Stephanie Golski

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Applying Cognitive Neuroscience to Intentional
Teaching and Learning
Stephanie Golski Dept. of Psychology
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• Plasticity
• Brains change
• Use it or lose it
• Top-down Processing
• Fit it in frameworks
• What are your/their expectations?
• Optimal Arousal
• Depends on task
• Selective Brain Development
• Works in progress

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Try It

• Seated to the LEFT?
• Check out picture
• Close eyes

• Seated to the RIGHT?
• Close eyes
• When asked, check out picture

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Psychology and Neurons

• Tying human behavior to neurons is difficult.
• There may be 100 billion neurons in your nervous
  system.
• Each neuron has many connections (within brain
  average 10K)

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Changing Brains

• What changes can occur in synapses?
• (increases or decreases)
• Strength and pattern of signal
• Character (excitation or inhibition)
• Changed by
• Use
• Importance of signal

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Long term potentiation

• Think about each term
• Change in neuronal response due to experience
• Could be easier to fire
• Or release more chemicals
• All because of previous firing

savings effect
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Plasticity

• Neuronal changes produced by experience
• Spines on dendrites can appear within minutes of
  stimulation
• Existing structure will play a role, be modified
• Well have to pay attention to existing knowledge

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Changing Brains

• Neuronal response is enhanced if
• Stimulation is repeated
• Distributed practice
• Saturation avoided
• Smaller chunks
• Making connections
• Depth of processing
• Highlighters and flash cards dont cut it
• Overlearned/overlapping

savings effect
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Will they remember everything from intro?

• No, but may experience the
• Faster relearning asconnections are
  reestablishedand strengthened

savings effect
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BRIDGE and the Brain

• Focus of BRIDGE
• Scholarship of teaching
• Discipline-based epistemology
• Classroom experimentation
• Themes across three years
• Content coverage vs. mastery
• Transition from novice to expert
• Backward design

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Maximize Savings

• Assignment Design
• Manage the timing of assignments to include
  review and reuse of critical concepts
• Increase the frequency of assignments
• Include practice with smaller chunks

• BRIDGE examples
• Increasing the meaning of reading assignments
• Ungraded assignment sheet (did it?), can use
  during exams
• Learning to use critical terms
• Key term web

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Processing what comes in Bottom-Up

• Association Cortex for integration
• Primary Cortical nuclei
• Thalamic nuclei
• Receptor to transduce energy

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Processing what comes in Top-Down

• Association Cortex for integration
• Primary Cortical nuclei
• Thalamic nuclei
• Receptor to transduce energy

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Try It

• Seated to the LEFT?
• Check out picture
• Close eyes
• When asked, open eyes and blink quickly

• Seated to the RIGHT?
• Close eyes
• When asked, check out picture
• Then blink repeatedly for final slide

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blink rapidly
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Go beyond cool

• Make the connection explicit
• HOW you saw the second item was influenced by
  your preparation
• Once you see it one way it is difficult, but not
  impossible, to see other ways
• Reading ahead of time, slides/outlines available
  can prime students to get the lecture

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Top-Down Processing

• Looking at a brain end of semester vs. first week
• Expertise
• Recognizing your friend from really far away b/c
  you knew she would be here
• Expectations
• Hearing the words to the song so clearly once you
  read the lyrics
• 20-20 Hindsight

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Reality

• Raw sensory (biological) info
• past experiences
• context
• motivation
• expectations...

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• The Last Supper is supposed to be thirteen men.
  Who is this woman? Although Sophie had seen
  this classic image many times, she had not once
  noticed this glaring discrepancy. Everyone
  misses it, Teabring said. Our preconceived
  notions of this scene are so powerful that our
  mind blocks out the incongruity and overrides our
  eyes. Dan Brown, Da Vinci Code

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Top-down and Teaching

• Be aware of biases, prior info
• Can we think like Novices?
• The obvious is NOT obvious
• We see details, students need to be SHOWN
• Framework, knowledge reminders
• Point out patterns, themes
• Encourage/reward reading before class

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Existing neural networks/knowledge Top-down
processing

• Use for
• Examplesconcrete, interesting
• Vocabulary breakdown
• Group work, explanations from students
• Teaching approach
• Memory of own student habits

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Existing neural networks/knowledge

• Help students find their own networks
• What does this make you think of?
• What makes this memorable to you?
• Use from one semester to another and/or one class
  session to another (supplemental
  instructor/tutor)
• Language and/or technology barriers
• comparing apples to oranges
• I can do it on my computer at home

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Blah blah blah
1.Orient 2.Familiarity alters processing
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What if their top is wrong?

• Focus on factually and conceptually correct
  information
• Asterisks in notes
• Error in previous thinking- show how it fits in
• Freud
• Negative correlation, negative reinforcement
• Polygraph

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Attention More Filters

• The Brain sees what it wants to see, not just
  what you put in front of it
• Same stimuli can be on retina- only cause brain
  response when attended to
• Optimal level of arousal
• Engagement/rewards
• Depth of processing again

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Managing Attention

• Assignment Design
• Know what is important and make that apparent
• Match course contingencies to real value of
  activities
• Influence student perceptions of value

• BRIDGE examples
• Should students have class notes on Blackboard
  (web)?
• Value of practice and homework
• What happens when you assign work that isnt
  completed?

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• Teacher sees important details, students need to
  be shown
• E.g. purpose of assignments (busy work!)
  syllabus design can include(w/recurring patterns)
  purpose, points, procedure

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• 10 Minute Reading Reinforcers (RR)
• Purpose Reinforce review of correct quiz
  answers and previous class notes as well as
  active reading of current chapter.
• Procedure Twice during each unit several
  questions (usually multiple choice) will be
  projected during the first 10 minutes of class.
  Please bring a pencil to class everyday (there is
  a sharpener just outside the classroom on counter
  in TLC office space). Notes can be used the
  text book cannot. Latecomers will miss that
  days reinforcer. Answers will be discussed
  immediately afterwards. Because this is not
  intended to take more than 10 minutes of class
  time, if you have an Individual Education Plan
  (IEP) through Rider Learning Center that
  recommends longer time on assessments please
  advocate for yourself by discussing this with me
  early in the semester. You should plan regular
  times throughout the week to read the text and
  review your notes. Plan on reading about 30
  pages per class session on average.
• Points 9(5) 45 points possible (can skip one
  w/out penalty or drop lowest) 12.7 of grade

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Stayed Aroused Helps Us Pay Attention
Tasks of avg. difficulty
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Optimal arousal level high for easy or passive
tasks
Tasks of low difficulty lecture, driving
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Optimal arousal level low for difficult tasks
Tasks of high difficulty stressful exam
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So Why Doesnt Fun Stuff Always Work?

• Increase arousal but students can miss the point
• Improvements add REFLECTION
• Games as review for test
• List topics strongest/weakest in
• Sensory illusions
• Use vocab words to summarize what was
  demonstrated

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Selective Brain Development

• Still have some growing to do
• Problem is, it is in the region that manages
• Planning
• Response inhibition
• Emotional regulation
• Organization

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PFC and Teaching

• Encourage planning
• Interim deadlines
• Model applications/abstractions
• Piaget
• Use action to complete learning cycle
• Group work to test ideas, promote outward use of
  terms and concepts
• Encourage metacognition
• Knowing what you know, reflection

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Long term planning

• Assignment Design
• Anticipate needs for long term planning
• Use assignments that build on each other

• BRIDGE examples
• Adding pre-professional activities to assignments
• interview
• Linked assignments that create planning
• Intermediate deadlines

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Models at our fingertips, FPOT, synapse
plasticity
Maximize savings, LTP, distributed processing
top-down processing
Be aware of and use existing knowledge, obvious
is not!, maintain arousal and direct attention
brain development
Selective, Promote and model abstraction,
long-term planning, active use of material
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The Art of Changing the Brain Enriching the
practice of teaching by exploring the biology of
learning
Suggested reference

• James E. Zull 2002
• http//Styluspup.com