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6D Learning #3
Human thinking involves the interaction of ideas, and ideas about ideas....
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Word Connections
Purpose
To help students explore how ideas are formed, how associations are made, and how they contribute to learning and memory.
Context
This lesson helps students explore how people form ideas, how they make associations between ideas, and how these impact learning. The lesson makes reference to research conducted at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania. The research focuses on how the brain creates new ideas and how this is related to associations and memory. Research subjects are asked to create associations between random word couplings, such as desk/cloud. As the participant works to combine the two disparate concepts to create a novel idea, brain-imaging techniques are used to observe how and in what order different parts of the brain respond to these word pairs. Thus far, researchers have determined that the frontal part of the right side of the brain is used when a person attempts to combine two concepts. This part of the brain has been shown in other experiments to be involved in the working memory. A second finding is that when participants successfully fuse the words to form a new concept, areas known to be involved in processing memory and language throughout the brain are used.
Though students will spend some time talking about the experiment, the focus of this lesson is more abstract, and it will entail discussing where ideas come from and how different people think differently. This research will be related to students' understanding of their own learning process. Encouraging students to think about what they have learned and how they have learned it will help to illuminate the strategies that work best for them.
Planning Ahead
Take a few moments to preview the Memory Test ahead of time to familiarize yourself with discussion points. Then, read the Explaining False Memories to prepare for guiding student discussion.
Materials:
Motivation
Have students use their Word Connections student E-Sheet to go to and take the Memory Test from MSNBC. The quiz asks students to quickly read three on-screen lists of words. Students are then given a set of words and asked to identify which appeared on at least one of the three on-screen lists. The quiz shows students that we can create false memories because of associations that we have created between ideas. For example, on the quiz, students are asked if the word "sweet" was on any of the lists. Though it was not included on any of the lists, the words "candy," "sugar," and "honey" were. Hence, some students will likely think they encountered the word "sweet" on one of the lists.
Ask students these questions: - Did you check off words on the test that were not on the original lists? (Many students will have had at least one false memory.)
- Why might you have checked off a word that was not on the original list? (The false memories are formed by associations that we have. Students may present the idea of "associations" without actually using the term, instead using words such as "connections" or "prior experience." What students should understand is that they thought they remembered the word "sweet" because in their minds that word is related to other words.)
- What does the memory quiz suggest about how our brain recalls words or ideas? (Our brains "bulk," or group, words together.)
- How do you think these associations work? Does one word "trigger" you into thinking of others? (Students should understand the presentation of the word "sweet" stimulates other associations and they believe it's a memory.)
- Do you think a word like "sweet" triggers the same memory for everyone?
Development
Students should use their student E-Sheet to go to and read Explaining False Memories from MSNBC, which provides an explanation of the memory test. Have them focus on this quote from the article:
"Why are people so easily fooled? The lists that you saw contain words that are strongly associated to "sweet," "sleep," or "needle." Presentation of so many strong associates of a word such as "sweet" might activate the general category of "sweet things" in your mind. You may then remember this categorical knowledge on subsequent tests. A related possibility is that when you initially see the word lists, one or some of the presented words trigger "sweet" as an associate. Later, on the memory test, you have difficulty remembering whether "sweet" was actually presented on the list or whether you merely thought of the word during list presentation." Dr. Daniel L. Schacter, "Explaining False Memories," MSNBC 1998. Continue to discuss word associations with your students: - Do you ever use associations between words to remember things (on purpose)? (Students may use this technique when studying, particularly in memorizing. Allow students to share examples of techniques that they use when studying, and why they think they are helpful.)
- How do you think associations come into play with how you learn? (You may want to bring up that different people learn differently. For instance, some people learn better with hands-on experience, some need to see or hear things to better retain them. How do these forms of learning make associations? When discussing learning, it does not need to be schoolwork, it can be a skill or a task.)
- How can the associations of words and ideas affect how you think? (As discussed in the article, one idea or word may "trigger" others. This could trick you into thinking you had a memory, or it could help you remember things accurately.)
- What do you think happens to the brain when two ideas or words are presented that you do NOT naturally associate? (This sets up the next part of the lesson, and challenges students to think about how the brain works. Students should be encouraged to brainstorm ideas.)
Next, have students use their student E-Sheet to go to Word Associations, a Science Update that discusses research being conducted on the relationship between the creation of new ideas in the brain to memory and associations. The research looks at how the brain reacts when asked to form a new concept with two words that one would not naturally associate, like we have done with the words computer and virus. The research also considers how the formation of the new concept relates to the parts of the brain that are used for memory and processing. Give students the Making Connections student sheet, which they should complete based on what they learned from the E-Sheet.
In the final part of the lesson, students will apply what they have learned. Tell students they will form their own novel ideas. They will be given two words that have nothing to do with one another. With those two words, they are to come up with a new concept, which they can portray on paper through words or pictures.
The random word combinations can be of any two words that do NOT go together in our everyday language. The example in the Science Update is desk-cloud. Other pairs you might present to students are: frog-proton, brick-coin, truck-bottle, chord-nature, energy-pancake.
Students can write their concepts or sketch them out. You may choose to give the whole class the same words, or to put some options on the board from which students can choose. Once students have had a chance to write or sketch their concepts, ask them these questions: - Are there variations among the concepts that you wrote or drew? (There should be some variation between students since we do not all think alike, and this question sets up the next.)
- Take one of the random word combinations and compare two students that have very different interpretations. Where did your ideas come from. (It will be interesting to point out that two people may think very differently.)
- What do the interpretations of these two students have in common? (Even if the interpretations differ greatly, you're looking for the class to recognize that both students used an interaction of ideas or prior knowledge. If students don't know what the two students have in common, ask what we all have in common when we think. The answers do not need to be anything in particular; what you're driving at is that in the act of thinking, we all have ideas and those ideas interact.)
- Where do other associations come from? (Discuss the other senses. Smell has the strongest associations, so you may want to ask students if certain smells elicit certain memories. Songs on the radio also do the same, etc.)
Assessment
You can assign the Assessment activity for homework. Student directions can be found on the student E-Sheet. Students should come up with their own word association exercise and test it out on at least ten people. The purpose of the study should be to find insight to one or all of the following: - How the expectations, moods, and prior experiences of human beings can affect how they interpret new perceptions or ideas.
- That human thinking involves the interaction of ideas, and ideas about ideas.
- That people can produce many associations internally without receiving information from their senses.
When you collect the assignments, they should include three sections: - Students should explain clearly in writing how they conducted their surveys or studies. For instance, if there was a questionnaire, it should be included.
- Then, they should describe the results and what the results might mean, as in the article that they read describing false memory.
- The final paragraph of that description should make a statement that relates the results of the test to the idea presented in the benchmark above.
Extensions
The Internet Psychology Lab offers some interactive sections on how some memories, such as visual and auditory, are obtained. Direct students to the homepage and tell them to explore the site. This page is more about how experiences and stimuli get into the brain rather than how the brain stores and reuses them, but can add an interesting element to the lesson above.
Created : 10/20/2001
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