http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120919103144.htm
This article discusses a study conducted that used EEG to determine how well a subject absorbed material and learned. The study had subjects study a list of words and used EEG to determine which subjects would be able to remember the most words on the list. The amount of brain waves conducted while the subject was studying would determine how much the subject would actually remember. The researcher was able to predict that 5 people out of the 23 would perform the best (and her prediction was correct). The subjects that the researcher said would perform the highest (by using their EEG information) remembered 72% of the words studied instead of the 45% that everyone else remembered. She also conducted another study to determine if different types of memory training would have an effect on memory performance and brain activity, but these results are still being analyzed.
If this is actually an accurate way of determining someone's ability to effectively learn material, I could see this being extremely beneficial in an educational setting. Although it would be very costly, schools could use these tests on students who constantly perform below standard. The tests could help teachers figure out the best way to teach each student in a way that the student would effectively learn the classroom material. It would be even better if these tests could be ran on all students in the classroom to determine the most effective teaching strategies for the whole class. As an undergrad on the pre-education track, I find this extremely interesting.
Do you think that this is a valid argument? Is it possible that in the future teachers could use these findings to better their ability to teach their students? Or does all of this seem to be too advanced to ever be utilized in schools? Would you ever agree to being a subject of one of these tests and determining what your perfect learning strategy is?
Jenna, although you bring up a good point in applying this to an educational setting, I feel that there is a bias and a low external validity to the study itself. Each individual has schema in which he or she may have already formed a certain association with particular words. In addition, memorizing a list of words already puts those with terrible memory at a disadvantage. This does not mean that they do not learn as well as another individual. It may just mean that they need more time to "study."
ReplyDeleteI would agree with the comment above that this is testing memorization. Does a high ability to memorize a list of words correlate accurately to one's ability to learn? Thought?
ReplyDelete- Morgan Eary