L&B Blog – Page 56 – Education & Teacher Conferences

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Andrew Watson

December-15-2017

Diagnosing ADHD with MRI

How do we know if a student has ADHD?

Typically, we observe behavior.

To what degree is the student inattentive? (That’s one kind of ADHD.) To what degree is s/he hyperactive? (That’s another type.) Perhaps the student demonstrates both kinds of behavior.

If these behaviors last long enough, and cause enough distress to be “clinically significant,” we can then make a diagnosis.

What would happen, however, if instead of looking at behavior, we could look at the student’s brain? Could a brain scan ever replace a behavioral study to make a diagnosis?

The Future Might Be Now

A just-published study starts us down this road.

By scanning the brains of 33 just-diagnosed/never treated students, and comparing them to the brains of 87 control subjects, researchers identified three brain areas substantially correlated with two subtypes of ADHD: inattentive, and combined inattentive/hyperactive.

(For the neurally curious, those three areas are the left temporal lobe, the bilateral cuneus, and regions around the left central sulcus.)

If the future is now, we might conclude that we can use MRI imaging to diagnose students, without having to observe their behavior.

The Future Might Be a Long Way Off

Despite all this exciting news, we have many reasons not to rush toward neuro-diagnosis of ADHD just yet.

First: the scans correctly distinguished between those who DO and those who DON’T have ADHD 75% of the time. That might sound impressive…unless you’re one of the 25% of cases where they got it wrong.

Second: the scans distinguished between Inattentive-type ADHD and Inattentive/Hyperactive-type ADHD 80% of the time. So, again, 1 in 5 of the participants would have been mis-diagnosed.

Third: the study didn’t include any students with purely Hyperactive-type ADHD. That’s a big gap in the diagnostic ability of MRI. (The authors explain that there is a low prevalence of this subtype in their research pool.)

Fourth: in a switch to cross-cultural perspectives, we must notice that different countries and cultures define “appropriate behavior” differently. Behavior that seems “clinically significantly” hyperactive or inattentive in one culture might be entirely appropriate in another. For this reason, the fact that this research was done in China means we must be very thoughtful about applying its conclusions to students from a non-Chinese cultural context.

(To be very clear on this point: I’m NOT saying that Chinese researchers can’t produce meaningful findings, or that ADHD doesn’t matter in China, or anything like that. I AM saying that cultures define “appropriate behaviors” differently, and so when behavior becomes diagnosable, we must be careful about cross-cultural applications. And we must be especially careful when looking for differences in neural structures that underlie those behaviors.)

Fifth: Chinese psychologists use a somewhat different set of terms in describing ADHD than do American psychologists. They are, quite possibly, looking for neural correlates of meaningfully different behavior than we would for a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual diagnosis of ADHD.

Sixth: changing perspectives once again, we should note that MRI scans are crashingly expensive. If we’re going to start diagnosing students this way, we need to have thoughtful discussions about the services we’ll stop providing in order to make these funds available.

A Balanced Perspective

With this daunting list of reasons to pause, I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of this research.

Instead, I want to be sure that we look at in with an appropriate balance of enthusiasm and caution.

Enthusiastically, I can say that the future possibility of MRI diagnoses of ADHD could be very helpful.

For one thing, when people recognize that there are consistent and meaningful differences in neural structures, they might be less likely to say “Well, the kid just needs to try harder to pay attention.”

Cautiously, I can say that these helpful possibilities are a long way in the future, and we should not let our enthusiasm prompt us to embrace them before they’re ready for effective, culturally appropriate, and affordable use.

Andrew Watson

December-13-2017

Highlighting Retrieval Practice

The Effortful Educator describes his fun system for using highlighters during retrieval practice. He teaches AP Psychology in high school, but I suspect this system could be easily used with younger students as well.

EE’s lesson plan stands out for two reasons.

First: it’s a great example of retrieval practice — asking students to pull information out of their brains rather than trying to put more information in.

Second: it’s a great example of translation. EE knows the research about retrieval practice–he’s a psychology teacher after all. In this case, he’s gone well beyond simply replicating methods used by psychology teachers. Instead, he’s thought carefully about the uses of that idea in his particular context, and he’s translated the research to make it work for his students.

In other words: you might emulate the Effortful Educator’s specific strategy of using different colored highlighters. You should emulate his general strategy of adapting psychology to your classroom, your students, and your own approaches to teaching.

Andrew Watson

December-11-2017

God on the Brain

What’s happening in your brain when you contemplate religious experience?

Over at Brainblogger, Viatcheslav Wlassoff contemplates the tricky subject of neurotheology.

Andrew Watson

December-09-2017

Advice for College Students

This brief (and admirably clear) article offers guidance to college students on the study strategies that have research support — and, helpfully, those that don’t.

The authors offer a few sources to verify their claims, explain why some counter-intuitive strategies work better that more traditional ones, and even toss in a few un-researched but entirely plausible suggestions.

(One minor disagreement: the authors cite the Mueller & Oppenheimer study to discourage laptop note-taking. Regular readers of the blog know I think that study doesn’t support its own conclusions.)

Andrew Watson

December-07-2017

Bilingual Preschoolers and Self-Control

If you can speak two or more languages, you’re likely to have some real advantages in life. For starters, you can talk easily with lots more people, and turn off the subtitles on more movies.

Are there cognitive benefits to bilingualism? That is, does being bilingual help you think better?

(more…)

Andrew Watson

December-05-2017

Beyond Mere “Memory”

Newcomers to the field of psychology and neuroscience often want to learn as much as they can about a student’s memory system.

After all: when students learn something new, that means their memory has changed. So, if we know how memory works, then we’ll know how learning happens.

Alas, it’s not that simple.

It turns out that we have many different memory systems. We can’t simply learn how one of them works; we have to understand them all.

Key Distinctions

In the first place, we need to distinguish between long-term memory, and other short-term memory systems.

For example: if I ask you for your business phone number, you pull that number out of your long-term memory. After all, you know it quite well.

As I then walk across the room to write that number down, I hold that number in my short-term memory. (Probably I’m rehearsing it in my head, or even saying the numbers quietly.)

If, however, I decide to engage in some quick mental exercise, I might try to add together all the digits in your phone number. In that case, I’m not only holding those numbers in short-term memory, I’m also combining them in working memory.

I haven’t even written your number down yet, and already we’ve got three at least different memory systems at play.

Subtler Still

Of course, we can subdivide each of these categories in many different ways.

Long-term memory, for instance, includes at least two sub-categories.

Explicit memory records facts and events. I know that the Ideal Gas Law states that PV=nRT (fact). I know that yesterday was my mother’s wedding anniversary (event).

Implicit memory, by contrast, records processes: how to do things. Muscle memory is implicit. So is your knowledge of your native language’s grammar. You know how to juggle, and how to conjugate the auxillary verb “should”–even though you probably can’t say exactly how you’re doing those things.

In schools, we seem to focus a great deal on explicit memory: we want our students to know all sorts of facts.

However, we also want them to learn procedures: how to integrate a quotation into a subordinate clause, or how to solve for three variables with three equations.

Initially, our students learn these skills explicitly, but with enough practice they can do them without having to think about it. At that magic moment, their explicit memory has become implicit.

Brain Structures and Memory

We’ve known for a long time that explicit and implicit memory formation takes place in different parts of the brain.

Those of you who know the story of Henry Molaisson know that surgeons removed his hippocampi to relieve his debilitating epilepsy. The operation (mostly) cured this medical problem, but created a profound cognitive problem: he could no longer form new explicit memories.

That is: if he practiced drawing a complex figure every day, he didn’t remember from one day to the next that he had practiced doing so the day before; he couldn’t remember the event.

However–and here’s the key point–HE GOT BETTER AT DRAWING THE FIGURE. That is, he didn’t form explicit memories of practicing, but he did form implicit memories of the new skill. He knew how to do it.

Clearly, the hippocampi are essential for explicit memory formation, but not for implicit memory formation.

Larry Squire’s article Memory systems of the brain: A brief history and current perspective provides a helpful overview of different memory systems, and the places in the brain that house them.

(The Henry Molaisson story is often told. Although controversial, Suzanne Corkin’s book Permanent Present Tense is probably the best place for an extended exploration of HM’s life, and the scientific information learned from it.)

Today’s News

A recent article in the journal Neuron argues that explicit and implicit memory differ not only in their location in the brain, but also in the frequency of their neural signatures.

As you can see in the diagram above, gamma waves oscillate quite rapidly–up to 100 times per second–whereas delta waves oscillate slowly–fewer than 3 times per second.

(Wikicommons has a helpful visualization of different oscillation rates here.)

This article suggests that explicit memories show an increase in the alpha/beta range (10-30 Hz), whereas implicit memories produce an increase in theta waves (3-7 Hz).

In other words: explicit and implicit memories record different kinds of information, operate in different parts of the brain, and produce increases in different kinds of brain waves.

As of yet, there are no specific teaching implications to these research findings. However, they underline the point where this argument started: we can’t simply study a student’s memory system, because each student has so many (and so complex) memory systemS.

Little wonder, then, that teaching and learning can be so challenging. And, of course, so much fun.

Andrew Watson

December-03-2017

Autonomy and Motivation

Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci & Richard Ryan, argues that people are motivated by a desire for three things: autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

(Here‘s a handy place to brush up on self-determination theory.)

This theory suggests that teachers can motivate students by creating lesson plans and classroom environments that promote all three.

As is always true, such broad categories identified by researchers might not be easy to translate into specific classroom practices that work for my students.

For example: What kind of metacognition is appropriate for 1st graders?

How, exactly, can I instill a growth mindset in high-schoolers? (I know: “process praise” in place of “person praise.” But what exactly does that sound like for a 16-year old?)

And: if I want to put self-determination theory to work, what precisely does autonomy look like in the classroom?

Of course, the answer to that question will be different for each of us. To get that conversation started, here‘s an article over at Edutopia listing a few strategies to promote classroom autonomy.

Some of these might be helpful for your students; some not. But, in any case, they’re a useful prompt for our own thinking about the appropriate kind of autonomy to motivate our own students.

Andrew Watson

December-01-2017

Brain Training and Dementia

When you see claims for an exciting new brain training finding (the headline crows “Dementia Breakthrough? Brain training game ‘significantly reduces risk’ “), you can expect to see the skeptics respond very quickly.

As the Guardian reports, the study didn’t follow rigorous definitions of dementia–it allowed participants to self-report!–and their results didn’t consistently reach statistical significance.

We ardently hope that someday we’ll find brain-training games that work. Perhaps later research will reveal these games to be effective.

For the time being, however, it seems the best we’ve got to reduce the likelihood of dementia is lifestyle changes: exercise being the best option.

I’ll see you on the jogging track tomorrow morning…

Andrew Watson

November-29-2017

Welcome to “the Messiness”

In a recent interview on this blog, Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal spoke about the benefits of retrieval practice: a study technique that–in her words–focuses on pulling information OUT of students’ brains rather than getting it back IN.

For example: if I begin today’s class by having my students write down three things they remember from yesterday’s lesson on the Han dynasty, that’s retrieval practice. After all, they’re going back into their memories and drawing OUT facts and ideas we discussed.

If, however, I begin by briefly summarizing yesterday’s class, well, then I’m trying to put information back IN. That’s not retrieval practice.

Dr. Agarwal summarizes the benefits of retrieval practice thus: “it works for all students in all subjects, all the time.”

Sounds tempting, no?

Pushing Boundaries

In one part of our conversation, Dr. Aragwal notes that she likes doing research in actual classrooms with actual students–rather than in psychology labs in highly controlled conditions–because “I really like the messiness of of doing scientific research in classrooms. The fire alarms, and school assemblies, and kids who are out sick, I really enjoy it because it pushes boundaries.”

In the spirit of messiness, here’s a recent post from the Learning Scientists about using retrieval practice in elementary school to learn vocabulary.

The good news about this study:

First: it took place in a real school with real students, not in a psychology lab. That means its results are likelier to be meaningful to teachers.

Second: the participants were 9-year-olds, not college students. So, we can be more confident that retrieval practice works with…say…4th graders.

Third: the study took place in the Netherlands, so we’ve got reason to believe that the benefits go beyond a North American cultural context.

So far, so good.

Let the Messiness Begin

At the same time, this particular study revealed a few muddles as well.

Muddle #1: the size of the benefit was relatively small. Retrieval practice produced more learning than simple restudy, and more than “elaborative retrieval,” but statistically speaking that difference was harder to find than in a psychology lab.

Muddle #2: Dr. Agarwal’s research shows that fill-in-the-blank retrieval practice and multiple-choice retrieval practice are equally effective. This study, however, contradicts that finding; multiple-choice retrieval didn’t produce more learning than pure restudy.

Muddle #3: believe it or not, muddle #3 contradicts muddle #2. Because of the study design, the authors acknowledge that their own findings about multiple-choice tests aren’t fully persuasive. For example: because the average score on the multiple-choice tests was above a 90%, there wasn’t enough difference among the students’ scores to calculate meaningful effects.

What should teachers do with all this contradictory information?

My advice: Embrace the muddle.

Teachers should expect that different studies produce muddled–and occasionally contradictory–results.

No one study tells us everything we need to know about retrieval practice. Instead, we’re looking for patterns of findings.

If we do ten studies, and eight of them show that retrieval practice helps learning, that’s impressive. We don’t need to be thrown off by one study that shows no effect–or, as in this case, a relatively smaller effect than in a psych lab.

The Quiet Finding

Although the authors don’t dwell on this point, one finding jumped out at me.

In one of the restudy conditions, students were asked to “elaborate” on the meaning of the word. For example, as they tried to remember “compost pile,” they were asked to circle the words relating to a compost pile on this list: manure, plastic, delicious, orange-peels, mailbox, dead leaves.

My teacherly instincts tell me that this restudy condition ought to help students. After all, to circle the correct words, they have to think a bit harder about the meaning of the phrase “compost pile.” That additional thought strikes me as a desirable difficulty, and ought to produce more learning.

But–at least in this one study–it didn’t. Students who “elaboratively restudied” scored between the “pure restudy” group and the “retrieval practice” group–and their scores weren’t significantly different from either.

The Take-Aways…

I myself reach three conclusions based on this research:

A) Yup: retrieval practice still works, even with 4th graders, even with vocabulary learning, even in the Netherlands.

B) My instincts about elaborative restudy might be off. I should keep my eyes peeled for further research.

C) The muddle isn’t disheartening, it’s enjoyable. Jump in–the water’s warm!

The Benefits of Prediction; the Dangers of Vocabulary

Andrew Watson

November-27-2017

The Benefits of Prediction; the Dangers of Vocabulary

What’s the best way to study complex material?

Working with Charles Atwood at the University of Utah, Brock Casselman tried an idea:

He had students in a general chemistry class do weekly online problems and practice tests; after completing that work, the students received detailed feedback.

In addition to this online practice, half of the students also predicted their scores before they took the tests; they then made study plans after they received the feedback.

Did this additional work help?

Indeed it did. On average, it raised grades on the final exam by 4%.

Even more impressively, those in the bottom quartile of the class raised their exam grade by 10%.

Especially for those who struggled with the material, making predictions and updating study plans boosted learning.

Reasons to Celebrate; Reasons to Pause

Of course, this research is quite helpful in giving us specific teaching advice. The more we can encourage our students to stop and predict their success, the more we can prompt them to make thoughtful study plans, the more that they’re likely to learn.

So far, so good.

However, I do see two reasons to add a note of caution.

First, this study was done in a difficult college class; according to this interview, only 2/3 of the students who take the class ever pass it.

A study technique that helps in such a difficult class might be beneficial to students in less rigorous classes…but, we can’t be sure based on this research.

Second, I do worry about the broad vocabulary used to describe this study technique: “metacognition.”

No doubt you’ve heard of metacognition: it means “thinking about thinking.” When I stop and ask myself, “now, why did I get that problem wrong? What patterns do I notice with other mistakes I made?” I’ve engaged in metacognition.

Here’s the potential danger. While it is true that Casselman’s particular set of metacognitive strategies helped these students, that doesn’t mean that ALL metacognitive strategies will help ALL students.

For instance, you might read that “using context clues” is a metcognitive strategy. It certainly is. And, of course, using context clues might well help students to important discoveries.

However: that’s not the metacognitive strategy that was used in this case. So, this study doesn’t show that using context clues would help students in this chemistry class.

Or that it would help your students.

Boundaries Matter

In a recent post, I encouraged teachers to look for boundary conditions. In other words: we’re interested in researchers’ general findings, but we want to be sure that they apply specifically to our students.

To do so, check out the “participants” section of the research you’re reading. If the students who participated in the research resemble your students, then you’re good to go. If not, use your own best judgment about the applicability of that research.

Equally important: be sure that the specific techniques described as “metacognition” are in fact the ones that you’re using. If not, you should look for more research to be sure you’re on the right track.

After all, my predictions about the benefits of metacognition might be correct–but if my results show that a particular metacognitive strategy didn’t work, I need to develop a new study plan.

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