How Does Your Brain Work?

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How Does Your Brain Work?

• An Information Resource for Students

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What is the purpose of this presentation?

• Much of the buzz in education has been about
  constructivism and metacognition (these are
  explained later in the presentation).
• I truly believe in constructivism and it is how I
  teach.
• I feel its important for students to understand
  where their teacher is coming from and why she
  teaches the way she does. (This slide show
  briefly explains it.)
• More and more of the research in education shows
  that students who are aware of how they learn and
  who can think about their thought processes do
  better in school and learn more. This slide show
  should give you some insight into your own
  learning styles and some insight into how your
  brain works.

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Stimulus-Response Model

• Up until the 1950s many psychologists thought
  that people learned by stimulus and response,
  otherwise known as behaviorism.
• The stimulus was the reward that a person
  received for performing a task.
• The response was the task that a person
  performed.
• Rewards can be intrinsic (coming from withinIm
  proud of that project I worked hard on it.)
• Rewards can extrinsic (coming from the outsideI
  get 20 for every A grade I earn.)
• You might have heard this approach called
  conditioning. Rats and mazes are used in some
  experiments.
• Learn about Pavlovs Dogs and conditioning at
  http//riri.essortment.com/pavlovdogs_oif.htm

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Information Processing Model

• Because many educators and psychologists thought
  that the behavioralist approach didnt answer all
  the questions about learning, in the 1950s, they
  began to think about learning as information
  processing.
• The model focused on the computer as an example
  of how we learn.
• Information goes in, is stored and then is spit
  back out when needed.
• The only problem with this theory was that people
  dont always spit out the same information they
  affect it and change it in some way.

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Constructivism

• This view of learning came about in the 1960s.
  It said that human beings CONSTRUCT their own
  knowledge based on their perceptions and previous
  life experiences.
• It contains some elements of behaviorism and
  information processing, but gives a clearer
  picture of how humans mentally manipulate
  information and make it their own.
• To the cognitive psychologist, memory consists of
  three distinct parts sensory memory, working
  memory (or short-term memory) and long term
  memory.
• Each part plays an important role in the storing
  and retrieving of information.
• The next series of slides will examine each part
  of memory and how it fits with the other parts.

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How your brain stores information
Sensory Memory (SM)
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Sensory Memory

• This is like a sorting area for your brain.
• All types of stimulus enter here (sight, smell,
  taste, sound, touch).
• Most stimuli are dropped after .15 seconds
  because we dont attach any specific meaning to
  them.

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Sensory Memory

• Imagine youre driving down a road. All sorts of
  images and smells and sounds come to you, but
  when you get home, do you remember all of them?
  No, because your sensory memory has dropped them
  as they were not important.
• Now, imagine if you were driving down the road,
  and all of a sudden, you see a deer coming up out
  of the ditch
• Do you think this is important enough for your
  sensory memory to pay attention to?

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Sensory Memory

• The sensory memory says, Whoa, a deer, thats
  important. I better send it over to the work
  bench.
• Notice that because you saw the deer as
  important, you made your ideas cross the
  perception filters.

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Short Term Memory or Work Bench
Short-term Memory or work bench

• This is the area of your brain where you do most
  of your work.
• Once the sensory memory has passed over
  information, the work bench has between 18 and 20
  seconds to either pick up and work with the new
  information or the new information will be
  dropped out of STM (short term memory).
• Rehearsal (practice) increases the time the work
  bench has to work with the information.

This is where we actually do our thinking!
Chunking 7 2 pieces of information
Lasts for 18-20 seconds or is dropped
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Short Term Memory or Work Bench

• The work bench can only process between 5 and 9
  pieces of information at one time. Information
  includes sights, sounds, smells, touch and even
  tastes.
• That means that if you are watching TV, talking
  to your friends, eating popcorn and studying,
  youre less likely to process your homework
  because your work bench is full of other things.

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Short Term Memory or Work Bench, continued

• The 5-9 bits of information are called chunks!
• Experts like scientists and doctors can also only
  hold 5-9 chunks at a time, but the size of their
  chunks are huge compared to ours.

Experts chunks (boulder)
Our chunks (small rock)
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Short Term Memory orWork Bench, continued

• Lets go back to our driver and the deer. The
  work bench realizes that you must pay attention
  to this new bit of informationits important!
• The work bench sends a message to the Long Term
  Memory Help, I need some stuff to work with.
  Weve got this deer thing happening and my person
  needs to know what to do!

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The Long Term Memory

• LTM gets the message from the work bench and
  starts to poke around on its shelves for stored
  information about deer.

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The Long Term Memory, continued

• In one part of the LTM is declarative knowledge
  about the deer
• What is a deer? Is it a buck?
• Boy, its a big deer.
• How much did it cost to fix the car last time?
• Could there be more than one deer because they
  usually live in herds.

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The Long Term Memory, continued

• In another part of the LTM is procedural
  knowledge
• How do I stop the car?
• I wonder if I remember how to file an insurance
  claim?
• What do I do if I go in the ditch?

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The Long Term Memory, continued

• The LTM takes all that information and sends it
  back to the work bench so it can solve the
  problem of the deer.

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And then

• In less than thirty seconds, youve identified
  the deer, braked the car, driven by the deer and
  sighed because you missed the deer.
• What if you had never seen a deer before, would
  you know that it was possibly dangerous?
• What if you didnt know how to brake and steer
  the car? Could you have avoided it?

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This is slide number 17 if you want to print it
for your own uses. It is a completed diagram of
how your brain stores your information!
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Our knowledge is built upon what we have learned
and stored before.

• Every person has a different way to store
  knowledge. Have you and a friend ever remembered
  something differently?
• That happens because each person has a different
  SCHEMA (pronounced skee-ma) or pattern for
  organizing and storing their own knowledge.

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Try this

• Draw a circle in the middle of a paper.
• In the circle, write the word apple.
• Take 3 or 4 minutes to write down anything you
  can think of that is connected to an apple.
• Have a friend or family member do this with you.
• When you are done, compare what the both of you
  have written down.

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Wellwhat did you find out?

• Was your diagram the same as your friend or
  parents diagram?
• Did it have a lot of the same words on it?
• Were they in different orders?
• It was pretty different, wasnt it? You might
  have had many of the same words, but they werent
  all in the same order.
• This is an example of how each person stores his
  or her knowledge in LTM differently. It also
  shows how differently the same information can be
  connected.
• Constructivist Theory of Education tells us that
  each one of us builds our own knowledge framework
  depending upon our experiences and our past
  knowledge.

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So what, Mrs. Tomlinson, whys this important?

• There are many different ways that you can get
  stuff to stick in your LTM.
• If you can connect something new that you are
  learning to something that you already know, its
  MUCH easier to learn.
• Learning is a combination of what you already
  know, what you are currently studying and how you
  stick it in to your SCHEMA.

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Some tricks to get new information to stick

• Rehearsal (repeat practice, works best for simple
  information)
• Imagery-attaching a picture to a new concept.
• Mnemonics-
• 1st Letter-use the first letter of a list to form
  a word(s). (ROY G. BIV-the colors of the rainbow
  red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)
• Loci-pronounce low-sigh. Imagine youre in a
  room. Place all the things you want to remember
  around that room. Put the steps to setting up
  the microscope on the table. Next to it are the
  instruments you need for the experiment and so
  on. It takes time to set up, but is extremely
  helpful!

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Some tricks to get new information to stick
continued

• Complex Information is more difficult to get to
  stick, but if you have the simple stuff well
  learned, you can attach the complex to it.
• Think about what you already know about a subject
  before beginning study.
• Ask questions about the new information before,
  during and after learning it.

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Moving on

• For other ways to enhance your stickability,
  check out this website http//braindance.com/fram
  bdi1.htm
• Well be studying more ways to get new knowledge
  to stick as we go through the year.
• __________________________
• Next, were going to take a look at personal
  beliefs and how they affect learning. Click on
  this link to take a survey to find out about your
  approaches to learning.
• Click on this link and take the survey on what
  you believe about learning. No, it wont tell
  you how smart you are it will give you some idea
  about how you feel about learning. Go on, try it!

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Beliefs about Learning

• Click on this link to score your approaches to
  learning survey.
• Click on this link to score your beliefs about
  learning inventory.
• Please see me so we can discuss what your scores
  mean for you

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Beliefs about Knowledge

• When psychologists talk about knowledge, they
  mean the nature of knowledge. At one point, is
  it possible to know everything about a given
  subject? Or, is there always one more piece of
  knowledge out there to learn?
• What do you think?

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Beliefs about Knowledge

• Schommer (a psychologist) says that some people
  believe that knowledge is
• Simple, it is absolute and certain.
• Certain, once it is known, it will always be
  true.
• Fixed, the ability to learn is inborn and
  unchangeable.
• Quick learned, learning must happen quickly or
  it wont happen at all.
• Do you believe that any of these are correct?
  Take a few minutes and write in your journal why
  you do or why you dont agree with Schommer.

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Beliefs about Knowledge

• Psychologists also believe that there are
  different types of knowledge
• Factual the basic elements you need to know.
  (vocabulary, music symbols)
• Conceptual the interrelationships among the
  facts that let them function together.
  (categories, principles, models and theories)
• Procedural the steps of how to do something.
  (how to set up a microscope, how to conduct an
  interview, when to use a particular math method
  or punctuation mark)
• Metacognitive knowledge about thinking and
  about a persons own thinking in particular. (I
  learn best from doing hands on experiments, or I
  write better essays if I make notes beforehand.)
  For more information on metacognition, check out
  this website
• http//chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/meta
  cogn.html
• Take a couple minutes here to write in your
  journal some examples of these types of knowledge
  that you have.

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Beliefs about Knowledge

• In summary, most psychologists take the view that
  knowledge changes as we grow and experience new
  things. We even restructure our knowledge to
  incorporate the new things with which we come
  into contact.

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Beliefs about Intelligence

• How do you see intelligence?
• Are we born with a certain amount of smarts and
  thats all we ever have?
• Or can we increase our brain power throughout our
  lives?

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Beliefs about Intelligence, continued

• Most psychologists believe that intelligence is
  changeable.
• Theres a new theory called Multiple
  Intelligences. It basically says that people are
  smart in different ways. To find out more about
  MI, visit this website http//www.ldpride.net/lea
  rningstyles.MI.htm
• It includes a test to find out about your
  multiple intelligences. The test does take a
  little bit of time, so make sure you have enough
  time to complete it.

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Beliefs about Self

• These fall into three categories
• Self-Efficacy (pronounced ef-ick-a-sea)
• Beliefs about future outcomes
• Attribution Theory
• Beliefs about past outcomes
• Self-Determinism
• Beliefs about the amount of control one has over
  events

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Self-Efficacy

• This is the belief in ones own ability and
  capability to influence future situations.
• It comes from what you believe about yourself, a
  type of self-fulfilling prophecy.
• Ive always done well in math, therefore this
  test shouldnt be a problem.
• I never do well in math, therefore Im going to
  bomb this test.
• For more information, check out this website
  http//www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/efficacy.html

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Attribution Theory

• When you think attribution, think explanation.
  This theory says that we explain our successes
  and our failures according to
• Ability- Im good at math!
• Effort- I worked really hard on this project!
• Luck- I lucked out the test was easy!
• Control- Im doing this because I like to do it!

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Attribution Theory, continued

• The most important component of the theory,
  EFFORT, is the one that every person can control.
• EFFORT is the key to success, research has
  proven. It might take longer, and you might have
  to work harder, but EFFORT is the most effective
  way to improve your learning!
• For more information on Attribution Theory, check
  out this website
• http//www.as.wvu.edu/sbb/comm221/chapters/attri
  b.htm

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Self-Determinism

• This deals with how much control and autonomy you
  feel you have in a given situation.
• This also deals with the choices you make.
• I have to write this research paper on
  metacognition because Mrs. Tomlinson is making me
  do it.
• I chose to do my research paper on metacognition
  because it really interests me.

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In Conclusion

• This presentation is intended to get you thinking
  about
• Your attitudes and beliefs about learning.
• How you learn.
• What is your style of learning?
• Just think, METACOGNITION!
• Its also intended to help you in your studies.
  Look for future presentations on study skills and
  critical thinking skills.

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Journal Reflections(These wont be shared in
class, and I wont read them if that is your
request.)

• In which way do you think you learn the best?
  Why?
• Which belief about self most strongly describes
  you? Why?
• What was the most interesting thing you learned
  in this presentation and how will it affect your
  future learning?
• Do you think metacognition is useful to you? Why
  or why not?
• Describe what a schema is. How does experience
  affect it?

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For further investigation

• If you want to take some personality quizzes or
  other quizzes (just for fun), check out
  http//emode.com . Make sure you do NOT order
  any of the reports as they will cost money.
• For more information about different learning
  styles and theories of learning, check out this
  website http//www.funderstanding.com/about_learn
  ing.cfm