Learning and testing
March 18, 2008
Category: Learning and testing • Memory • Research
My first introduction to psychology was in a required social science class in college over 20 years ago, reading Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. The experience made me think I'd better be careful if I ever had kids: I didn't want them telling their psychoanalysts how my misadventures in early parenting had scarred them. But while true Freudian psychoanalysts are becoming rarer with each passing year, one of the concepts he advocated has persisted for more than a century: transference.
Freud believed that transference was a fundamental part of the psychoanalytic process, sometimes achieved only after many years of careful therapy. Transference occurred when the patient substituted his or her relationship with the therapist for the troubling past relationship (often with a mother or father figure) that was the root of the patient's problems. After transference occurred, the patient was much more inclined to remember the key moments that had caused their neurosis, leading eventually to a resolution and cure.
More recently, Susan Andersen and her colleagues have offered a new explanation for transference. Far from being the product of a difficult negotiation between patient and therapist, the application of transference is much more like a stereotype, and is experienced all the time by healthy individuals. For transference to occur, all that is necessary is to encounter a person that reminds you of a significant person in your life -- a family member, friend, or lover. Transference in this view is simply the misapplication of the traits of your significant other to this new person.
In a typical study, Andersen's team has a volunteer describe an important person in their life. Then after some delay, they read a description of a new person that has some similarities with their friend or loved one. In a subsequent memory test, they tend to misapply traits of their loved one to the new person -- traits that were never present in the description they read.
Is Andersen's transference the same as what Freud describes?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:55 PM • Comments (4)
February 7, 2008
Category: Development / Aging • Learning and testing • Research
You're trapped inside a rectangular room with four doors, one in each corner. You try the first door. It's locked. You try the second and the third door -- locked again. Finally the fourth door opens. You make a point of remembering which corner of the room it's in, which turns out to be useful, because before you know it you're trapped in another identical room. Now, how did you remember what door opened last time? You can't rely on your physical orientation because you might be facing a different direction.
Suppose one wall in both the rooms was a different color from the rest. Then it would be easy to locate the correct door based on this feature. If not, you'd have to rely on the shape of the room. Take a look at the two rooms below. If door 4 is always unlocked, then it should be easier to find in room B than in room A.
If you're placed in a series of rooms like room A, facing a different direction each time, then you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between door 4 and door 2: both doors have a short wall to the left and a long wall to the right. If the rooms always look like room B, it shouldn't take long to learn to pick door 4 every time -- it's always just to the left of the green wall. But still, even in room A, eventually you'd learn to avoid doors 1 and 3 -- they're never going to be unlocked.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:55 PM • Comments (2)
January 7, 2008
Category: Language • Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis -- stated in its strongest form -- claims that language determines thoughts: if a language doesn't have a means of expressing a particular idea, then people speaking that language can't even conceive of that idea. This strong form has long since been rejected: There are plenty of thoughts we can have without having the words to express them.
But there is also little question that the available words do have an important impact on our thoughts. If a language doesn't have a way to express numbers above 10, for example, then that would probably result in a somewhat different understanding of the world for its speakers compared to speakers of languages with more comprehensive number systems.
It's difficult to demonstrate these kinds of differences in the real world, though. Perhaps the different conception of the world comes more from growing up in a society that doesn't value abstract mathematics than from a particular vocabulary limitation.
Recently researchers have figured out an innovative way around this limitation: They invent entirely new things, and new words to describe them. Take a look at this set of objects, used in a recent study led by Gary Lupyan:
Each object is different, but they all share similar features. We might be tempted to invent just one new word to describe the entire set of objects. Closer inspection reveals that the eight objects on the left share some features which distinguish them from the objects on the right. If we invent one word, "leebish" to categorize the objects on the left, and another, "grecious," to categorize those on the right, will people be better at distinguishing between the two types of objects?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:16 PM • Comments (26)
January 3, 2008
Category: Language • Learning and testing • Memory • Research
During my brief tenure as a high school teacher, one common suggestion I got from supportive colleagues was to "make your tests teaching tools." "That's often the only time you've really got your students' attention," they suggested, "so don't neglect the opportunity to teach them something."
What they meant is that you shouldn't use misleading or false information in tests as a "trick" to make sure they grasp the material: your test might be the only thing students remember from a unit.
But there's another reason testing is important for learning. For decades researchers have known that more is often learned during testing than traditional "learning." If, for example, students must learn 20 spelling words for a test, in many situations they'll remember the 10 words they were *actually* tested on better than the others.
If I quiz Jim on his Spanish vocabulary words every day, he does better on tests than if he studies on his own. This might be more of a reflection of the quality of his study time than a testing effect, but it still demonstrates the power of testing in aiding learning.
But how exactly does the testing effect work?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:45 PM • Comments (13)
December 4, 2007
Category: Development / Aging • Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research
One of our readers emailed us asking if there has ever been research on whether kids' understanding of numbers -- especially large numbers -- differs from adults. Greta did a little poking around and found a fascinating study on second- and fourth-graders.
In the U.S. (and I suspect around the world), kids this age are usually taught about numbers using a number line. In first grade, they might be introduced to a line from 0 or 1 to 10. In second grade, this is typically expanded up to 100. But what happens when second-graders are asked to place numbers on a line extending all the way up to 1,000?
This happens:
I've placed the 500 (in gray) on these lines for reference; in the real study, conducted by John Opfer and Rober Siegler, the kids used lines with just 0 and 1000 labeled. They were then given numbers within that range and asked to draw a vertical line through the number line where each number fell (they used a new, blank number line each time). The figure above represents (in red) the average results for a few of the numbers used in the study. As you can see, the second graders are way off, especially for lower numbers. They typically placed the number 150 almost halfway across the number line! Fourth graders perform nearly as well as adults on the task, putting all the numbers in just about the right spot.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:43 PM • Comments (28)
November 13, 2007
Category: Emotion • Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research
Yesterday we discussed several experiments offering converging evidence that exposure to the color red, even for brief periods before taking a test, can result in lower achievement. It's startling research, but as my daughter suggested at breakfast this morning, maybe people are just intimidated by the color red because that's the color that's always used for grading.
Aren't we just conditioned to see red as threatening? That might be part of it, but in nature red also frequently suggests danger. Many poisonous plants and animals are red. Blood is red. Hot coals and lava are red. It's possible that humans have a biological predisposition to avoid the color red.
In our nonscientific poll conducted yesterday, we asked readers what the dominant color on their computer desktop was. Just 28 out of 550 respondents chose red from our list of 11 colors -- about half of what you'd expect if colors were chosen arbitrarily. It's possible that many computer users simply never change from their computer's default desktop, but someone (at Microsoft or Apple, for example) had to decide on a default, didn't they? Why didn't they choose red?
The team led by Andrew Elliot suspected that avoidance motivated by the color red may be the reason test-takers scored worse on tests marked with red, and they developed an additional two experiments to explore that notion.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 9:46 AM • Comments (20)
November 12, 2007
Category: Emotion • Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research
One of the things I was taught in English graduate school was never to grade papers using red ink. Students don't respond well to the color red, I was told -- it's intimidating. I always thought this was a little far-fetched, and my instructors couldn't offer a peer-reviewed journal article that definitively answered the question of whether red ink was harmful.
There is some research on the question of whether red is harmful in an academic setting -- but it's inconclusive, with some studies showing harm and others appearing to show a benefit to the color red. For decades, there has been a theoretical argument that red is arousing or threatening, but little data to back it up. A team led by Andrew Elliot argues that what little data exists is problematic. Most of the studies on color suffer from flaws. In many cases, the experimenter was aware of the color condition, and so may have biased research subjects with actions that were themselves seen as intimidating or threatening.
One seemingly contradictory study that found athletes performed better while wearing red could be explained in two ways: either red improves performance because athletes wearing the color win more frequently, or red impairs performance of competitors facing athletes wearing red.
I'm going to talk about Elliot et al.'s study, but first I thought I'd try a little poll. Do CogDaily readers avoid the color red in their workspace? Hide all your windows and look at your desktop background. What's the dominant color in the picture?
If your desktop doesn't include any of those colors, just pick the closest one. We'll soon see if your responses bear any relation to the study results.
Now, on to the study. After a series of six experiments, Elliot's team arrived at the astonishing conclusion that a brief exposure to the color red does indeed impair performance on several different types of tests. Let's break down their methods:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 10:50 AM • Comments (19)
September 27, 2007
Category: Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research • Social
Yesterday, we discussed sex differences at the highest levels of achievement and found that there are some significant differences between males and females. But despite these observations, it's still unclear why the disparity exists, and what can or should be done about it.
Sex differences in brain structure
One possibility is that the physical structure of the brain is different for males and females. MRI imaging shows that males do have larger brains than females on average. But women have a higher proportion of "gray matter" -- the part of the brain where most cognitive activity is believed to occur. Indeed, there is no significant difference in the amount of gray matter in male and female brains. However, one white matter structure in female brains -- the corpus callosum -- appears to be bigger than in males (though different studies are more or less successful in replicating this observation).
The corpus callosum is where most communication between brain hemispheres occurs, and it appears that female brains are more effective at coordinating both hemispheres. Male brains, by contrast, appear to have more connectivity within each hemisphere than female brains. There also appears to be some correlation between these physical differences in brain structure and mathematical ability. The coordination of both hemispheres is associated with better language skills, while the connectivity within hemispheres is associated with better math skills.
But there is plenty of research demonstrating that the physical structure of the brain changes as new knowledge is acquired. Are the differences in brain structure the cause or the effect of sex differences in math skills?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:39 PM • Comments (21)
September 26, 2007
Category: Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research • Social
In yesterday's post, we discussed sex differences in achievement and ability. Few were identified. For the most part, however, this research discussed average differences. The problem with only discussing averages is that people engaged in science and math careers are far from "average" when it comes to math and science ability. Math and science professors often score in the top 1 percent -- or higher -- on standardized math tests.
It's entirely possible that the top 1 percent looks very different from the average results for the population. Consider this graph of test scores from two different groups:
The vertical axis of the graph is the number of people achieving each score on the test. Even though Group 1 has a higher average score than Group 2, there are still more members of Group 2 at the top of the scale (and at the bottom). Group 2's scores are more spread out, more variable than scores of Group 1, which means that when we focus in at the top of the scale, we find more members of Group 2, even though overall Group 1 performed better on the test.
So, is that what we find when we look at real populations? Are males like Group 2, and females like Group 1, when it comes to mathematical ability?
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 5:26 PM • Comments (11)
September 13, 2007
Category: Development / Aging • Learning and testing • Research • Social
In 1999, Melissa Kamins and Carol Dweck made a striking discovery about the best way to praise children. When you are helping a child learn to read, saying "you are a smart girl" as opposed to "you did a good job reading" results in very different behavior when she has trouble reading in the future. Children who have received praise about their abilities ("you're smart") rather than specific praise about a task ("you did a good job ___") are more likely to exhibit "helpless" behavior when they encounter problems. Even though they were praised in both cases, telling kids they are "smart" just didn't motivate them the way specific praise did.
It's hard to deny the child's logic in this case. "I am a smart girl," she may think. "But I can't read this sentence. Therefore it must be impossible." But if she believes that she was able to do a good job reading in the past, then maybe if she just tries a little harder, she will eventually be able to surmount the current problems.
The lesson seems to be that generic praise is less effective than specific praise. But how generic is too generic? A new study led by Andrei Cimpian makes a subtler distinction between the generic and specific praise to see if the effect persists.
Instead of praising kids with "you are good" or "you are smart," they offered more specific generic praise. Children were given a pretend drawing task, and were praised either with "you are a good drawer" (generic) or "you did a good job drawing" (specific). What did they find? First, let's take a closer look at what Cimpian's team did.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 11:46 AM • Comments (34)
September 11, 2007
Category: Learning and testing • Reasoning • Research • Social
A recent report in Nature Neuroscience has gotten a lot of press. The headlines proclaim that "left-wing" brains are different from "right wing" brains. Are our brains literally hard-wired to be conservative or liberal? The article in the L.A. Times sure seems to suggest it:
Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.
Really? Could one study of 43 college students actually tell us all that? Let's take a look at what the researchers, led by David Amodio, actually did find. Participants first took a survey in which one of the questions asked them to rate their political orientation on a scale ranging from "extremely liberal" to "extremely conservative."
Next they were attached to an electroencephalogram while they completed a quick go/no go task. The task is mind-numbingly simple, but it can be extremely difficult in practice. I've created a little movie (
QuickTime required) so you can try it out. When you watch the movie, tap your finger on your desk every time you see the letter "W", and
don't tap for any other letter.
Not as easy as it looks, is it? Now on to what the researchers found:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 2:08 PM • Comments (33)
August 21, 2007
Category: Learning and testing • Memory • Perception • Research
When you look at a scene: a building, a park, a mountain, your visual system processes the information differently from when you look at a single object: a face, a pen, or a coffee mug. For example, this first image is from our trip to Prague this past summer:
When you look at this picture, your eye might move first to the bridge, then to the lampposts on the bridge, to the castle in the background, to the overhanging limbs. The next picture is much simpler:
It's a coffee mug, plain and simple. There's not much left to do with it. There are three regions of the brain that respond more strongly to scenes than to objects: the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), and the transverse occipital sulcus (TOS).
But do these areas respond differently to different types of scenes? That's what a new study by a team led by Russell Epstein (and including Steve Higgins of Omni Brain) sought to uncover.
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 1:27 PM • Comments (4)
July 12, 2007
Category: Attention • Learning and testing • Research
This is a guest post by Daniel Griffin, one of Greta's top student writers from Spring of 2007.
Does anything seem stick out about this sentence? I'm sure that if I told you to keep looking for yellow highlighted words, you would not have much trouble finding them in these first few sentences. You could even make it simpler for yourself and just look for any highlighted word. The only highlighted portions are yellow, so what is the difference? Let's say that by now you are used to searching for these highlighted words by just looking for a different color background than just the usual white. Does it take any longer to find the yellow word in this sentence? For most of us the answer to this question would be not especially, but I bet you glanced twice at "find." If I were to write the rest of this post in this fashion you would have to change your visual searching strategy to not just look for highlighted words, but yellow words in particular.
This kind of visual searching strategy is called an "attentional set". More specifically, an attentional set is an innate part of our information processing that prioritizes certain stimuli, such as yellow highlighted words, for selection. So why would we create this set when look for things? Well, using a certain set prevents things other than what we are looking for from distracting us. The problem with creating and using a set is that we do not always use the set that is best for what we are doing. With this in mind, Andrew Leber and Howard Egeth studied our visual searching strategies and the effects of past experience.
Read on »
Posted by Aaron Couch at 9:53 AM • Comments (5)
July 7, 2007
Category: Learning and testing
A continuation of our "greatest hits" from past Cognitive Daily postings:
[originally posted on December 14, 2005]
IQ has been the subject of hundreds, if not thousands of research studies. Scholars have studied the link between IQ and race, gender, socioeconomic status, even music. Discussions about the relationship between IQ and race and the heritability of IQ (perhaps most notably Steven Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man) often rise to a fever pitch. Yet for all the interest in the study of IQ, there has been comparatively little research on other influences on performance in school.
Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman estimate that for every ten articles on intelligence and academic achievement, there has been fewer than one about self-discipline. Even so, the small body of research on self-discipline suggests that it has a significant impact on achievement. Walter Mischel and colleagues found in the 1980s that 4-year-olds' ability to delay gratification (for example, to wait a few minutes for two cookies instead of taking one cookie right away) was predictive of academic achievement a decade later. Others have found links between personality and college grades, and self-discipline and Phi Beta Kappa awards. Still, most research on self-discipline has achieved inconsistent results, possibly due to the difficulty of measuring self-discipline. Could a more robust measure of self-discipline demonstrate that it's more relevant to academic performance than IQ?
Read on »
Posted by Aaron Couch at 10:00 AM • Comments (24)
June 21, 2007
Category: Learning and testing • Perception • Research
This is a guest post by Laura Younger, one of Greta's top student writers from Spring 2007
Everyone has heard of the concept of reinforcement. You reinforce your child with dessert after finishing his or her vegetables; you praise your dog with ear scratches for not barking at the mailman; or you give yourself a little TV time for cleaning the bathroom. It's a system that often works, but what types of behaviors can be reinforced? We know that learning can be improved with reinforcement, but is external reinforcement required for learning to occur? A team of researchers led by Aaron Seitz were interested in this very question as it relates to perceptual learning. Perceptual learning in this case can be defined by improvements in our sensory abilities. Suppose I asked you to determine in what direction a cluster of faintly shaded dots are moving, as in this video (QuickTime required). Can you see them move?
Would you get better at this exercise without any reward or feedback? It might help to think of a task like this in the context of the real world. Think of it as having to drive in the rain and perceive road signs, when everything around you is dark or as creeping through a green fantasy world in a video game and having to shoot an evil plant. Does improvement in these types of activities develop automatically or is there some external force that aids our improvement?
Read on »
Posted by Aaron Couch at 9:53 AM • Comments (10)
February 15, 2007
Category: Development / Aging • Learning and testing • Research • Social
The setting was an integrated suburban middle school: nearly evenly divided between black and white students. As is the case in many schools, white students outperformed black students both in grades and test scores. But how much of this difference is attributable to real differences in ability? After all, black kids grow up "knowing" that white kids do better in school. Perhaps this was just an example of kids living down to expectations.
A simple experiment would help find out. A team led by Geoffrey Cohen found a group teachers who taught the same 7th-grade course and were willing to participate in a very brief intervention. In each class, half the students would participate in an exercise designed to affirm their own abilities, while the other half completed a similar exercise that asked them to instead consider the abilities of others.
The self-affirming group of students (evenly divided between African Americans and European Americans) was asked to select from a list of 12 "values," such as having good friends or being good at art, the value that was most important to them personally. They then wrote a paragraph about why the value was important to them.
The other group selected the least important value and explained why it might be important to someone else. Teachers were unaware of which students were in which group. The researchers then tracked the students' performance for the remainder of the school year. Here are the results:
Read on »
Posted by Dave Munger at 3:09 PM • Comments (5)
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