1) Chapter 3 was all about attention and consciousness. Attention being all about our mental activity and how it allows us to take in a limited amount of the constant amount of information being thrown our way. Consciousness, simply stated, means the awareness one has of their outside world and their perceptions. Even though these two are closely related, they are not identical.
2) The material in chapter three reinforces what we have already learned in previous chapters. The brain is a magnificent machine and attention processes are related to how our abilities to take in and process visual and auditory information. I found myself reflecting on the Gestalt psychology that we read about in chapter 1. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
3) I enjoyed reading the information in this chapter. I did not find the material to be hard to understand; primarily due to the fact that it was of high interest to me. I would like to further investigate the obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have self diagnosed a family member with this and would be interested in learning more about it.
4) This information can and should be easily applied to the field of teaching. I found myself thinking of individuals in my classroom when reading about the divided and selective attention and dichotic listening. I know how hard it is for me to stay focused on just one thing at a time yet I expect my eight year old students to do this. I find it hard to concentrate when there are distracters present and yet I ask my students to do this everyday. I hope to keep this information in mind when dealing with my students. While I might not be able fix their attention problems, I can now understand them a little better.
5) The author presents many different studies and demonstrations to give the reader proof of what they are learning. I was amazed at the demonstration for the Stroop Effect. The studies that were discussed helped me to better understand the material.
6) The information in this chapter is extremely helpful in understanding attention and consciousness. These are two areas that teachers must be aware of to truly be understanding of their students and what they expect of them. The material presented about the three kinds of attention processes helps me to understand why it is so difficult for some of my students to stay on task.
7) I am drawn to the information about saccadic eye movement when thinking about what I could take back to the classroom and use. The book does a great job of explaining how this affects readers. I am trying to think of some strategies that could help my poor readers who might be struggling because of their saccadic movements. I am thinking of trying a blank index cards for the students to use as a guide to follow the text. I am wondering if this would help the eye movement.
8) I am not sure if there is a faster, cheaper, or better way of understanding the brain. It is too beneficial to not continue to research and discover more about our brain and how it functions.
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Thanks Karen. For #8, you might think more narrowly. For example, which one of the selective attention types would be most useful to you if you could implement only one and had to choose the fastest, cheapest, easiest, and most effective? What trade offs would you have to make? That is what I was trying to get at.
ReplyDeleteRegarding saccadic eye movements, I don't know the answer for sure, but I will tell you I also thought of the index card idea when I read this section...and I have not seen that before as a solution. Most of the solutions are a combination of technology and therapy that are somewhat expensive. Might be worth some more research on your part if you are really interested. You could maybe invent a new cost-effective intervention (kind of like what I mentioned also in #8)!