Attention, Emotions and Memory

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Ph.D.

Harvard University, Psych 1609

Week 11, November 2014

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Today’s focus

¤  “Some Big Ideas”

¤  Attention systems

¤  Emotion and learning

¤  Memory systems

¤  Unified model

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¤  “Designing educational experiences without an understanding of the brain is like designing a glove without an understanding of the human hand.”

-Leslie Hart (1983)

¤  Important, however, what is we consider some of the “bigger ideas” beyond just the physiology of learning and performance?

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Some Big Ideas of Psych 1609

1.  Celebrate complexity •  There are often no easy answers when considering human

behavior.

•  “X” is not usually the sole cause

•  The individual nature of learning and performance

2.  Integration of areas of study versus silos •  Thinking like a psychologist versus a teacher versus a

neurologist….or a holistic approach?

3.  “Roadblocks and threats” versus “Roadblocks as opportunities”

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Some Big Ideas of Psych 1609

4.  The exceptions often tell us more than the rules.

5.  Prescriptions are often more dangerous than observations.

6.  Content versus Skills instruction: Thinking processes—how to approach problems—versus memorized answers.

7.  Learning in enhanced by Depth versus Breadth (sometimes less is more).

8.  Learning and performance change over the lifespan.

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One-minute paper

1.  Celebrate complexity

•  There are often no easy answers when considering human behavior.

•  “X” is not usually the sole cause

•  The individual nature of learning

2.  Integration of areas of study versus silos

•  Thinking like a psychologist versus a teacher versus a neurologist….or a holistic approach?

3.  “Roadblocks and threats” versus “Roadblocks as opportunities”

4.  The exceptions often tell us more than the rules.

5.  Prescriptions are often more dangerous than observations.

6.  Content versus Skills: Thinking processes—how to approach problems—versus memorized answers.

7.  Learning in enhanced by Depth versus Breadth

8.  Learning and performance change over the lifespan

INSTRUCTIONS:

¤  Choose one of the eight big idea.

¤  Think about today’s topic of “Attention, Emotion and Memory”

¤  Where do you think we’re going with this class today?

¤  (List the number of the big idea and write in your thoughts in the chat area or share your ideas out loud)

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Author’s Presumptions

¤  We could spend semesters or years (or lifetimes) going into the many facets of Attention, Emotions and/or Memory. (Justice won’t be done to any of these themes today.)

¤  The “bigger” idea is to contemplate overlap areas and similarities: ¤  Historical review: What do we know to date?

¤  Neurons to Neighborhoods:

¤  Neural circuits and networks

¤  (Chemistry and neurotransmitters)

¤  Lifespan changes

¤  What can we do to enhance our performance related to each?

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True or false?

¤  “Attention + Memory = Learning?”

¤  Are emotions vital to decision-making?

¤  Is decision-making related to learning?

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(Oversimplified, but…) TRUE! Without Attention and Memory there is no Learning and Emotions influence the potential to learn.

¤  To learn something new means you have to pay attention to it as well as remember it.

¤  Decision-making (giving priority to something) is vital learning.

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Attention

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Attention and the Brain

Big ideas:

¤  What kinds of attention systems are there?

¤  Where is attention in the brain?

¤  (Roadblocks): ¤  What are the benefits of down-time/sleep for attention?

¤  What is the relation between age and attention spans?

¤  How does stress influence attention?

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Patterns versus Novelty

¤ Human brains seek and often quickly detect novelty, (which is individually defined).

¤ We are quick to notice things that are out of place or different, and we actually unconsciously look for things that don’t belong.

(e.g., “2+3=5” and “5-3=2”)

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Patterns versus Novelty

¤  Human brains seek patterns upon which they predict outcomes, and neural systems form responses to repeated patterns of activation (patterns being individually defined).

¤  We categorize our world in ways that help us understand information. Part of how we do this relates to designing patterns for the things we find. These patterns are like a road map that tells us where to go next. This road map is the neural system for that group of like experiences.

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Attention systems

¤  Your brain pays attention to different things at different times for different reasons. Your brain is drawn to elements that help sustain your focus. When the situation is not engaging, sustained focus is dropped.

¤  The difference between what’s happening in class with what’s important in real life is sometimes a formula for “boredom.”

¤  Authentic learning is connected to engagement.

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Attention systems (Petersen & Posner, 2012)

Petersen and Posner (2012). Their original work identified three networks including the:

¤  “alerting network, which focused on brain stem arousal systems along with right hemisphere systems related to sustained vigilance; an orienting network focused on, among other regions, parietal cortex; and an executive network, which included midline frontal/anterior cingulate cortex” (p.73).

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True  or  false?  

“Students can pay attention for a full class period (40-120 minutes).”

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FALSE! The human attention span is limited

Attention spans

¤  Attention spans are usually measure in relative terms (“compared with one’s peers”)

¤  Recognize that humans have an average 10-20 minute* maximum attention span.

Oversimplified as shown in Binder, C., Haughton, E., & Van Eyk, D. (1990). Precision teaching attention span. Teaching Exceptional Children, 22(3), 24-27. Attention spans depend on the method used in class, student interest, age of the individual and more. What is certain is that the average class length is beyond the average attention span.

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In practice:

¤ This means that teachers need to change the person, place or activity every 10-20 minutes to maintain a high level of attention.

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“Primacy-Recency”

The Primacy-Recency Effect

¤ People remember best what happens first, second best what happens last, and least what happens in the middle.

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In practice:

¤ This means that moments in the “middle” should be dedicated to learner-centered practice.

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In practice:

¤ The last part of the learning moment should be dedicated to summarizing important concepts and bridging to the next encounter.

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Emotions

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Does how we feel influence how we learn?

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Emotions and the Brain

Big ideas:

¤  What kinds of emotions are there?

¤  Where are emotions in the brain?

¤  What is the difference between emotion and feeling? ¤  How does the physiology of emotion influence the

psychological interpretation of feeling?

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True  or  false?  

“Making decisions with ‘a cool head’ and without emotions helps you think better.”

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FALSE!  It  is  impossible  to  separate  emo8ons  and  reasoning  in  the  brain  

¤  Emotions are critical in decision-making.

¤  Even though emotions and reasoning seem like opposites, they are actually complimentary processes.

¤  There are no decisions without emotions.

Tenet: True for all but with significant individual variances

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Improve Student Self-Efficacy

¤  According to Hattie’s research (2009), a student’s self-reported grades are the greatest indicator of improved learning. In many ways, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: “If I think I can learn, I will; if I believe I am incapable of learning, I will fail.”

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Improve Student Self-Efficacy

¤  As Hattie points out, a child’s willingness to invest in learning, openness to experiences, and the general reputation she can build as a ‘learner’ are key s to success (2009), and this self-efficacy is prejudiced by the way the teacher makes the child feel.  

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Maintain High Expectations

¤  Learners respond to expectations. When teachers and parents let kids know they expect a lot from them, the kids react positively.

¤  Examples: Proctor (1984); Rosenthal and Jacobson in 1968, the “Pygmalion effect” the students performed to the level of their teacher’s expectations, high or low (Good, 1987; Good & Brophy, 1997; Rubie-Davies, 2010).

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Communicating expectations

¤  Many teachers don’t even realize how they are communicating low expectations to their students.

¤  For instance, a noteworthy finding of Hattie’s work is that failing a grade is a strong indicator for future failure, primarily because the student loses faith in her own ability to learn because her teachers—those “in the know”—have deemed her unable to learn.

¤  On the other hand, the joy of learning is a great motivator, and people who love learning have often had at least one teacher in their lives who has given them confidence in their ability to learn and pushed them to achieve more than they believed they were capable of

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Unconscious expectations

¤  Teachers often unconsciously have different expectations for different students (related to race, gender, socio-economic status and even physical attractiveness [see Clifford & Walster, 1973]), contributing to the self-fulfilling prophecy of failure for many (Graham, 1991), or unintentional raising of IQs with “exceptional ability” (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968).

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Appreciate the Role of Affect in Learning

¤  There is no decision without emotion, and there is no learning without decision-making; therefore, there is no learning without emotion.

¤  According to the editors of The Nature of Learning, “emotions are the primary gatekeepers to learning” (Dumont, Istance, & Benavides, 2010, p.4),

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Emotional Intelligence

¤  How well do we recognize our own emotions and those of others? How well to we manage the emotional states of others and ourselves?

¤  Emotional abilities and social functioning are closely related (Brackett, Rivers, Shiffman, Lerner, & Salovey, 2006).

¤  Being able to manage one’s own feelings and clearly understand their origins is important in decision-making, which is a decision in and of itself.

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Managing the social and emotional environment

¤  Establishment of relevant emotional connections to what is being learned is key to remembering that information.

¤  Teachers should be more conscious of actively managing the social and emotional climate of the classroom

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Take the Lead in Social Contagion

¤  Teachers communicate to their students verbally and nonverbally, but they are often conscious only of the message sent and not the message received.

¤  The complex mirror neuron system in the brain appears to be triggered when the brain perceives, then acts on, an understanding of “the Other” (Pineda, 2008).

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Award Perseverance and Celebrate Error

¤  Challenge, ok, threat, no.

¤  “Every problem is an opportunity.”

¤  People who have a great degree of openness to experiences learn faster than those who don’t.

¤  “Dare to err”

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The Influence of Judgment and Fear on Learning

¤  Why does openness flourish in some settings and not in others? Because being open to new ideas requires a mind frame that takes fear out of the equation.

¤  Students who fear they will be ridiculed for their ideas will not speak.

¤  The concept of brain plasticity (MBE principles 3 and 6) tells us that the brain adapts to what it does most: If the brain is in contact primarily with tolerance of error and openness, it remains open. However, if it has been punished for being open—as in being told, “Don’t be ridiculous!” or “Why would you every think that?”—then it learns to retreat from such negative confrontation and learning is stunted.

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Motivate

¤  Dan Willingham, author of Why Don’t Students Like School? (2010), looks at student’s lack of motivation from a cognitive scientist’s angle and makes the case that the way school is structured, and the way teachers teach, is not compatible with how the brain wants to learn.

¤  The “Goldilocks's Rule”: No one likes to do things that are too easy or too hard; we seek learning experiences that are just slightly beyond our reach.

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The Individual Nature of Motivation

¤  Motivation is a tenet of MBE because it influences all learners, but no one in exactly the same way. People spend time and energy doing things they think are important.

¤  When students think something is worth learning, they invest time in the process, and the more time they spend, the more likely they are to actually learn the new competency.

Motivation

Time

Learning

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Passion and Motivation

¤  The passion with which a teacher approaches the profession is more important than all other factors combined; passionate people are the reason teaching works (Hattie, 2009).

¤  Without passion, there is no motivation, and without motivation (positive or negative, intrinsic or extrinsic), there is no learning.

¤  People who love what they are doing are contagious and inspirational.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

-William Bulter Yeates (1923)

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Memory

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Memory and the Brain

Big ideas:

¤  What kinds of memory are there?

¤  Where is memory in the brain?

¤  (Roadblocks): ¤  What are the benefits of down-time/sleep to allow for

memory consolidation?

¤  What is the relation between age and memory decline?

¤  How does stress influence memory?

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What kinds of memory are there?

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Long-term Memory Systems (Squire, 2004)

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Complexity of Memory ()

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Memory Systems (Tulving, 1985)

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Memory

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Interaction Between Memory Systems (Poldrack, Clark, Paré-Blagoev, Shohamy, Creso, Moyano, Myers and Gluck, 2001)

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The Seven Sins of Memory

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Seven sins of memory:

Three sins of omission, since the result is a failure to recall an idea, fact, or event. 1.  Transience 2.  Absent-mindedness 3.  Blocking Four sins of commission, meaning that there is a form of memory present, but it is not of the desired fidelity or the desired fact, event, or idea. 4.  Misattribution 5.  Suggestibility 6.  Bias 7.  Persistence

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Unified Model of Attention, Emotion and Memory (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014)

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Reflection on the “big ideas”:

1.  Celebrate complexity

•  There are often no easy answers when considering human behavior.

•  “X” is not usually the sole cause

•  The individual nature of learning

2.  Integration of areas of study versus silos

•  Thinking like a psychologist versus a teacher versus a neurologist….versus the holistic approach

3.  “Roadblocks and threats” versus “Roadblocks as opportunities”

4.  The exceptions often tell us more than the rules.

5.  Prescriptions are often more dangerous than observations.

6.  Content versus Skills: Thinking processes—how to approach problems—versus memorized answers.

7.  Learning in enhanced by Depth versus Breadth

8.  Learning and performance change over the lifespan

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3-2-1

1.  Three things you learned.

2.  Two things you will share.

3.  One thing you will change.

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Contact:

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Ph.D. Universidad de las Américas traceytokuhamaespinosa@gmail.com

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