Transcript of Improve Your Cognitive Abilities With Better Learning Skills Dr. John I. Paciorek.
- Slide 1
- Improve Your Cognitive Abilities With Better Learning Skills
Dr. John I. Paciorek
- Slide 2
- Classical Music and Learning If you listen to classical music,
or any music, will it improve your ability to learn? What effect
does walking around a room or gesturing have on learning? Will
sound, smells, and other sensory experiences help the learner? Are
distractions such as noise detrimental to the learner?
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- This session will examine some of the research that has been
done in these and other areas to find out what can be done to help
the learner to learn better.
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- What is the Mozart Effect? The phrase Mozart Effect was first
used in 1991. It is the belief that classical music improves a
childs intelligence.
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- About 2 years after this term was first used, a tremendous
amount of public interest was generated when the journal Nature
published research results that seemed to suggest that classical
music does improve learning.
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- As a result of this research, thousands of parents played
classical Mozart music to their children with the expectation that
it would improve their brainpower. Zell Miller, the Governor of
Georgia, was so convinced of its effectiveness that in 1998 he
asked for money to purchase Classical Music CDs for all newborn
babies in the state.
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- Will listening to Mozart really increase ones intelligence?
Lets take a look at what the research actually revealed on this
topic.
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- Researchers from the University of California, Irvine who
conducted this study did not even use the term Mozart Effect. The
research was conducted on young adults, not children. Only 36
students participated.
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- On 3 occasions the students were given a series of mental tasks
to complete. Before each task, they experienced 10 minutes of:
1.Silence 2.A tape of relaxation instructions 3.Mozarts Sonata for
2 pianos in D Major
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- What were the results? The students who listened to Mozart did
better at tasks where they had to create shapes in their minds. For
a short time they were better at spatial tasks where they had to
look at folded pieces of paper with cuts in them and to predict how
they would appear unfolded. But--this effect only lasted 15
minutes.
- Slide 11
- Other similar research followed. Listening to music did lead to
a temporary improvement in learning but the benefits were
short-lived. The research also showed that Mozart was not so
special. Other classical musicians like Schubert were just as good
as Mozart. Even reading a passage from a Stephen King Novel out
loud produced similar results.
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- In 2006 research was conducted on 8,000 children in Britain.
These children listened to: 10 minutes of Mozart A discussion about
the experiment A sequence of 3 Pop Songs The children who listened
to Mozart did well BUT the results with Pop Music were even
better.
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- This research seems to suggest that it was not so much Mozarts
music but a cognitive arousal brought on by the music. To get your
mind more activated you need to know the kind of music that appeals
to the learner. In fact, it does not have to be music. Anything
that makes you more alert should work just as well.
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- There is a way in which music can make a difference to your IQ.
However, it requires considerably more effort than playing a CD.
Learning to play a musical instrument can benefit the brain. A year
of piano lessons along with regular practice can increase ones IQ
by as much as 3 points according to research at the Western
University in London, Ontario.
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- Other Sounds and the Mind What are earworms or brainworms? An
earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm,[1] is a catchy piece of
music that continually repeats through a persons mind after it is
no longer playing (Wikipedia).
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- Earworms or brainworms may be similar to something called
incidental learning? Dr. Robert Gagne describes Incidental Learning
as that type of learning which occurs without the learner
intentionally trying to learn.
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- The interesting thing about earworms is that they are part of
our mind that is largely out of our control. Neurologist Oliver
Sacks wrote in his book Musicophilia that earworms are a clear sign
of the overwhelming, and at times, helpless, sensitivity of our
brains to music.
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- Music is defined by repetition, just like earworms, and this
might make them hard to forget. They are musical memories that
loop, say a particular verse or a hook, forever repeating rather
than running to completion.
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- Earworms have a little twist or peculiarity, something that
makes them catchy, and perhaps this is a clue as to why they can
take hold of our memory system. They are a phenomenon of long- term
memory.
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- Researchers have also identified them as part of our short-term
memory where they are kept alive long enough for us to focus on
them. Our short-term memory also has sub systems. One sub-system is
known as the minds eye which captures visual information.
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- A 2nd sub-system is the inner ear which is the part we use for
remembering phone numbers. This 2 nd sub-system is the part that
seems to get infected with earworms. We lack control over earworms
that get stuck in our inner ear.
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- Our inner ear is a vital part of our cognitive process for
remembering and rehearsing sounds. Since it is not under our
control then trying to forget it will not work. By purposely trying
to forget it you have to recall it which further imbeds it into
your long term memory. Earworms or brainworms may have both good
and bad qualities.
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- As reported by WebMD: "Songs with lyrics are reported as most
frequently stuck (74%), followed by commercial jingles (15%) and
instrumental tunes without words (11%)," (Dr. James Kellaris) "On
average, the episodes last over a few hours and occur 'frequently'
or 'very frequently' among 61.5% of the sample.
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- Students' top-10 earworm list: Other (you pick). Everyone has
his or her own worst earworm. Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" jingle. "Who
Let the Dogs Out" "We Will Rock You"
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- Students' top-10 earworm list (cont.): Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle
("Gimme a Break...") "Mission Impossible" theme "YMCA" "Whoomp,
There It Is" "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" "It's a Small World After
All
- Slide 26
- Using Your Body to Learn If you want to learn quicker, use your
body. Researchers already know that learning is easier, quicker,
and longer lasting if lessons involve the body as well as the mind.
This includes gesturing with the arms or moving around a room.
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- Many people, especially children, lack the ability to think
abstractly. They depend upon physical objects to help them solve
problems. Conventional thinking might suggest that teachers should
help wean children off physical objects and body gestures to
prepare them for the adult world. Actually, the physical world is a
very important component of learning.
- Slide 28
- Spencer Kelly, a psychologist at Colgate University in
Hamilton, NY found that people spend 3 times as much time gesturing
when they think it is particularly important that they get a
message across. It suggests that, at the subconscious level, people
appreciate the communicative value of our body language.
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- Spencer Kelly also found evidence that people like a teacher
better when they use arm and hand movements to emphasize points.
Research shows that young children learn more if their teacher uses
gestures when explaining a concept.
- Slide 30
- Susan Cook, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, found
that children pick up new concepts more effectively if they are
taught to mirror and repeat the gestures their teacher uses. Also,
lessons involving words and gestures live longer in a students
memory than lessons using words alone.
- Slide 31
- New technical devices like the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox, and
touch- screen tablet PCs that use kinetic sensors to determine
gestures and body motion have been shown to help learners to learn
better. They help the learner to develop a better concept of
proportions such as when one plant grows faster than another
one.
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- Researchers at Eberhard Karis University in Germany found that
7 year olds can place numbers more accurately along a line between
0 and 100 if they physically walk the line on a floor.
- Slide 33
- The lessons we learn at school usually involve a declarative
memory which are facts that we can consciously recall or declare at
a later date, for example: definitions. However, some of our
memories are non-declarative or things we can remember without
really being able to explain why. The classic example is how we
never forget how to ride a bike.
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- Psychologist Susan Cook from the University of Iowa states: In
every study that weve tested the importance of gesturing, weve
found it workseven in the experimental settings where we thought
gesturing wouldnt work.
- Slide 35
- What influence do our senses have on boosting learning power?
Research is revealing that smells and sounds can have a significant
impact on learning, performance, and creativity. Studies over the
past 15 years reveal that children attending schools under the
flight paths of large airports lag behind in their exam
results.
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- Bridget Shield, professor of acoustics at London South Bank
University and Julie Dockrell at the Institute of Education have
studied the effects of all sorts of noises such as traffic &
sirens as well as noise generated by children.
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- The results show that noise negatively impacts a childs
performance, in numeracy (the ability to reason and fundamental
mathematics), literacy, & spelling. Noise seems to have an
especially detrimental effect on children with special needs.
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- Professor Shield says the sound of babble-the chatter of other
children, is particularly distracting in the classroom. These
studies suggest that Children in so called open-plan classrooms may
not do as well in school because of the babble.
- Slide 39
- Professor Shield says that people are very distracted by
speech- particularly if its understandable, but youre not involved
in it. This phenomenon is also known as the irrelevant speech
effect. Shield says: its a very common finding in open-plan offices
as well. Open-plan offices may similarly negatively impact your
performance.
- Slide 40
- Background noises may or may not be beneficial depending upon
the type of noise and the volume. Ravi Mehta at the College of
Business at Illinois studied creativity & background noises
like coffee-shop chatter and construction-site drilling at
different volumes. Creativity was best at medium levels. Loud
background noise damaged creativity.
- Slide 41
- Psychologist Dr. Nick Perham at Cardiff Metropolitan University
in the UK says that the most distracting sounds tend to be
variable. When there is not much acoustical variation there is not
much to capture your attention (steady hum). There may be some
benefit from playing music or other sounds in an art class or other
situations where creativity is key (medium arousal).
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- Music is not always helpful while you are trying to work.
Trying to perform a task which involves serial recall (mental
arithmetic) will be impaired by sounds with acoustic variation,
which includes most types of music. Songs with lyrics are more
likely to interfere with tasks that involve semantics such as
reading comprehension.
- Slide 43
- Research suggests that smells can help with cognitive
performance. Psychologist Mark Moss at Northumbria University
studied the effect of smells on cognition using rosemary &
lavender. Those who smelled lavender did significantly worse in
working memory tests & had impaired reaction times for both
memory and attention-based tasks.
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- Those in the rosemary group did much better than a control
group with memory tasks but their reaction times were slower.
Smells affect memory since the brains olfactory bulb is intimately
linked to the hippocampus which is associated with learning.
Subjects smelling rosemary had elevated levels of 1,8-cineole which
increases brain cell communication.
- Slide 45
- Jerome Bruner is a psychologist who focused much of his
research on the cognitive development of children and how it
relates to education. While he has made many contributions to the
field of psychology, his greatest contributions have been in the
educational field.
- Slide 46
- Jerome Bruner theorized that learning occurs by going through 3
stages of representation. Each stage is a "way in which information
or knowledge are stored & encoded in memory" (Mcleod, 2008)
From: http://bruners- stages.wikispaces.com/Bruner's+Stag
es+of+Representation
- Slide 47
- Jerome Bruner The stages are more-or-less sequential, although
they are not necessarily age-related like Piaget- based theories.
Going through the stages is essential to truly understanding the
concept, as it helps the learner understand why.
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- 1. enactive (action-based) Sometimes called the concrete stage,
this first stage involves a tangible hands-on method of learning.
Bruner believed that "learning begins with an action - touching,
feeling, and manipulating" (Brahier, 2009, p. 52).
- Slide 49
- 1. enactive (action-based) In mathematics education,
manipulatives are the concrete objects with which the actions are
performed. Common examples of manipulatives used in this stage in
math education are algebra tiles, paper, coins, etc. - anything
tangible.
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- 2. iconic (image-based) Sometimes called the pictoral stage,
this second stage involves images or other visuals to represent the
concrete situation enacted in the first stage.
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- 2. iconic (image-based) One way of doing this is to simply draw
images of the objects on paper or to picture them in one's head.
Other ways could be through the use of shapes, diagrams, and
graphs.
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- 3. symbolic (language-based) Sometimes called the abstract
stage, the last stage takes the images from the second stage and
represents them using words and symbols. The use of words and
symbols "allows a student to organize information in the mind by
relating concepts together" (Brahier, 2009, p. 53).
- Slide 53
- 3. symbolic (language-based) The words and symbols are
abstractions, they do not necessarily have a direct connection to
the information. For example, a number is a symbol used to describe
how many of something there are, but the number in itself has
little meaning without the understanding of it.
- Slide 54
- 3. symbolic (language-based) Other examples would be variables
such as x or y, or mathematical symbols such as +, -, /, etc.
Finally, language and words are another way to abstractly represent
the idea. In the context of math, this could be the use of words
such as addition, infinite, the number 3, etc.
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- Educational Trends in School Wall Street Journal Article March
11, 2014: Shaking Up the Classroom; Schools Scrap Age-Based Grade
Levels, Basing Promotion on Mastery of Material
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- Called competency-based learning, it is based on the idea that
students learn at their own pace and should earn credits and
advance after they master the materialnot just because they have
spent a year in a certain class.
- Slide 57
- Students are expected to take the initiative to learn on their
own with their teacher facilitating a learning environment
conducive to learning. They must prove that they have mastered the
material before they can move on to the next level. If students are
aware of what learning methods work best for them then they can get
the maximum benefit from their education.
- Slide 58
- We are living in the Information Age. Today learners are
subjected to such a tremendous amount of information at any given
time that each sense, or a combination of senses (see, feel, touch,
hear, taste) can easily be overwhelmed. Information overload is a
serious problem for the learner.
- Slide 59
- An important key to learning is to manage the stimuli the
learner is constantly being subjected to. Stimulation that is too
little or inappropriate for the learner leads to boredom and loss
of interest; too much leads to information overload. In order for
it to be effective and beneficial it must be meaningful and
appropriate for the learner.
- Slide 60
- Hacking Knowledge: 77 Ways to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better
Feb 28, 2014 oedb.org/ilibrarian/hacking- knowledge/ by Ellyssa
Kroski: Director of Information Technology at the NY Law Institute
and is a highly regarded writer, speaker and digital librarian who
has contributed to a variety of publications like Library
Journal.