with a nice sound. The results suggested that it depends on whether the piano had been presented in the context of being a heavy object or whether the piano had been presented in the context of being a musical instrument. Findings revealed that people could better remember the word piano when the recall cue was relevant to the test sentence. For example, the man lifted the piano, so the cue was something heavy then you were able to better remember the word was piano than the cue word was something that has got to do with nice sound. What this suggest or argue is that when the word is being encoded in memory by looking at this original thing not just the word piano that is being encoded but it’s just the whole context for the word piano is being used whether it is something really heavy or musical. It’s not just enough to think about the meaning of the word but also the relevance of the word and context matters.
Why is just considering any possible meaning of an item not necessarily helpful in remembering it?
- When the brain is processing this sort of thing in a particular context, it remembers that in the future that we might have to remember this thing. It is assuming that you have got to remember it again in the same sort of context. Hence, if you got a word that has two different meaning and processing it on one different meaning. Then, it’s that meaning that the word has been memorized in that context.
What experiment did Hyde & Jenkins (1973) conduct regarding the semantic processing of words (methods, results, conclusions)?
- Hyde & Jenkins (1973) gave their participants some words. The crucial thing is that the question did differ on whether they have semantic compare or whether the questions were about semantic thing or non-semantic thing. The question requires you to process the meaning of the word or not. If the question is non-semantic “Does, the word contain a letter E?” The idea is that you do not need to process the meaning of the word in order to answer the question. If the question is semantic, “here ’s a word, “I want you to rate it out how pleasant you think it’s going to be.” To make the rating you have to think about the meaning of the word based on ESI as similar to PSYC4191 pre-presentation survey where we are being asked to rate all of the questions from the forthcoming presentation about whether you are familiar with the content or not. The same idea applies into this context where it is actively making you rate is forcing you to process the content of the presentation of the question which means it primes the questions that you go into this. You know what the questions are and need to find the answers that they are listening to. Crucially, people who are asked to rate the semantic content of the words rate pleasantness / unpleasantness basically remembered more words. By asking semantic question, people think more about the meaning of the word. Thinking leads to memory. In a way that just thinking about words and letters did not work.
What is Willingham’s (2009) argument for why thinking about something is crucial to memorizing it?
- Willingham’s (2009) argument for why thinking about something is crucial to memorizing it is that we remember most what we think about. They have remembered the things they have think about, as they spend all day thinking about all these things. To think about something, it has to be your working memory. However, most things that we experience does not make it to working memory. To actually remember something, not only does it need to be sitting in your working memory, then as transfer from your working memory to long term memory. Not everything in working memory makes it to long term memory. We remember all these things is because we are thinking about it more. The stuff that you are remembering is only the stuff that has made it all the way through those filters to get it to long term memory. The key component is how much you are thinking about it.
What does Willingham (2009) argue with regard the role of knowledge in skill acquisition?
Willingham (2009) argues that this does not mean we can therefore neglect knowledge as we need knowledge to carry out any skill. In a lot of domain of acquiring that knowledge poorly is most of the effort, certainly in academic domain. Knowledge is necessary, but it’s often not sufficient.
What does Ericsson (2016) argue for the relative roles of knowledge and skill in education?
- Ericsson (2016) argues that our education system is basically not overly focused on sort of moving things rather than doing things. He goes on to explain that we assume the outcome measure for education should be knowledge. But the key outcome should be skill. By the end of this course, you should be able to do more than you can do that than you can do before, not just more than you knew before. Knowledge is just a means to an end.
What is the “fourth grade slump” and why might it be linked to background knowledge?
- The “ fourth grade slump” finding is that you have got kids from those low socioeconomic status homes or from almost saying homes where their parents don’t value education so much as people from education higher socioeconomic status families. What you see in terms of reading ability they can sort of track along until grade 3 then there is a big gap emerging. They start to fall behind. Because up until grade 3, the learning and reading that they are doing at this level is very sort of concrete and it’s all the focus on just comprehending what the word means. It’s the idea where there isn’t sort of validating, describing and decoding. There’s no about high level for processing in order to understand these high level concepts. Everything seems fine exactly as it is. When you are at grade 3, children know roughly what it means and understand the term. When we get into the grade for the level of reading required is and suddenly gets a level of sophistication where you have to go beyond that and it starts requiring background knowledge. Hence, that’s where the kids who might have that advantage. For example, I have done more reading at home. Therefore, they have got this much for richer background knowledge compared to those kids who do not so much reading at home. When you get to this higher of filling in gaps and they are not, this is not cat sit on the mat. But there is some sort of level of reading between the lines going on that some level that were they having to fill in and to understand intense. The kids who have got a lot more reading at home. I have got this background knowledge, who come from. As it is empirically a higher socio-economic status home typically that’s when they get a massive advantage. This is when you start getting this big gap in reading ability opening up between these two groups of kids. Up until grade 3, it does not really matter. After grade 3, it seems matter.
- List four reasons why background knowledge helps reading comprehension.
- It provides vocabulary.
- It allows the bridging of logical gaps writers leave.
- It allows chunking which increases room in working memory- which makes it easier to link ideas.
- It guides the interpretation of ambiguous sentences.
What is the interaction between background knowledge and ease of reading, according to Willingham (2009)?
- According to Willingham (2009), the interaction between background knowledge and ease of reading is that if our background knowledge is being chunks in short term memory fit to fill in the immediate information then cognitive load is reduced. It becomes way easier to absorb what the writing is communicating.
How we can make the Wason 4 card problem easy without changing the fundamental problem?
- We can make the Wason 4 card problem easy without changing the fundamental problem by turning it into something concrete that people can leverage their background knowledge. For example, turn it into a pub drinking example.
Describe the Wason 4 card problem and its solution.
- Each card has a letter on one side and the number on the other side. The proposition is that if the card has a vowel on one side, it must also have an even number on the other side. Which cards do we need to turn over to confirm this hypothesis? For example, if you think you need to turn over the card 4 & K, then you will have to write 4+ K. The actual answer to this question is E & 7. The incorrect answer is E +4. The rule means that the card comes with even number. Hence, it still have consonant on the other side. There is no point of turning over 4 because it does not matter what is on the other side. That has nothing to do with the rule. The more you read that rule and you imply that are there for everything with an even number must have a vowel on it, but that’s actually not was written. However, the rule also means that caused by the odd numbers must have a constant on the other side. We do also need to turn over 7. If you have been trying hard to solve the problem but still cannot do it because it is fundamentally difficult. Because you have not encountered it before.
- Another problem that is similar to the Wason 4 card problem that is presented in a more concrete version is which drinker do you have to disturb to see if anyone under 18 is drinking alcohol underage. You are a bartender who is in-charge of a pub that attends to 4 people. You know some information of these people but not all of it. Person 1 drinks alcohol but you are unsure if they are over or under 18. Person 2 drinks soft drink but you do not know their age. Person 3 is over 18 who drinks but unsure whether he consumes alcohol or non-alcoholic drink. Person 4 is under 18 but did not tell what drink he is drinking. Which one of these people do you have to disturb to find out extra information and make sure you do not lose your license from Queensland Government? If you think you need to disturb person 1 & 2, just write it down. The correct answer is person 1 & 4. Person 1 needs to be disturbed because they are underage and doing illegal activity. Person 2 does not need to be care because they are drinking a soft drink are allowed to be consumed be people of all ages. There is no difference in whether your license will be revoked. You do not need to disturb. As for Person 3, there is no difference because they are over 18. While Person 4 needs to be disturbed because they are underage and drinks alcohol. It is exactly the same problem structure but just that the same problem is from a logical point of view. It is easier to answer this question compared to the last question. Because this question gives more concrete and maps on by leveraging your background knowledge of drinking situation. Whereas, the last one is a bit more highly abstract that you are unable to leverage background knowledge of this situation, so it is harder to answer. The concrete version of this question gives a more concrete picture for you to understand what it’s going on by leveraging all your background and expertise in drinking in pubs. The problem becomes much more effortless when you start to apply background knowledge based on your mental representation.
What’s the main prediction made by Cognitive Load Theory?
The main prediction made by cognitive load theory is that by having background information helps to reduce that cognitive load.
According to Sweller (1988), what’s the link between learning and cognitive load?
- According to Sweller (1988), the link between learning and cognitive load is that you learn better when your brain is not holding too much information in short term memory.
What did Van Overschelde & Healy (2001) find about their “created experts”?
- Van Overschelde & Healy (2001) found about their “created experts” was that it was not a true randomized experiment because you have experts and novices so there may be some confounds. Therefore, it is hard to say about the direction of the causality. If we really want to know about the causality, we need to run an experiment in this domain. Both authors had basically “created experts” within the experiment itself. The problem of looking into experts and novices is that if you have got people who are already an expert, they might get a better score and memory. It could just simply mean that they like this topic better because they have chosen it. There is a self-selection confound.
What evidence is there that background knowledge aids memory?
- The evidence that supports background knowledge aids memory allows you to remember more about some story or article or something related to that topic than if you do not have the background knowledge related to that topic. The more background knowledge you know, when you see the new knowledge the more sort of links you can make to the stuff that you already know. Basically, this gives you more cues to aid your memory.
Why might we expect having more background knowledge on a topic would improve memory for that topic?
- Because it allows chunking to minimize cognitive load. If we have got more information about a particular topic, it makes acquiring more knowledge about that topic easier. We can take that new things slot it straight into this mental representation rather than have to understand the things all around it that makes it much harder to understand.
According to Willingham (2009), why is it a problem to talk about teaching either factual knowledge OR analytical skills?
- Willingham (2009) argued that it is basically a fallacy to think on one hand, we have facts. On the other hand, we have analysis. The two separate is decent facts and just teach people how to analyze things. The point that he was trying to make was that those two things are completely interdependent on one another. They are intimately intertwined for problems with reasoning skills and problem-solving skills are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge in short to long term memory. The thing is that your knowledge structure is all combined together. The critical thinking processes are tied to background knowledge not two separate things. For example, the vocabulary. We are doing some sort of analysis task to analyze something you need the language to be able to analysis. The language that you are using is background knowledge, you expect background factual knowledge, just let you have the words to be able to express and to be able to think about things is background knowledge. On the other hand, knowing facts about a topic does not mean that people can’t necessarily apply that knowledge to solve that problem. In conclusion, if you just simply have facts alone is useless compared to when you are being dumped with all this information and then go out there to get a job and to make a training course. We have to show the application as well. But overall, we need both application and facts to allow both to be working together.
According to Willingham (2009), why is it a problem to focus education exclusively on analytical skills at the expense of factual knowledge?
- According to Willingham (2009), the point that he is trying to make within education in the olden days, we make kids to sit down to route learn all of these stuff and memories all of these stuffs. What we want people to have these sort of analysis, generalizable, critical thinking skills where they can synthesize all of this information. We should not be making children to sit there to route learn things or memories facts. He argued that what we are trying to do here is to teach people analytical skill but not all of these facts. As they go through life, the facts may change. Because they got all of these analytical skills, they can apply that to any new situation. It is so easy to look up for the facts by using your phone on google within 2 seconds. The analytical skills will never go out of date. But the facts that you are certainly analyzing will go outdated. Therefore, we should teach analytical skills and dump all of the factual basis. However, he rebutted that what you are acquiring the very skills of analyzing something or synthesizing something or criticizing something, you cannot do it in a vacuum of knowledge. You need something to analyses or criticize or synthesize, you can’t do it in the abstract
List five of Willingham’s principles for learning in education together with what needs to be known about the students, and classroom implications.
- Knowledge precedes skill
- Memory is the residue of thought
- While people are curious, they only willingly think under circumstances.
- We understand new things in the context of things we already know.
- Proficiency requires practice.
Describe an example of an Intelligent Tutoring System.
- John Anderson, who is cognitive psychologist, have created this software tutoring program where they aim to teach people to program this computer language which is called LISP. It has basically created this computer tutor and the tutor could sot of lip functions and he could analyze sort of things that students typed in the list. LIPS are only function that people typed into its spot areas with it and then suggest correction. This is a bit link to proceduralisation. He ran a component analysis of learning LISP and came up with these 500 key procedures. If you have mastered these 500 procedures, then you would be pretty good at programming lists or production rules as he called, “2* x 2” – set the sub goals to code, those two numbers. The main point is that we have defined these 500 procedures that we need the people to load to be able to program list and then set up this systematic training program to actually communicate what these 500 procedures are getting to apply them into action and monitor their performance to ensure they achieve mastery on each of these 500 things such as practice, feedback.
What are Intelligent Tutoring Systems?
- Intelligent tutoring systems were devised as a way of putting componential analysis/ mastery learning into practice.
How does a mastery learning approach differ from traditional education practices?
- A mastery learning approach is the idea that people have got to learn 10 things you show them the first thing and they have got a base you reach a high level of standard and that before you move on to the next thing. You have got to master each step along the way. Whereas, the traditional education approach allows you to attain half pass the mark before you are allowed to move on and decide to go which education and the route.
What is mastery learning?
- Mastery learning is where we set up a sort like a learning situation context. All the experts in this domain have automated different procedures to create training where you have got a basically proceduralise those components to a certain standard before we show you further component.
What is a componential analysis?
- A componential analysis is essentially taking your skill and then breaking it down into all its key procedures or component by converting all of your declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge.
- We might ask “what exactly is/are the components of knowledge that we actually need for that task?” Based on the task that we know; we make a long list.
How can we reconcile the automaticity account of expertise with experts reporting thinking during skilled performance?
- In chess, where we know the incidental memory for the task relevant stimuli. This is like chess players see a board and then they can just remember the whole entire board. This suggest that if they were completely automated then they should remember it. Because I barely process that information. This suggest that if they were looking at the board and they are processing the board. It’s not that they are not engaged in cognitive processes and paying attention to these tasks, because if they were completely automatic they shouldn’t be able to remember anything. What we are doing is automating the bits of the task that can be automated. The things have to be done quickly and where there is a direct link between this stimuli and output you do this. Therefore, you can do that. They can use their spare thinking time to think at a much higher tactical level. It is less that they don’t think. It’s more they free up stuff that all their thinking space that they wouldn’t otherwise if they were a novice have required to sort of deal with small detail. They have automated all of that. Therefore, they can instead use their thinking time to think of that much higher strategic level and therefore more advantage. The expert think high strategic level that will receive the map on to that marathon runner study so planning, reasoning and anticipation high level stuff that they are able to do because they have automated all the low level stuff.
What did Morgan & Pollack (1977) find out about the thought processes of expert marathon runners compared with novices?
- Morgan & Pollack (1977) found expert marathon runners were actually thinking all of these tactical and strategic sort of thoughts and plans and things as they were running along, monitoring their physiological state “ if I run a bit slower, how is my body dealing with this and the effectiveness or running should speed up in this compared with novice marathon runners who were basically thinking about the pain while running. They were basically not thinking of how to win this marathon
What experiment did Rowe and McKenna conduct to investigate automaticity in expert tennis players (methods, results, conclusions)?
Rowe and McKenna (2001) conducted a study to investigate automaticity in expert tennis players where they were showing them video footage of someone who was changing their shot goes to one direction. Then, you have to press the button when the student shot goes in the other direction. The results suggested that expert players are able to predict the direction of the ball, much earlier than novices and in fact predict the direction of the ball before the other player has actually hit it. This is crucial in tennis because if you wait until the ball has left your opponent racket then it’s way too late for you to react to it. The ball has got to move way faster which allows you to predict where the ball is going to go before, they have hit it, which means you have to use cues from the way their body posture is. But of course, in a professional tennis game of tennis, they will be trying to hide those cues and some use of misdirection. Therefore, it is really hard skill especially in high level tennis and possibly low-level tennis.
In one experiment, these people did two alternative forms of this tennis test- one on its own and one while doing a secondary task at the same time. The secondary task was to generate a stream of random letters at a rate of about 2 per second. function. The initial stage of doing this task is really hard. The task has been designed to completely filled up your brain up. Hence, it is very demanding and requires massive cognitive resources to do it properly. Findings revealed that both main effects are significant which means that experts are much better than novices. When they are doing the dual task, they perform much worse than when they are doing the single task. The interaction is significant which explains that the effect of the dual tasking on the expert is significantly smaller than novice. The novice is proportionally more affected by the dual task than the expert and that is evidence of automaticity. The expert suffers less interference when they are doing this task, suggesting they require fewer cognitive resources to do it. The simple effects are significant as well.
Describe Jenkins et al.’s (1994) PET scanner study looking at proceduralization (methods, results, conclusion).
- Jenkins et al.’s (1994) conducted a PET scanner study on people by getting them to tap their fingers in a particular sequence, and he is getting to do that while they were sitting in the back of a brain scanner. By using the same sequence, participants were told to tap their right finger index finger middle finger middle finger index finger, so it becomes a set pattern. As participants were sitting in the PET scanner early on in the training, there is a lot more activity in the frontal bits of the brain and the frontal bits of the brain are more associated with conscious thinking and planning. As you are thinking about, what is its next finger that you are moving. You are relying on your declarative knowledge. We predicted that if porceduralisation has taken place or we might predict is that once you have a lot of practice. It actually showed the memory area of your brain lighting up and not the thinking areas of your brain at the front. Hence, that was exactly what they found. They give people this task. They start off on all the activity right in front of the brain. After they have done enough, the thing becomes proceduralised and it is much more automatic then the activation is all in the hippocampus, which is associated with memory. If you are an expert, you are relying on your long-term memory. If you are a novice, you are relying on figuring everything out from first principles which is way harder.
What neuroimaging evidence supports the idea of proceduralization?
Jenkins et al.’s (1994) PET scanner study
What did Logan and Klapp (1991) find in their experiment examining proceduralization (methods, results, conclusions)?
- Logan and Klapp (1991) conducted a study that illustrates proceduralisation by getting the participants to solve a specific problem. The problem is something along the lines of “which letters is three along from F?” When the participants were presented with this problem, these problems would vary the number of letters that you would have to actually counter ahead to solve the problem. “Tell me what letter is three along from F. They are F G H or what letters are 3 along from a? They are A B C D E F. They vary this problem by one of the key things are varying apart from the letter itself is how many letters ahead. The result suggested that the bigger the number of the larger letters, they have to count ahead, the longer it takes them. People are solving the problem at this stage by literally, physically counting ahead in session 1. Whereas, in session 12, when people had to count fewer or less letters, they took about the same amount of time. When you have done enough of counting ahead 12345 you have remembered. You can pull down straight from memory, because you have memorized it. In conclusion, you start off by using declarative knowledge of having to figure it out after lots of practice. They are just remembering the solution. They do not have to count it forward in their heads to solve the problem. After the proceduralisation, they are essentially memorizing the answers that they took the same amount of time to solve the five counting forward problems as they would have solved the one counting forward problem one or two.
Describe an experiment that illustrates proceduralization.
- Logan and Klapp (1991) conducted a study that illustrates proceduralisation by getting the participants to solve a specific problem. The problem is something along the lines of “which letters is three along from F?” When the participants were presented with this problem, these problems would vary the number of letters that you would have to actually counter ahead to solve the problem. “Tell me what letter is three along from F. They are F G H or what letters are 3 along from a? They are A B C D E F. They vary this problem by one of the key things are varying apart from the letter itself is how many letters ahead. The result suggested that the bigger the number of the larger letters, they have to count ahead, the longer it takes them. People are solving the problem at this stage by literally, physically counting ahead in session 1. Whereas, in session 12, when people had to count fewer or less letters, they took about the same amount of time. When you have done enough of counting ahead 12345 you have remembered. You can pull down straight from memory, because you have memorized it. In conclusion, you start off by using declarative knowledge of having to figure it out after lots of practice. They are just remembering the solution. They do not have to count it forward in their heads to solve the problem. After the proceduralisation, they are essentially memorizing the answers that they took the same amount of time to solve the five counting forward problems as they would have solved the one counting forward problem one or two.
How did Logan (1988) define skill acquisition in terms of problem solving?
Logan (1988) define skill acquisition in terms of problem solving as learning to recall solutions to problem that was previously solved.
What 3 things changed following proceduralization during Anderson’s (1982) geometry studies?
Firstly, they solve the problem a lot faster. Secondly, they are not doing this verbal rehearsal of all of the actual details of what these postulates are. He is pretty much going into the final solution and single step. For instance, “ I am going to stop my head, I am going to take a guess and wants to do an angle DK, DC, K is congruent to triangle ABK. This is only one of the two possible. It’s where they are getting to full stop. This is known as the cognitive stage of skills development. With all of the information, they are totally overloading him that takes a long time. With a few problems later, he has basically chunked all of that information and proceduralise. Therefore, he is able to solve the problem and thinking a lot less.
What verbal commentary evidence supports the idea of proceduralization?
- Anderson (1982) set up a verbal protocol type experiment where they were getting people to solve problem by talking aloud about what they were getting people to solve problems. He showed this geometry problem here with triangles. Participants were shown side side side and side angle side postulate to prove two triangles are congruent to prove that they were the same shape and size. The participant is doing a lot of thinking by looking at side angle side postulate which is really effortful. By pulling out all of this facts that he knows about the postulates from his declarative knowledge , he is making a real deal of solving this problem. This occur before the novice proceduralise this knowledge. The same group of participants were given a whole series of these problems and few problems later, they basically become much better at it. Later, when you actually ask them to talk about it, they talk a lot less.
What are the parallels between Anderson’s concept of proceduralization and Ericsson’s concept of mental representations?
The parallels between Anderson’s concept of proceduralization and Ericsson’s concept of mental representations is using less effort in thinking so that it allows us to do things way faster. Moreover, both concepts help you to make less mistake and free up your brain to do other things.
What is proceduralization?
- Proceduralisation is basically solving the problem by just recognizing the pattern
Describe the autonomous stage of skill development, according to Fitts and Posner (1967).
- According to Fitts and Posner (1967), they described the autonomous stage of skill development which is where the skill that I can do to become even faster and more errors free and the procedure become more automatic. Being automatic in this context is that it takes fewer and fewer cognitive resources. To think a lot less in order to carry them out.
Describe the associative stage of skill development, according to Fitts and Posner (1967).
- According to Fitts and Posner (1967), they described the associative stage of skill development as taking all of that declarative knowledge and essentially turning it into procedural knowledge. At this stage, it tries to eliminate the initial that errors in understanding by making connections between all the different components of the skills. They create procedures in the head about performing the skill. Hence, there is no need to work out from scratch every time. This conversion of declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge is known as proceduralisation.
What is procedural knowledge?
- A procedural knowledge is a knowledge about how to actually do a thing. It is usually (though not always) constructed from declarative knowledge to help to solve a problem.
What is declarative knowledge?
- Declarative knowledge is known facts about things. For instance, Prof Mark can know what drum & bass to hit on what parts of the bar. It becomes a declarative explicit knowledge that you can say in a sentence.
Describe the cognitive stage of skill development, according to Fitts and Posner (1967).
According to Fitts and Posner (1967), they described the cognitive stage of skill development as someone who is completely a novice because you are learning a skill completely for the first time. You do not know anything about it and trying to figure out how to get started. Since you are taxing your cognitive resources, it is hard at this stage to be taking all of these many facts. Declarative knowledge is relevant to this skill. All these are things that you need to solve the problem. All the component of skills. You are trying to hold all of them in your short-term memory. It is really hard. As a learner, you are trying to rehearse these facts into your knowledge and perform that skill. As a result, your brain becomes overload and you perform this skill really slowly. Hence, this increases your chance of cognitive overload of errors inside your brain.
What are the three stages of skill development, according to Fitts and Posner (1967)?
Cognitive , associative and autonomous
Describe evidence that indicates expertise tends to be very domain specific?
- Steve Faloon spend 200 hours of practice of trying to remember a list of random numbers. He actually went back to the ground zero for not be able to remember any random digit after spending hours of practice. This is probably because all of these strategies were built around processing numbers. He mentions that he was a runner and had a great familiarity with all of these sorts of world record in various things will record in various running races. He was using those numbers that built in as part of his strategy for how he would remember these random string of numbers.
