Week 3 - Attention and Consciousness

When reading chapter three about attention I found myself making many connections.  I think that majority of my time is spent giving divided attention to different tasks. That being said I don't think that this is the best process for me because I am the type of person that doesn't comprehend things the first time through. Currently I am using selective attention as I try to focus on my blog and my dog is barking in my ear at something outside. After reading chapter 3 I have also learned many things about consciousness. To put in my own words I think that consciousness is not an automatic process, but yet something that is controlled and filtered by our focused attention. 

I think that Gordan's weekly question to the reading tells how perception is relevant to consciousness. In order for us to be aware of something we must first perceive them based on previous theories of perception in chapter 2. 

I think that consciousness is definitely a challenging topic. I would love to continue reading up on the process of problem solving. I often solve problems, but then am unaware of how I actually reached the solution.

Although this is an early theory of attention that has been rejected,  I still feel at times that the bottleneck theory describes my information processing. After sitting through meetings at school I often feel that I cannot process anymore information at that given time. I am on overload, and I feel that this limits the amount of information that I can take in. Why is that?? Or is it just that I think that I am not taking in information and I really am. 

Treisman shows proof of the feature - integration theory through many demonstrations. It is nice when some of these demonstrations are shown in the book because when you experience something yourself it is very believable. (EX - the Blue X) 

The attention process is very important for education. It helps us understand the best ways that students learn and take in information. 

If you realize that a student is not comprehending something it may be due to their attention process. Our job as the teacher would be to create the best environment that suits each child. 

I think that the demonstrations and research done on attention and consciousness are the best ways to find the results we need in order to give our students the best education. 

Week 2 Reflection

 After reading Chapter 2 this week I have learned many different theories that explain visual and auditory recognition. It makes you think about how amazing our perceptual abilities really are. We use visual object recognition with everything we do, and reading about the template - matching theory, and the feature analysis theory gave me more of a background as to why we perceive things the way we do. 

When starting this class all I knew was that  the title of the text was Cognition. I was unsure of what the text would actually cover. When my students give me answers to questions I always reply to them with "why is that" I realize how hard of a question that can be sometimes. I feel like I am learning "the why" from the reading of this text. 

A part of chapter 2 that I feel I struggled with was part of the feature-analysis theory. When applying this to my classroom, I made a post about classifying solid figures by their faces, edges, corners. After reading others posts I am unsure if this is a good example since these are not two dimensional patterns. 

I thought of my students when reading the part on context and speech perception. Students often make mispronunciations while reading and continue on with the story even though it does not make sense. When listening to a student read and this happens, I simple raise my hand to let them know that they need to reread that sentence to check to make sure it makes sense. When slowing down and actually listening for comprehension they often realize "Ohhhh, that doesn't sound right. We then practice looking for other words in the text that can help us determine the meanings.

  There were many studies done to prove theories from all parts of chapter 2. One that stands out to me the most was Simons and Chabris's videotape of the gorilla that proves inattentional blindness. I most definitely believe it because I didn't see the gorilla myself.

Much of the cognitive research done from chapter 2 is very important. Especially for those people who lack the ability to perceive things the same as others. Research teaches us why that is. I would use many of these strategies for students that have trouble recognizing how we do certain tasks in class. I cannot think of any other way to accomplish these things in a better way.