The literature review has been revised

Additional articles have been added to the References post. The postings on perception, working memory, and semantic memory have been updated to further explain the results of the research articles presented in the list of References.

How does semantic memory influence perceptual processes?

After reviewing current research on semantic memory and perception, the interrelationship of these cognitive processes are evident. The Dewhurst and Robinson study showed that older children use their semantic memories to process words based on meaning, while young children tend to process words based on sound, as in rhyming. Numerous cognitive studies have shown that explicit recall and recognition of recently studied words, objects, or other materials is greatly affected by how those materials are initially encoded. The Wolfe, Butcher, Lee, and Hyle study on priming shows that explicit top down guidance is less effective than guidance provided by a picture of a stimulus (implicit priming).

Two main points can be gathered from the literature review on semantic memory and perception:

1) semantic memory influences the interpretation of new information, especially in older children, and
2) how well new information is encoded may be influenced by the way existing information was encoded (top down guidance versus implicit visual stimulus).

Therefore, visual and verbal guidance should be given to younger children as they develop their basic semantic memories. If this is followed, then older children will already have the information encoded from which to build subordinate knowledge. This will help to lay a more solid foundation for the formation of super-ordinate knowledge bases.

How does working memory influence perceptual processes?

It is generally thought that working memory peaks at young adulthood. However, a study by Vladimir Sloutsky and Anna Fisher counters this belief. The researchers counter that very young children tend to similarity-based induction when examining pictures, whereas adults use category-based induction (or top-down processing using feature comparison model, or prototype approach). When the adults used category information, they would filter out unrelated information and have more trouble recalling specifics. On the other hand, the children who used similarity-based induction encoded specific items about each picture that helped them remember it later. These findings tie back to the Wolfe, Butcher, Lee, and Hyle study on priming, which found that implicit priming targeted to young children is just as effective as top down guidance targeted to older children or adults.

The study by Tremblay, Parmentier, Geraud, Nicholls, & Jones tested whether the classical modality effect -- that is, the stronger recency effect for auditory items relative to visual items -- can be extended to the spatial domain. The results demonstrated a modality effect -- greater recency in the auditory than in the visual modality -- in the recall of verbal items but not of spatial items. The results also suggested that the recency effect is stronger in the auditory modality than in the visual modality.

The two main points I draw from the research on working memory and perception are as follows:

1) Children have a visual strength in their working memory; adults tend to filter out details.
2) People have better recall for recent auditory stimulus. The serial order of visual stimuli did not seem to matter as much.

How could these theories be used in the library media world?

There are many ways that the library media center aids students in their perceptual processes. These ways can range from quiet reading, to movies, to group research activities, to storytelling. I’d like to focus on storytelling and examine how these theories on could be used in my future career as a library media specialist to develop and promote storytelling in schools.

Storytelling can be used to exercise listening skills, to improve language skills (comprehension and vocabulary), to develop oral speaking skills, and to enhance problem-solving skills. The storyteller Mary Kinsella's web site has an exhausive list of reasons to include storytelling in schools. Many cognitive processes are utilized by the teller and the listener: perception, working memory, semantic memory, problem solving, creativity, schemas -- just to name a few. The most basic influences in the success of storytelling, however, are perception, working memory, and semantic memory. A child must be able to perceive the story, store the facts in working memory, and relate the story progress back to information already in semantic memory. Storytelling is much like reading, but there are more senses involved, especially the auditory sense. Facial expressions and gestures are used by storytellers, and occasionally props are used, bringing a visual aspect to the storytelling experience.

The National Council of Teachers of English has a position statement on storytelling. The council encourages teachers to tell stories and to teach students the art of storytelling.

Teachers who tell personal stories or go through the process of learning to tell folk or literary tales make the most credible models. Visiting storytellers or professional tellers on audiotapes or videotapes offer students a variety of styles. Often a community historian or folklorist has a repertoire of local tales. Older students both learn and teach when they take their tales to younger audiences or community agencies.

Today's school library media specialist works with both students and teachers to develop, promote, and implement a program that will help prepare students to be effective users of ideas and information. And storytelling is unsurpassed as a tool for learning about ourselves, about the ever-increasing information available to us, and about the thoughts and feelings of others.

The theories regarding perception, working memory, and semantic memory help to explain common storytelling styles. The theory that younger children tend to process words based on sounds helps to explain why storytelling to younger children is more successful when it includes rhymes, songs, and music. The studies of implicit priming help explain why storytellers tend to break the ice, or "prime," their audience by using some kind of visual stimulus. For example, if the Indian story of Ganesha, the elephant god, was being told, a stuffed elephant could be shown and discussed with the audience prior to the story. The strength of the recency effect in the auditory modality works well with traditional story stuctures that have some verse, song, or moral told at the end to leave an impression on the audience.

Research Project

Research Design

The purpose of this research project is to experiment with the storytelling format in order to discover which formats are most effective in terms of how well the story is received and understood. Story comprehension will be measured with a standard reading comprehension test. It may be possible to have the students complete a survey following the experiment in order to collect qualititive data regarding the effectiveness of their storytelling experiences. And if a survey is utilized, it may be more effective to use an oral survey versus a written survey for the younger student groups.

The first study will consist of two groups of students of the same grade, preferably a middle grade such as 4-6. One group will will come from a class that has been studying the setting for the story. For example, the story is an Indian folk tale, and the class has been studying the country of India. The second group will just have the story with no prior context provided in school. The purpose of this study is to examine recent semantic memory influences.

The second study will involve the same two groups, the the story will be unfamiliar to both groups. One group will be given a visual stimulus related to story then told the story. The second group will be told the story then shown a visual stimulus. The purpose of this study is to examine serial effects in working memory.

Research Expectations

It is expected that the student group studying the story setting in the classroom will have a better comprehension and application of the story. In the second study, better scores should be obtained from the group that was visually primed before the story.

Educational Implications

I think the information gathered will be useful in designing a storytelling program in an educational setting. The results will provide feedback on how to effectively weave a visual stimulus into the storytelling experience. The results may help emphasize the need to collaborate with teachers to choose stories that complement what the students are currently learning in class.

Limitations and Weaknesses

A story choice may or may not appeal to certain students, and this may influence the their attention and subsequent performance on a reading comprehension test. Also, it is difficult to factor out any prior knowledge of the story setting in the control group. For example, one child may happen to already know something about India. The study may have to be repeated several times in order to factor out these influences.

Future Research

In order to isolate variables that influence a student's perception of a story, this experimental design is very simple. However, there are countless ways to adapt storytelling to the audience and collect the results for analysis. Visual stimuli in the form of props such as picture books and puppets can be utilized. Auditory stimuli such as music, singing, and rhyming can also be incorporated. Digital storytelling via web sites, movies, and slide shows is gaining popularity in schools. And since many young adults are spending more library time in chat rooms, why not take storytelling to the chat rooms? An outside storyteller or the students themselves could tell stories interactively and virtually during the students' designated library time.

References

Cowan, Neil. (2001). The Magical Number 4 in Short-term Memory: A Reconsideration of Mental Storage Capacity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1).

Dewhurt, S.A. & Robinson, C.A. (2004). False Memories in Children: Evidence for a Shift From Phonological to Semantic Associations. Psychological Science, 15(11), 782-786.

El-Tigi, M.A. (1997). Perception of Elementary Students of Visuals on the Web. In VisionQuest: Journeys toward Visual Literacy. Selected Readings from the Annual Conference of the International Visual Literacy Association, October 1996 (9p). Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Gray, R. (Sun 3 April 2005) Verse Broadens the Mind, the Scientists Find. Scotsman.com News. Retrieved from http://news.scotsman.com/arts.cfm?id=352752005

Kahana, M., & Seculer, R. (2002) Recognizing spatial patterns: a noisy exemplar approach. Vision Research. 42, 2177-2192.

Matlin, M. (2005). Cognition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Ruthruff, R., Remington, R.W., & Johnston, J.C. (2001). Switching Between Simple Cognitive Tasks: The Interaction of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Factors. Retrieved 26 February 2007 , from http://www.unm.edu/~ruthruff/Ruthruff%20task%20switch%202001.pdf

Sarter, M., Givens, B., & Bruno, J.P. (2000). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Sustained Attention: Where Top-Down Meets Bottom-UP. Brain Research Reviews, 35, 146-160.

Schacter, D.L. & Buckner, R.L. (1998). Priming and the Brain. Neuron. 20(2), 185-195.

Swanson, L. (1999). What Develops in Working Memory? A Life Span Perspective. Developmental Psychology, 35(4), 986-1000.

Thorne, Glenda. What are some problems students have with memory? Retrieved February 24, 2007, from http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/memory_pt2.php

Tremblay, S., Parmentier, F., Geraud, K., Nicholls, A., & Jones, D. (2006). A spatial modality effect in serial memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32(5), 1206-1215.

Vroomen, J., & Gelder, B. (2000). Sound Enhances Visual Perception: Cross-Modal Effects of Auditory Organization on Visual. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 26(5), 1583-1590.

Watson, C.S., Kidd, G. R., Connell, P.J., Eddins, D.A., Gospel, M.D., Watson, B.U., Horner, D.H., Lowther, A., Rainey, B.B., & Kruger, G. (2003). Sensory, Cognitive, and Linguistic Factors in the Early Academic Performance of Elementary School Children: The Benton-IU Project. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 36(2), 165-197.

Wolfe, J. M., Butcher, S.J., Lee, C., & Hyle, M. (2003). Changing Your Mind: On the Contributions of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Guidance in Visual Search for Feature Singletons. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29(2), 483-502.

Semantic Memory

Semantic memory is our organized knowledge about the world. Categories and concepts are necessary components of semantic memory. We classify objects into categories and our mental representations of categories become concepts. For example, one category of furniture is the concept of a table. Semantic memory allows us to code objects into concepts, greatly reducing the amount of storage space, because we can store many objects with the same label. But how do we decide how to combine similar objects. There are four major approaches: the feature comparison model, the prototype approach, the exemplar approach, and network models.

Using the feature comparison model (E.E. Smith, 1995, as cited in Matlin, 2005), a decision process is followed to determine how to store concepts in memory.



Smith and his coauthors propose that features are either defining features necessary to the meaning of the item, or they are characteristic features that are merely descriptive but not essential. One major tool used to explore this model is the sentence verification technique, in which people see sentences and then consult their semantic knowledge in order to determine if the sentence is true or false. The typicality effect is a common finding that means people reach decisions faster when an item is a typical member of a category rather than an unusual member. For example, a carrot is typical vegetable, while rhubarb is not.

A recent study suggests that young children tend to process words based on sound while older children and adults process words based on meaning (Dewhurt & Robinson, 2004). The researchers studied the effects of memory illusions, or false recollections of words. The younger children’s word recollections were influenced more by rhyming, whereas the older children’s recollections were influenced more by semantic associations. Click here to read more.

Using the prototype approach, we decide whether an item belongs to a category by comparing that item with an idealized item that is most typical of the category. There are levels of categorization: super-ordinate, basic, and subordinate. Examples of these are: animal, dog, collie.

One characteristic of prototypes is that they are judged more quickly after priming. The priming effect means that people respond faster to an item if the item was preceded by a similar item. Research shows that priming facilitates the responses to protoypes (fruit – apple) more than it facilitates the responses to nonprototypes (fruit – giraffe). It is known from numerous cognitive studies that explicit recall and recognition of recently studied words, objects, or other materials is greatly affected by how those materials are initially encoded during the study phase of an experiment. In other words, priming is an implicit form of top-down guidance.

One study done on priming shows that explicit top down guidance is less effective than guidance provided by a picture of a stimulus (Wolfe, Butcher, Lee, & Hyle, 2003). They believe the added benefit is from the implicit priming produced by the visual stimulus. Click here to read this study. Another study looks at how priming remains intact with patients with amnesia, dementia, and focal cortical lesions (Schacter & Buckner, 1998). The researchers’ findings converge to suggest one neural correlate of priming: repeating items during performance of the same task, or even during performance of different tasks, can lead to decreases in the amount of activation present in specific brain areas.Read more by clicking here.

Using the exemplar approach, we learn some specific examples of a concept, then we classify each new stimulus by deciding how closely it resembles those specific examples. For example, we form an exemplar of a dog based on all the dogs we have ever seen. A recent study (Kahana, & Seculer, 2002) that introduced similarities among exemplars of two-dimensial visual patterns found that subject's tendencey to say "yes" to a lure decreased with increasing similarity among items being compared (represented by textures) to the exemplar pattern. This was a departure from the standard experimental framework that considered only the simlarities in the items compared to the exemplars.

In contrast to the above theories which emphasize categorization, network theories are more concerned about the interconnections among related items. One example of a network model is the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) Approach. This approach argues that cognitive processes can be represented by a model in which activation flows through networks that link together a large number of simple, neuron-like units. Here is an example of a PDP model for colors, textures, and patterns that are combined to form a design:




Theorists argue that the PDP approach works better for some kinds of cognitive tasks in which several processes typically operate at the same time such as categorization and memory search. This article concerned a Scottish study of how reading and listening to poetry affect leads to heightened brain responses. In other words, poetry seems to exercise our brains more so than general reading. Our brains have to work harder to find meaning in poetry.

Working Memory

Working memory is the brief, immediate memory for material that you are currently processing; a portion of working memory also coordinates your ongoing mental activities (Matlin, 2005, Ch. 4). One classic theory, the “Magical Number Seven," was developed by George Miller. Miller suggested that people can remember about seven items, give or take two. Miller used the term chunk to describe the basic unit in short-term memory. More recently, Nelson Cowan proposed that this number is actually closer to four. Click here to read more about Cowan’s theory.

Two sets of researchers, John Brown and Lloyd and Margaret Peterson, established that material held in memory for less than a minute is frequently forgotten. The Brown/Peterson & Peterson research technique involved quickly memorizing 3 letters, counting backgrounds, and then attempting to recall the letters. This early research underscored the fragile nature of memory stored for just a few seconds. The Brown/Peterson & Peterson technique inspired hudreds of studies on short-term memory and increased support for the cognitive approach (versus the behaviorist approach) (Matlin, 2005).

Another technique often used to examine short-term memory makes use of the serial position effect, which establishes that recall is better for items at the end of the list (recency effect) and at the beginning of the list (primacy effect). Therefore, the serial position of the stimuli plotted against probability of recall tends to form a U-shaped curve. However, a number of more recent studies that used visual–spatial stimuli (computer-constructed pattern of dots) have reported an absence of primacy effect and a limited recency effect (Broadbent & Broadbent, 1981; Frick, 1988; Hines, 1975; Phillips & Christie, 1977; Potter & Levy, 1969 referenced by Tremblay, Parmentier, Geraud, Nicholls, & Jones, 2006). To further test this observation, the Tremblay team tested whether the classical modality effect —- that is, the stronger recency effect for auditory items relative to visual items —- can be extended to the spatial domain. Computer simulations were done for visual-spatial (dot patterns), visual-verbal (letter patterns), and visual-auditory (letters spoken in a monotone male voice) tasls. The results demonstrated a modality effect —- greater recency in the auditory than in the visual modality -—in the recall of verbal items but not of spatial items. The results also suggested that the recency effect is stronger in the auditory modality than in the visual modality.

Working memory research led to the concept of proactive interference, which means that people have trouble learning new material because previously learned material keeps interfering with new learning. A recent study shows that older adults have the same mental acuity as younger people, but they have less room in working memory to handle additional information. Read the Developmental Psychology article by clicking here.

As researchers were contributing to the body of knowledge on working memory, there was still no comprehensive theory for this brief kind of memory – not until a cognitive psychologist, Alan Baddeley, developed his model of working memory.



Baddeley likened his model to a workbench where material is constantly being handled, combined, and transformed. The workbench holds both new material and old material that you have retrieved from storage, or long-term memory. A recent NASA study examines the “switch cost” in terms of time for the Central Executive to switch between cognitive tasks. Click here to read more.

Another study by Vladimir Sloutsky and Anna Fisher (Grabmeier, 2004) is interesting because the results run counter to the popular belief that people's working memory peak out at young adulthood. The researchers counter that very young children tend to similarity-based induction when examining pictures, whereas adults use category-based induction (or top-down processing using feature comparison model, or prototype approach). Click here to read more.

A healthy working memory is the ideal; however, for various reasons, many people have a deficit of working memory. Dr. Glenda Thorne discusses working memory deficits and how they can impact students. Students with working memory deficits may have problems following directions, solving math problems that have multiple steps. They may forget sentences they just read resulting in poor reading comprehension. Writing is arduous, as it involved the simultaneous retrieval of thoughts from long-term memory and organization of thoughts into grammatically correct sentences. Higher order thinking such as problem solving also suffers, since it involves holding components of the problem in mind while generating solutions. Click here to read the entire article.

Perception

When we perceive, we use our previous knowledge to gather and interpret stimuli registered by our senses. Typically, we gather stimuli by seeing (visual) or hearing (auditory). Visual object recognition allows us to identify a complex arrangement of sensory stimuli. Gestalt psychology is a historical approach to psychology. One main principle of Gestalt is that humans have the tendency to organize what they see into pattterns rather than random arrangements. Look at the picture below. What do you see?



You probably see a human face rather than simply an oval and two straight lines. This figure has Gestalt, or an overall quality that transcends the individual elements.

More modern theories of visual object recognition include template-matching theory, feature-analysis theory, and recognition-by-components theory.

With template-matching theory, you compare a stimulus with a set of templates, or patterns that you have stored in memory. An example is the variability of letter shapes. We can easily read the words below, even though they are in different fonts.



Feature-analysis theory proposes that a visual stimulus is composed of a small number of characteristics, each being a distinctive feature. For example, a table has four legs and a flat surface.



Recognition-by-components assumes that a given view of an object can be represented as an arrangement of simple 3-D shapes called geons. For example, a mug consists of a straight upright cylinder and another curved cylinder for a handle.



The above types of visual object recognition are all examples of bottom-up processing, where the physical stimuli from the environment are registered on the sensory receptors. Another type of processing is top-down processing, which emphasizes how a person’s concepts and higher-level mental processes help in identifying objects. Top-down processing particularly influences the ability to recognize words during reading. See how easy it is to read the paragraph below, even though only the first and last characters of each word are positioned correctly.

Aoccdrnig to rseearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt thing is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. This is bcuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

We use context and previous knowledge to make meaning of these strings of characters in between. So you see, both bottom-up and top-down processes must work together to allow us to recognize objects such as words in print.

Recent research has begun to pinpoint the areas of the brain associated with bottom-up and top-down processing. One such study done at Ohio State University (Sarter, Givens, & Bruno, 2000) measured the brain’s activation during sustained attention (top-down), or a person’s ability to detect rarely and unpredictably occurring signals occurring over a period of time, versus arousal attention (bottom-up). This article combines research from both animal and human studies in cognitive neuroscience into a complete and exact description of the neuronal networks ascribed to sustained attention (essential for successful academic performance). The researchers found evidence to conclude that sustained attention is ascribed to the right fronto-parietal-thalamic network, while arousal is controlled by the thalamic, midbrain, and reticular networks. By pinpointing these regions of the brain, more effective treatment for attentional disorders can be provided. While the article is very scientific, the researchers’ emphasis on studying each sub-process of attention and how they interact helps us to understand and appreciate individual learners.

Speech perception is the complement to visual perception. During speech perception, our auditory system translates sound vibrations into a sequence of sounds that we perceive to be speech. Visual cues contribute to speech perception. The researchers McGurk and McDonald showed participants a video of a person producing simple sounds, such as “gaga”. However, the researchers present different audio information along with the video, such as “baba”. The observer’s responses usually reflected a compromise between these two discrepant sources of information: “dada”. Here is a video clip that illustrates the McGurk effect. Turn up the volume and watch the video. What do you hear? Now, play it again and shut your eyes, what do you hear? You can even open and close your eyes while watching the video, the effect is still the same.

Recent research (Vroomen & Gelder, 2000) underscores the direct correlation between auditory and visual perception. The researchers concluded that it is eaiser to detect a visual stimulus when it is accompanied by an abrupt tone. This so-called "freezing" phenomenon in the visual modality was closely related to the organization of the sound in the auditory modality. This begs the question, can we utilize information from one sensory modality to organize our perceptions in the other modality? Read more about the study by clicking here.

With the “no child left behind” policy, test scores are foremost in educator’s minds. One study at Indiana University looked at the impact of visual and auditory cognition, measured through standard clinical tests, on predicting test scores (Watson, Kidd, Connell, Eddins, Gospel, Watson, Horner, Lowther, Rainey, & Kruger, 2003). The researchers found that the reading-related skills factor was the strongest predictor of reading performance and other areas of academic achievement. The second strongest predictor of reading and math achievement was the visual cognition factor followed by the verbal cognition factor. The weakest predictor of academic achievement was the speech processing factor.

By directing lessons to different learning modalities, teachers can utilize the codependency between visual and auditory perception. The use of the Internet as a teaching tool, however, raises another question: how can visual/verbal information presented via the WWW increase or restrict understanding? The Department of Education did a study in 1996 when the WWW was first gaining inroads into the classroom (El-Tigi, 1997). The purpose of the study was to examine student’s perceptions of the effectiveness of visuals in conveying the instructional message. The conclusion was that an educational web site's visual design greatly affects how people understand and use the information. Therefore, the web site should be designed using a learner-centered approach which takes into account the audience's age, learning preferences, and culture, among other factors. Click here to read more about the DOE study.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog I created for my Advanced Educational Psychology class! Here I will ponder selected theories of cognitive psychology, review the current scientific literature, and see how the information applies to my chosen career path as a school library media specialist. First, I believe, some definitions are in order.

From Margaret Maitlin’s, book Cognition:

Cognition is the acquisition, storage, transformation, and use of knowledge. Cognitive psychology can be considered a synonym for this mental activity, or it can refer to a particular theoretical approach to psychology, the cognitive approach. This approach emphasizes people’s knowledge and their mental processes. The cognitive approach is often contrasted with the behaviorist approach, which emphasizes observable behaviors, or the psychodynamic approach, which focuses on unconscious emotions.

From the American Library Association (ALA) web site:

Today's school library media specialist works with both students and teachers to facilitate access to information in a wide variety of formats, instruct students and teachers how to acquire, evaluate and use information and the technology needed in this process, and introduces children and young adults to literature and other resources to broaden their horizons. As a collaborator, change agent, and leader, the school library media specialist develops, promotes and implements a program that will help prepare students to be effective users of ideas and information, a lifelong skill.

Notice the similarity in the definitions for cognition and school library media specialist. Acquire and use information…transformation and change agent… If a library media specialist is to instruct students and teachers how to acquire and use information and serve as a change agent, then she should understand the mental activities surrounding the acquisition, transformation, and use of knowledge, don’t you agree?

The area of cognitive psychology is as broad as it is deep, so I can only begin to cover a subset of topics in the time and resources I have available. In order to narrow my focus, I chose the following set of questions to discuss on this blog.

Present, evaluate, and show the relation between the theory of semantic memory and working memory with perceptual processes: visual and auditory recognition. Show how the semantic memory could influence perceptual processes. What is the influence of working memory in perceptual processes? Show how the theories could be used in your future career. Evaluate how your knowledge about these theories influences the way you would explain different situations in your career.

I feel these theories are key to my purpose as a library media specialist, which is to provide many means by which students can learn about a subject. When a person takes in information, it is stored in semantic memory. How well this is retained in semantic memory can be influenced by how the information was presented (perception). And vice versa, what is already in semantic memory could influence how students they perceive additional information. Working memory grows during the elementary school years, so the stage of the student’s memory development needs to be considered when planning learning projects.

My next few posts will discuss the theory behind perception, working memory, and semantic memory. The posts will also review current literature on these topics from the perspective of how these cognitive processes influence student education and teaching methods.