comps reading - How People Learn – Chapter5. Mind and Brain

1.Summary research findings of this chapter:
(1)The functional organization of the brain and the mind depends on and benefits from positively from experiences.
(2)Development is not merely a biologically driven unfolding process, but also an active process that derives essential information from experiences.
(3)Research has shown that some experiences have the most powerful effects during specific sensitive periods, while others can affect the brain over a much longer time span.

2.Memory is neither a single entity nor a phenomenon that occurs in a single area of brain. There are two basic memory processes: 1) declarative memory; 2) procedural or non-declarative memory (P.124).

3.Research has indicated that the mind is not just a passive recorder of events, rather, it is actively at work both in “sorting” and in “recalling” information (P.124).

4.In an act of efficiency and “cognitive economy” (Gibson, 1969), the mind creates categories for processing information. Thus, it is a feature of learning that memory processes make relational links to other information (P.124).

5.Classes of words, pictures, and other categories of information that involve complex cognitive processing on a repeated basis activate the brain. Activation sets into motion the events that are encoded as part of long-term memory. Memory processes treat both true and false memory events similarly and, as shown by imaging technologies, activate the same brain regions, regardless of the validity of what is being remembered. Experience is important for the development of brain structures, and what is registered in the brain as memories of experiences can include one’s own mental activities (P.125).

6.One of the primary differences between the novice and the expert is the manner in which information is organized and utilized (P.125).

7.Development is not solely the unfolding of programmed patterns. One of the simplest rules is that practice increases learning; in the brain, there is a similar relationship between the amount of experience in a complex environment and the amount of structural change (P.125).

8.The learning of specific appears to alter the specific regions of the brain involved in the task. The brain is a dynamic organ, shaped to a great extent by experience—by what a living being does, and has done (P.126).