gregorc style delineator experiment*

Last class we did another cognitive experiment to find out what each of our learning styles were. There are 4 styles altogether that make up the Gregorc model of the mind:

1. Concrete Sequential (CS)
2. Abstract Random (AR)
3. Abstract Sequential (AS)
4. Concrete Random (CR)

The "concrete" and "random" parts of the model are the 2 perceptual qualities, while the "sequential" and "random" parts are 2 ordering abilities, quoted from Mills's website:

Concrete: This quality enables you to register information directly through your five senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. When you are using your concrete ability, you are dealing with the obvious, the "here and now." You are not looking for hidden meanings, or making relationships between ideas or concepts. "It is what it is."
Abstract: this quality allows you to visualize, to conceive ideas, to understand or believe that which you cannot actually see. When you are using your abstract quality, you are using your intuition, your imagination, and you are looking beyond what is to the more subtle implications. "It is not always what it seems."

Sequential: Allows your mind to organize information in a linear, step-by-step manner. When using your sequential ability, you are following a logical train of though, a traditional approach to dealing with information. You may also prefer to have a plan and to follow it, rather than relying on impulse.
Random: Lets your mind organize information by chunks, and in no particular order. When you are using your random ability, you may often be able to skip steps in a procedure and still produce the desired result. You may even start in the middle, or at the end, and work backwards. You may also prefer your life to be more impulsive, or spur of the moment, than planned.

The instructions of the test were to look at lists of words, composed of 4 words each, and rank them from 1 to 4 according to how accurately the word describes our true Self. Therefore, the word ranked 4 will be most like us and 1 the least like us, and we tried to do them quickly and mostly on our first instinct. Then we added our numbers and mine were:

CS: 25 , AR: 25 , AS: 26 , CR: 24

I was very surprised with my scores, because they were close to an equal 25 in all 4 styles of learning. Although I think I am more of a concrete sequential person than any other style, the results show that I am pretty much balanced in learning styles. Surprisingly not one single person got abstract sequential in our class, and I scored in it highest just by one point, so I joined the concrete sequential group because I think I belong more in there. We looked up the characteristics of CS people, and found:

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?"

Overall I feel like most of these points describe who I am because I don't like thinking about things that don't have a literal or concrete meaning because I want complete answers about everything; unexplained things frustrate me. I also like to do things step by step instead of randomly jumping around in an illogical way... and I think I am pretty organized with my stuff and my studies. However I don't think I have that much difficulty working in groups; I actually enjoy sharing the thoughts and working together. But I sometimes do get annoyed with unpredictable people so I guess it's true. However, I really enjoy art class because I guess it's a time where you can use your imagination to create whatever you like. Lastly, the last point "when is it due?" is extremely...very true.

it's magical. it's malleable. it's...memory*

1. What is the relationship between memory and selfhood?
Our memories are created by processes in our brain that link experience with personal emotions felt in each life event. They could be reconstructed as a result of facts “blending” together with false events and people. It is the nature of our memory that shapes up our “autobiographical narrative”, which is the story of our lives as we personally view it. Therefore, our memory constructs the sense of self. Also, it could also be said that memory is a product of the self, which constantly seeks meaning in life and therefore shapes up our experiences and memories.

2. What new discovery about memory do you find most interesting?
I find the discovery that memory does not reside in a single, specific place in the human brain particularly interesting. I once thought that memories were stored in a specific place in the brain, and that if that place was destroyed, then all our memories would be wiped out. I find it very intriguing how the different aspects of each memory—emotions and experiences—are stored in entirely different parts of the brain, yet are still part of one memory. This is significant because then you could never destroy a memory by cutting off a particular part of the brain.

3. How can some memories become indelible?
Memories become permanent and sometimes even haunting when they become so “deeply engraved” in the brain due to the experience of a traumatic event that triggered a particularly strong emotional or stressful response in a person. During this event, the brain releases 2 very strong stress hormones that activate neurons in the brain, tense you up, and is believed to measure the strength of the storage of that memory. The more traumatic the event, the more permanent it becomes. Therefore, when the person is placed in a situation where that memory could be recalled, the emotions experienced then resurface. Other times, the emotional processing occurs beneath our conscious awareness.

4. How can amnesia and repression be explained?
Amnesia and repression could be explained by a problem in the hippocampus, which controls and processes explicit memory (declarative memory) during recall. It is possible that the functioning of the hippocampus is impaired when the situation is traumatic and strongly emotional; however, the other aspects of the memory are still stored in other parts of the brain (such as the amygdala). Although explicit memory is disrupted, implicit memory may not be and therefore it is still possible to be strongly influenced by the particular experience.

5. Explain the following statement: “Memory is more reconstructive than reproductive.
It states that memory is usually not recalled, or reproduced, exactly as it was when the person experienced it; as time passes, some of its elements and details are forgotten (and sometimes we tend to fill in those gaps with our own schemas). Although we remember the general meaning of an event clearly, we cannot exactly recall the small details of what we did and said.

6. What new paradigm of memory is now emerging?
Loftus stated that our reconstructed memories are a mixture of “fact and fiction” that are shaped up by our experiences and emotional impact. Also, a person’s idea of the memory shapes up the sense of self, and at the same time it develops from the self and perception of life.

7. After reading this article, what conclusions can you make about memory?
I could conclude that memory has a very paradoxical nature: it could develop the sense of self yet it is shaped up by the self; it is simple when reduced to the 3 seemingly straightforward processes of encoding, storage and retrieval, yet is extremely complicated in the sense that it stimulates very complex neural networks at multiple places in the human brain. I can also conclude that with the new advancements in the study of memory and technology that will enable these projects, it is possible to find out new information that could cure diseases and improve the way our memory works.

-- yuki

exp #5: the rumor chain activity*

The 5th memory test was conducted with 3 volunteers. The first person stayed in the room and the other 3 was asked to leave. Mr. Anthony then read out a story about a hijacker on a plane and Pang was told to remember as much as possible. Then Maytee came into the room and Pang was asked to retell the story to him, then he did the same thing when Daniel came in. Daniel then retold the story to the class. Here is the story:

A Qantas International 747 that was going to Los Angeles took off the 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 door. 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 through the open cockpit door and onto the floor.
The angry passengers forced the gun off him and tied him up. The plane returned to Bangkok and in a few minutes the hijacker was arrested.

One thing that was very significant that we found is leveling, or simplifying material. We noticed that the story got shorter and shorter as more and more detail was lost. Another important thing we saw was sharpening, or highlighting or emphasizing some material; in this particular story retelling, the details about the gun and the plane stayed even thought the story was retold 3 times. Assimilation also happened—it is changing details to better fit the subjects’ own background or knowledge, or schemas. We found that they were more focused on the schema of the pilot and the flight attendant and forgot about the passengers completely. Also, although in the story the pilot was a woman and the flight attendant a man, as the story was repeated the pilot turned into a man and the stewardess into a woman. They changed crucial information due to the schema in their minds. We then discussed how real eye-witness accounts and rumors are not very reliable some of the time because the story somehow changes each time it is retold.

-- yuki

exp #4: all purpose memory activity*

Today we did our 4th memory experiment. We were instructed to listen to 14 words, read aloud immediately one after the other. At the end, we were given a while to write down all the words. The words were: bed, quilt, dark, sleep, silence, fatigue, clock, snoring, night, toss, tired, artichoke, turn, rest and dream. The entire class scored pretty high on this test; I was surprised to find that I actually remembered all the words.

Looking at the results, we found 5 understandings about memory. Firstly, this test showed the serial-position effect, which is when the first (primary) and last (recent) items are remembered best. For example, everybody remembered the first word ‘bed’ and 6 people remembered the last word ‘dream’ because we tend to remember earlier items and the things we heard last. Secondly, we found that words that have semantic distinctiveness, or a particular word that has a meaning that stands out or is dissimilar, are remembered pretty well. For example, the word ‘artichoke’ which had no close relationship with all the other words stood out to us and that is why we remembered it. Thirdly, we found that rehearsal improves recall. The word ‘night’ was repeated 3 times, and everybody remembered it and wrote it down. Fourthly, we discovered that we have memory reconstruction, where we fall back on the schema that we already have in our head because the words are related to each other. Therefore, 3 people wrote down a word that wasn’t there: ‘sleep’. This is because sleep was related to almost all the other words; an interesting thing we thought about was that people who wrote down ‘sleep’ were more creative than others. Lastly, we found that chunking helps with memory. The words ‘toss’ and ‘turn’ could be chunked together because they are often seen together in the English language.

-- yuki

exp #3: memory enhances recall*

Today we did our 3rd memory experiment as a class. Mr. Anthony read out 20 words on 20 separate sheets while letting us see the words as he held it up. The sensory inputs were the sight and sound of the words. At the bottom of each sheet was either letter ‘A’ or ‘B’; we were supposed to count the syllables in the word if we saw an ‘A’ and think about whether it was pleasant or unpleasant when we saw a ‘B’. I remembered a total of 12 words, and remembered 4 ‘A’ words and 8 ‘B’ words.

When we combined the results from the whole class, we found that the highest score was 19, and the lowest score was 6. The mean of the number of ‘A’ words people recalled was 5.09 words, the mean of the number of ‘B’ words people recalled was 7.09 words, and the mean of the total number of words people recalled was 12.27 words. There were 2 people with an equal number of ‘A’ and ‘B’ words, 2 people with more ‘A’s than ‘B’s, and 7 people with more ‘B’s than ‘A’s.

In this particular task, we did effortful processing. The reason most people remembered more ‘B’ words than ‘A’ words is because when we tried to think whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we were giving the words meaning. Meaning enhances recall, and that is why we remembered more ‘B’ words. When we tried to retrieve the words from our long term memory, more ‘B’ words came because it has more ‘power’; we gave meaning to it. Conversely, when we were asked to count the syllables in the ‘A’ words, we were not giving it enough meaning and therefore we did not remember many. The person with the highest score scored very well because he used a mnemonic device to help him recall things easily—he made up his own story using the words. We found that the crazier the story, the more easily we can recall it. Also, we found that those who scored the least either had distractions, misunderstandings, or exhaustion—which are all factors that may affect our ability to encode all the words into our memory.

-- yuki