Activity 6.3

In this chapter, James opens up and admits, “the free-willists believe the appearance to be a reality [and] I myself hold with the free-willists.” (p. 93) This is perhaps, his most candid statement about the subject, as James often dances around “hot topics”, leaving the reader to wonder about his views. Another great remark that James makes, “to think, in short, is the secret of the will, just as it is the secret of memory.” (p. 91) I enjoy this statement because it demonstrates that although we have inhibitions we can and should think before we act upon them. Similarly, Robert Richardson summarizes James views by explaining that to will is to believe, and belief and action are the same. Our actions demonstrate our will, which in turn resemble what we believe. This sheds light on James’s opinion about the will; that it’s an observable behavior, which reveals the inward man.  

James continues in his talk by going into detail about the will or voluntarily action. In fact, he claims that there are two types of will, which include impulsions and inhibitions. The impulsive will is when inhibitions have no time to arrive, ideas discharge into action rapidly. The inhibition will is broken into two types. Inhibition by repression, in which the “inhibited idea and the inhibiting idea the impulsive idea and that negates it, remain along with each other in consciousness, producing a certain inward train or tension there.” (p. 93-94) Next is inhibition by substitution, “the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea for which it inhibits, and the latter quickly vanishes from the field.” (p. 94) This was rather vague, until James explained that the teacher’s response to the students’ diverted attention by redirection would substitute for the distraction. I’ve experienced students’ attention being diverted and attempted to repress and substitute their attention. I have found that some students respond to repressed inhibition but the majority of students were still distracted. Whereas, substituting students’ attention seems to pull in the majority of the students and they forgot about the distraction.

Activity 6.2

I can connect to the Math Needs a Makeover discussion because I’ve worked with students that have a lack of initiative and an aversion to word problems. I agree with Dan Meyer, that the curriculum being taught doesn’t teach students how to problem solve but rather creates impatience with resolution.  Many of my past students simply wanted a math formula and were reluctant to converse about math problems or attempt to think or even solve the problem.  This also makes me think about the information processing perspective that problem solving is analogous to learning. Therefore, when students aren’t able to problem solve or refuse to, they stop the process of accommodation and learning doesn’t take place. 

I found Tom Wujec’s results in the Marshmallow Challenge, interesting and relatable. The kindergarteners performed very well on the challenge because their approach was better than the businessmen. Also, according to the cognitive constructivist perspective, students are active learners that construct knowledge based upon past experiences.  The kindergarteners most likely had prior experience building and used those skills during the challenge.  In addition, the social constructivist believe that social interaction is important in the process of learning and development.  In this activity, the children were able to use prior knowledge and discuss their ideas with one another. First, I was surprised that the children out preformed the business men, but similar to my own experience as a teacher, students often have hidden skills and or experiences outside of the classroom, which the teacher knows nothing about.  

Activity 6.1

According to the information processing approach, problem solving is a key component to learning. The readings explain that learning is a process of assimilation and accommodation. When assimilating, a person experiences the familiar and incorporates new information easily. However, when learning the unfamiliar a person experiences a problem and must accommodation. According to the article, Recognizing, Defining, and Representing Problems, “when faced with any type of problem, an individual brings to the task his or her experience with similar problems, such as the knowledge about the domain and the individual’s expectations or intuitions about how to approach the problem.” (p. 19) However, approaching unfamiliar content using prior experience and intuition, won’t solve the problem, instead a person must think non-routinely. Therefore, all of learning is a process of assimilating and accommodating, experiencing the familiar and unfamiliar and solving problem after problem.

Activity 5.4

In the book, The Shallows, Carr describes the struggles that he and many friends experience when reading and focusing on a book. He attributes these struggles to the technology overload, which has changed the way that humans attend, receive information and stores memories. Carr explains, “the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” (p. 6) As a result, people aren’t able to “process” information the way they did prior to the influx of technology, and this has negatively impacted learning.

In addition, learning, storing and retrieving information has gone from focused and linear to disjointed and overlapping, changing the make-up of our brains. In fact, Carr explains, “the influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on anyone thing. The process of memory consolidation can't even get started. And, thanks once again to the plasticity of our neuronal pathways, the more we use the Web, the more we train our brain to be distracted-to process information very quickly and very efficiently but without sustained attention. (p. 194) Similarly James describes, “the total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties.” (p. 57) Therefore, if one part of our “faculties” isn’t working, such as our ability to mentally attend, receive or retrieve information, then the man isn’t mentally efficient.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Activity 5.3a

The video, Your Brain is You: Learning and Memory, discusses how the memory is used in the learning process.  Dr. Eagleman explains that when something is learned it causes a change in the brain. The brain works as a system of networks that functions by making associations.  Dr. Eagleman stresses the importance of connecting instruction to prior knowledge so that student can learn and maintain the information on top of their preexisting experiences. He also mentions that humans use the senses to perceive information and to make connections. For example, if we smell coffee we immediately connect that smell to what we already know about coffee and this help us to expect that someone is drinking coffee.

Dr. Eagleman’s explanation of making associations is connected to James statement, “We always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know.” (p. 78) Another connection to Dr. Eagleman’s discussion about coffee is how in information processing the brain receives an input and pushes that to the sensory registers. Humans use their senses and to retrieve prior knowledge from the long term memory and explain that they are smelling the coffee.   

Activity 5.2

During this week’s readings about memory, I was able to make connections from James perspective to the constructivist information processing perspective and to the article, The Critical Role of the Retrieval Process in Long Term Retention. James and the constructivist’s information processing perspective both support the idea that the mind needs a “cue” to retrieve information. Specifically, James states, “the cue determines its vast set of potentialities toward a particular point. And if you now look to see how this happens you immediately perceive that the cue is something contiguously associated with the thing recalled.” (p. 59)

I really enjoyed James description of the brain, “each of the associates is a hood to which it hangs, a means to fish it up when sunk below the surface. Together they form a network of attachments by which it is woven into the entire tissue of our thought.” (p. 61) James’s last statement is aligned with the constructivist’s information processing point of view, which also identifies memory as a network which makes associations with information.

Finally, I noticed a connection between James and the article, The Critical Role of the Retrieval Process in Long Term Retention. James describes the retrieval process and associations, “but if we remember because of our associations, and if these are due to our organized brain paths, we easily see how the law of recency and repetition should prevail. Paths frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open, those which may be expected most easily to lead to results.” (p. 59) Similarly, the article describes the retrieval process, “the idea is that retrieval of information from memory leads to elaboration of the memory trace and/or the creation of additional retrieval routes, which makes it most likely that the information will be successfully retrieved again in the future.” (p. 24) These statements both explain that as information is constantly retrieved the paths become “plowed” and memory retrieval becomes smoother.

As a student, I can personally relate to making associations and retrieving information in order to understand the content that I’m currently studying. For example, I’m currently taking a sociolinguistics course and I’m required to retrieve the morphology, syntax, semantic and phonetic content that I learned in linguistics. In addition, I’m required to make new associations to sociology and connect ideas with my prior knowledge about society and language. The more I learn and retrieve my prior experiences, the more the paths are “plowed” and information becomes readily available. Given the right “cues”, I make connections, associations, retrieve and build deeper networks of memory.

Activity 5.1

I believe that learning does depend on memory. If we haven’t memorized the activity, information, process or experience then we haven’t really learned. I think that we if “know” something and do not act upon it then we haven’t really learned it. A concrete example is when children are taught the color blue. The child might be able to point to the circle and say blue after you’ve shown them.  But the next day, when you ask the child to find a blue object and they cannot, it’s because they haven’t really learned the color.

Sometimes people need to be reminded of things, and although he or she has “misplaced” that knowledge, the information is stored in their memory and he or she still understands the concepts. Again, I’ll use the example with the color blue. If the child can’t show you a blue object but you remind them that they see something blue every day. The child might remember that the sky is blue. Then, the child can connect their understanding of the color blue to locate a blue object.  

I think we remember things that we wish to forget because these things are seared into our minds and connected to bad experiences or deep feelings. Since feelings are senses it’s easy to recall the bad memories every time we are reminded by a song, a scent or a picture.