STUDENT LEARNING STYLE

Today, we did a test that can determine our learning styles. Firstly, we have to rank the importance of 4 words in 10 lists. Then we added up the score at the end of the test. Now, we can know our learning styles.

There are 4 styles of learning: concrete sequential (CS), abstract random (AR), abstract sequential (AS), and concrete random (CR)

After I did the test, I found out that I have a concrete sequential style of learning.

Here are my characteristics suggested on the web. http://http//www.csrnet.org/csrnet/articles/student-learning-styles.htmlhttp://www.csrnet.org/csrnet/articles/student-learning-styles.html

What Do They Do Best?
Apply ideas in a practical way
Organize
Fine-tune ideas to make them more efficient
Produce concrete products from abstract ideas
Work well within time limits

What Makes Sense to Them?
Working systematically, step by step
Paying close attention to details
Having a schedule to follow
Literal interpretations
Knowing what’s expected of them
Routines, established ways of doing things

What’s Hard For them?
Working in groups
Discussions that seem to have no specific point
Working in an unorganized environment
Following incomplete or unclear directions
Working with unpredictable people
Dealing with abstract ideas
Demands to "use your imagination"
Questions with no right or wrong answers

What Questions Do They Ask While Learning?
"What are the facts I need?"
"How do I do it?"
"What should the result look like?"
"When is it due?"

The result of the test suggest that I'm a CS, and I agree with most of the CS traits suggested. However, there are some characteristic that don't fit me at all. For example, it says that CS would have a hard time working in a group. I rarely have problem working in a group. When I look at the traits of the other styles of learning, I can see some traits that really fit me. I think this might happened because my score for each styles was really close (maybe i'm the hybrid of all styles).

What is the relationship between memory and selfhood?
The “self” is how we think and act or it can be simply described as our “identity”. What we are – our identity - is shaped by what remember from the past, especially our childhood experiences - how our parents taught us and how close we are to them. The more we remember about our past the stronger sense of self we would have. However, we sometimes forget something that had happened to us through repression and sometimes create a memory of something that had never happened to us. Memory is so soft and malleable. This may be the reason why we feel, at sometimes, confused of our own identity.

What new discovery about memory do you find most interesting?
The discovery that I found most interesting is the one that suggest students to sleep after cramming for exam. I think this discovery has the power to change the world of education. If this is really true, then school should give students a “sleeping break” during day time, so that they can remember what they have studied better. Furthermore, it is also very easy to be applied. The next time I study for my test, would sleep earlier, rather than dragging the study longer at night.

How can some memories become indelible?
Some memories become indelible because our bodies think there is something special in them. Those memories might have some strong emotion or excitement attached to it. When the original event of these memories happened, our body released hormones to regulate our reaction. Now that the memories become indelible, our body can easily recall the event and would release hormones to regulate alike reaction for the similar event that happened.

How can amnesia and repression be explained?
Both amnesia and repression are caused by malfunction of the brain. For us to recall a memory of something, that memory must be processed through a part of the brain called the hippocampus. However, amnesia and repression are different. Amnesia is when the information is never encoded into long term memory. But repression is when the memory is forgotten because it is so painful that our defense mechanisms need to protect us from them. However, repressed memory can be retrieved through time.

Explain the following statement: "Memory is more reconstructive than reproductive."
We don’t really remember things in the way that we can reproduce them exactly as how it is exactly. We reconstruct the memory in the way we understand it and how we think it should be according to our schema. If we were asked to recall something we would just remember the deep meaning and the main points of the event and would probably forget the details.

What new paradigm of memory is now emerging?
The new paradigm of memory sees it as a creative blending of fact and fiction, with us as the writer of those. The way we reconstruct memory is like how we blend the “real” and “unreal” creatively according to our experiences, emotions, and schema.

After reading this article, what conclusions can you make about memory?
The memory has a big impact in shaping who we are. However, it can be easily influenced by our emotions and other external factors that would distort the information or make us forget about it. Some memories are more easily recalled than other. This is because there is something special as strong emotional attachment in them.

“If our identity is shaped by our memories, and if memories are shaped by we reconstruct them, then we can construct our own identity!”

The Rumor Chain

A QANTAS International 747 that was going to Los Angeles took off from Bangkok International Airport. A passenger near the rear of the aircraft announced that he was hijacking for the People’s Revolutionary Army.
The hijacker then held a 357 Magnum gun to the head of Jack Straw, a flight attendant, and forced him to open the cockpit floor. There the hijacker held the gun at the head of the pilot, Jane Smith, and forced her to change course to Cuba. While the pilot radioed Bangkok to report the situation she suddenly threw the microphone at the hijacker who fell backwards though the open cockpit door and onto the floor.
The angry passengers forced the gun off him and tied him up. The place returned to Bangkok and in a few minutes the hijacker was arrested.

Today’s second experiment is called “The Rumor Chain”. Firstly, Mr. Anthony asked for three volunteers, and asked two of them to go out of the room. Then, he started reading a story of hijacking a plane. The volunteer that was not asked to leave the room had to listen to the story and retell it to the other two volunteers. Each time the story is retold, some information has been lost. However, the first and the last part of the story tend to be very well remembered, as well as the other elements of the story which sounds distinctive such as the Magnum 357.

From the experiment, we can see the following:

Leveling: simplifying material ...We can see that as the story is being told more and more, it gets shorter and shorter. This happens because the person tend to forget the non-important details of the story.

Sharpening: highlight or overemphasizing some material which the person think is important

Assimilation: changing details to better fit the subjects own background or knowledge (schemas)
Eg. Gender of pilot and flight attendant

All Purpose Memory

Today’s activity is called “all purpose memory activity”. Mr. Anthony read out several words, and we have to remember them. The words said are the following: Bed, Quilt, Dark, Silence, Fatigue, Clock, Snoring, Night, Toss, Tired, Artichoke, Turn, Rest, and Dream. After plotting the result in the graph, we can see that pattern that people tend to remember the first and last words better than the middle ones. This shows the effectiveness of the serial position effect which states that we tend to remember the primary and recency of the list. Furthermore, we tend to remember words which sounds more fancy (semantic distinctiveness) that the others such as the words fatigue and artichoke. Rehearsal is another factor that can enhance our memory. In this experiment, the word “night” was said 3 times, and ten out of ten people remembered it. On the other hand, we can also make up the word that was not on the list because of our schema (memory reconstruction). In this experiment, the word “sleep” was not said out. However, three people had it on their list – showing their imagination of the schema of the bedroom. Lastly, chunking is another technique that might be able to enhance our memory, but in this experiment it didn’t work quite well. Since the participants are not native English speakers, so they are not used to the words Toss and Turn. This causes the results to not be as Mr. Anthony had expected.

Meaning Enhances Recall

The third experiment was called “meaning enhances recall”, determining the capacity of our long term memory. Firstly, we have to listen to a set of words, which are divided into two subgroups. We have to mentally count the syllable of the word labeled with A, and categorized if the word is pleasant or unpleasant if it is labeled B. As the result of our experiment, the highest score for A was 10, and the lowest was 1. The highest for B was 9 and lowest was 2. The highest total was 19, and the lowest total was 6. The produced the average of 5.09 for A, 7.09 for B, and 12.27 in total. From this we can see that we tend to recall more word that we have attached meaning to it (B) than the one that we didn’t (A). However, the result of two participants of the experiment didn’t follow the occurred trend. After all the experiment is done, Pox, participant who got the highest, told us that he used the method of telling meaningful stories (effortful processing) to himself while listening to those words. From this, we can see that the more meaningful the memories are, the easier it is to be recalled.

Short Term Memory

In today’s class, Mr. Anthony conducted the experiment to determine the capacity of our short term memories. Firstly, he read out series of numbers in an ascending amount of digits. Each time each series was read out, each student have to try to recall and write it down. After doing this, I can remember only up to 6 digits series of number, whereas the average of the class is 6.5 digits. The literature value of human’s short term memory is 7 ± 2. This shows that the capacity our class is below the normal average. From this experiment, we can see that we tend to remember the first and last part of the information and tend to forget the middle ones. This is because we focused too much in remembering the first couples of digits and tend to forget to remember the upcoming ones. However, we also tend to focus more remember the last part of the information causing interference with the earlier parts of our memories. To improve our short term memory, we should try to visualize the information, remember the pattern, or use "chunking" - grouping into sets of 3 numbers. However, in this experiment number is very difficult to be visualized. Therefore, chunking seems to be the only way that works with this experiment.

My First Memory

Mr. Anthony lets each of us recall our first memory. Each of the class members need to come up with what they think is their first memory, their age at that time, and their emotions. I recalled the memory of walking back home from a pre-school with my nanny. I remembered it as a sad memory since I need to walk for quite a long distance under the hot sun. After all my classmates report their first memory, we can see from the results that our first memories are constructed around the age of 3-4 years at average. But actually, what we really came up might not really be our first memory since we are neurologically capable to remember things at the age of 5. What we came up with would just be a reconstruction of several events (what you experienced or been told by your family) that we have strong emotional elements attached to it. This shows that our memories are very malleable. What we remember would be a picture of us looking back at ourselves, but not exactly the same since they are not videotaped.

scrapbook url: mpamaslow.blogspot.com

Assumptions of the Humanistic Perspective

The humanistic perspective assumed that each person is a unique and inherently good being. One that can understand the person best is he himself. Therefore, behavior must be understood in terms of the subjective experience of the individual. Furthermore, behavior is not determined by either past experience, environmental influencess, or biological factor, but by the choice or free will of the person - our choice are independent from the external factors. To understand the behavior of each unique person, the humanistic perspective thinks that the person should be studied as a whole individual in the context of their lives. Lastly, it assumed that psychology should be meaningful and applicable to all human beings.

Existentialism

I like the ideas of Existentialism a lot more than the ideas of the first and second force psychology. What I especially like is its ideas of existence precedes essence and the ideas that every person is a unique being. We are the one who really determine who we really are, not our biology or the environment around us. I think these ideas can also encourage people to be independent and love themselves more. I also agree with its ideas on the negative sides of life - anxiety, angst, absurdity, death, and alienation. These are the facet of life which are inevitable.