Becca Horan (beca1116)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Feb 09, 2009, follows 0 people, 0 public groups, 16 public bookmarks (16 total).

More »

Tags

Recent Tags:	brain(0), behavior(0), race(0), sterotyping(0), performance(0), autism(0), neuroscience(0), information(0), overload(0), Memory(0), Function(0), Higher(0), Education(0), Online(0), Resources(0), UDL(0), Blogs(0), motor(0), cortex(0)
Top Tags:	brain(3), behavior(2), overload(1), motor(1), UDL(1), Plasticity(1), cortex(1), race(1), autism(1), Higher(1)

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention -- Cohen et al. 313 (5791): 1307 -- Science on 2009-04-13
- These results suggest that the racial achievement gap,a major social
  concern in the United States, could be amelioratedby the use of
  timely and targeted social-psychological interventions.
- Consequently, negativecharacterizations of one's group can prove
  threatening, especiallyin chronically evaluative environments.
- 7 more annotations...
- - Because people subjected to widely known negative stereotypesimpugning the intelligence of their group are aware of thesenegative characterizations, they may worry that performing poorlycould confirm the stereotype of their group
  - One potentially effective way to buffer people against threatand its
    consequences, we suggest, is to allow them to reaffirmtheir
    self-integrity
  - First, in normal school settings, a negative recursivecycle can
    occur, where psychological threat and poor performancefeed off one
    another, leading to ever-worsening performance.
  - Second, a small reduction in psychological threat can set offanother
    recursive cycle by leading to a slight improvement insubsequent
    performance, which in turn can further lessen performance-inhibitingthreat, etc., leading to sustained or improving performanceover time.
  - Third, small interventions can generate large effects if thoseeffects accumulate across multiple trials (such as the multipleperformance opportunities observed here)
  - Our findings demonstrate that alleviating psychological threatcan
    improve intellectual achievement in a real-world environment(8).
  - Unlike other interventions,it benefits the targeted students,
    including those most at risk,reducing group-based inequality while
    not adversely affectingnontargeted students
THE BRAIN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM on 2009-03-15
- The primary motor cortex is
  the anatomical region composed of Area 4 of the precentral
- The primary motor cortex is
  the anatomical region composed of Area 4 of the precentral
  gyrus.
- 10 more annotations...
- - Penfield also showed that cortical Area 6, just rostral to Area
    4, has two other somatotopic representations that induce complex
    movements when stimulated. The first is in the lateral portion
    of Area 6 and is called the premotor area (PMA).
    It helps to guide body movements by integrating sensory information,
    and it controls the muscles that are closest to the body's main
    axis.
  - The second somatotropic representation is in the supplementary motor area
    (SMA), in the medial part of Area 6. The SMA is involved
    in planning complex movements and in co-ordinating movements involving both hands.
  - The most striking aspect of this map is that the areas
    assigned to various body parts on the cortex are proportional
    not to their size, but rather to the complexity of the
    movements that they can perform.
  - The term "basal
    ganglia" refers to a group of several structures in
    the brain: the caudate nucleus, the putamen, the globus
    pallidus, and the subthalamic nucleus.
  - The basal ganglia may also act as a filter, blocking
    the execution of movements that are unsuited to the situation.
  - The cerebellum appears to play several roles. It stores
    learned sequences of movements, it participates in fine
    tuning and co-ordination of movements produced elsewhere
    in the brain, and it integrates all of these things to
    produce movements so fluid and harmonious that we are
    not even aware of them.
  - The two hemispheres of the cerebellum are not divided neatly
    in two like the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. The medial
    portion constitutes what is known as the cerebellar vermis.
    This vermis does not display any lateralization. It projects
    axons to the brainstem which, via the ventromedial
    system, help to maintain posture.
    
    More recently, the cerebellum has also been discovered to play a role
    in sensory information processing as well as in cognitive functioning.
  - The first step
    is to select an appropriate response to
    the current situation, out of a repertoire of possible
    responses
  - The second step is to plan the movement in physical terms.
  - The third step is to actually execute the movement.
THE BRAIN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM on 2009-03-14
- The motor cortex
  is located in the rear portion of the frontal lobe, just before
  the central sulcus (furrow) that separates the frontal lobe
  from the parietal lobe. The motor cortex is divided into two
  main areas, Area 4 and Area 6.
- To carry out goal-directed movements,
  your motor cortex must first receive various kinds of information
  from the various
  lobes of the brain:
- 11 more annotations...
- - They observed that depending on what part
    of the cortex they stimulated, a different part of the
    body contracted.
  - every part of the body has a particular
    region of the primary motor cortex that controls its
    movement.
  - basal ganglia consist
    of a set of neural structures buried deep inside the
    cortex. The main basal ganglia are the caudate nucleus,
    the putamen, and the globus pallidus.
  - Once the basal ganglia have processed
    this information, they return it to the motor cortex via the
    thalamus.
  - One of the likely functions of this loop, which
    operates in conjunction with another one involving the cerebellum,
    is to select and trigger well co-ordinated voluntary movements.
  - To make the various segments of your hand and arm deploy
    smoothly, you need an internal "clock" that
    can precisely regulate the sequence and duration of
    the elementary movements of each of these segments.
    That clock is the cerebellum.
  - In fact, the clumsiness that accompanies excess consumption
    of alcohol is
    directly related to its depressive effects on the activity of
    the cerebellum.
  - Another metaphor summarizes the role of your
    cerebellum rather well: it acts like an air traffic controller
    who gathers an unbelievable amount of information at every moment,
    including (to return to our original example) the position of your
    hand, your arm, and your nose, the speed of their movements, and
    the effects of potential obstacles in their path, so that your
    finger can achieve a "soft landing" on the tip of your
    nose.
  - Similarly, in the human
    brain, planning for any given movement is
    done mainly in the forward portion of the frontal lobe.
  - Area 6 acts like
    the ship's lieutenants. It decides which set of muscles
    to contract to achieve the required movement, then
    issues the corresponding orders to the "rowers"—the
    primary motor cortex, also known as Area 4. This area in
    turn activates specific muscles or groups of muscles via
    the motor neurons in the spinal cord.
  - In addition, to ensure that all of these movements are fast, precise, and co-ordinated,
    the nervous system must constantly receive sensory information from the outside
    world and use this information to adjust and correct the hand's trajectory. The
    nervous system achieves these adjustments chiefly by means of the cerebellum,
    which receives information about the positions in space of the joints and the
    body from the proprioceptors.
CAST: Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Guidelines - Version 1.0 on 2009-03-04
- Principle I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
- Principle I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
- 39 more annotations...
- - Principle I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
  - Principle I. Provide Multiple Means of Representation
  - Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach that addresses and
    redresses the primary barrier to making expert learners of all students:
    inflexible, one-size-fits-all curricula that raise
    unintentional barriers to learning. Learners with disabilities are most
    vulnerable to such barriers, but many students without disabilities also find
    that curricula are poorly designed to meet their learning needs.
  - Students differ in the ways that they can navigate a learning environment and
    express what they know.
  - Students differ in the ways that they can navigate a learning environment and
    express what they know.
  - At CAST (the Center for Applied Special Technology), we began working nearly
    25 years ago to develop ways to help students with disabilities gain access to
    the general education curriculum. In the early years, we focused on helping
    individuals adapt or "fix" themselves – overcoming their disabilities in order
    to learn within the general education curriculum. That work, commonly focused on
    assistive technologies, is an important facet of any comprehensive educational
    plan.
  - However, we also came to see that this focus on assistive technologies was too
    narrow. It obscured the critical role of the environment in determining who is
    or who is not considered "disabled." In the 1990s, we shifted our focus towards
    the general curriculum and its limitations: how do those limitations contribute
    to the "disabling" of our students?
  - we have come to recognize that our curricula, rather than our students, are
    disabled.
  - Strategic, goal-directed learners
  - Resourceful, knowledgeable learners
  - Purposeful, motivated learners
  - Goals:
  - Methods:
  - Materials:
  - Assessment:
  - They are disabled in WHO they can teach.
  - They are disabled in WHAT they can teach.
  - They are disabled in HOW they can teach
  - However, Universal Design for Learning refers to a process by which a
    curriculum (i.e., goals, methods, materials, and assessments) is intentionally
    and systematically designed from the beginning to address individual
    differences. With curricula that are universally designed, much of the
    difficulties of subsequent "retrofitting" and adaptation can be reduced or
    eliminated – and a better learning environment for all students can be
    implemented.
  - The challenge of diversity is not merely to differentiate the curriculum but to
    do so effectively.
  - While the best educators have found ways to differentiate curriculum for
    thousands of years, the field of UDL has benefited greatly from the recent
    advent of powerful digital technologies that make it possible to more easily and
    effectively customize or personalize curriculum for diverse students.
  - UDL is based upon the most widely replicated finding in educational research:
    students are highly variable in their response to instruction
  - The three basic principles are derived from modern neuroscience and the
    cognitive science of learning, but they also are deeply rooted in the
    foundational work of Lev Vygotsky and Benjamin Bloom, who espoused nearly
    identical principles for understanding individual differences and the pedagogies
    required for addressing them
  - Like UDL itself, these Guidelines are flexible and should be mixed and matched
    into the curriculum as appropriate. The UDL Guidelines are not meant to be a
    "prescription" but a set of strategies that can be employed to overcome the
    barriers inherent in most existing curricula. They may serve as the basis for
    building in the options and the flexibility that are necessary to maximize
    learning opportunities for all students.
  - ASL for students who are deaf whenever possible
  - As a consequence, one of the most effective ways to make information more
    accessible is to provide explicit cues or prompts that assist individuals in
    attending to those features that matter most while avoiding those that matter
    least. Depending on the goal of the lesson, highlighting may emphasize 1) the
    critical features that distinguish one concept from another, 2) the "big ideas"
    that organize domains of information, 3) the relationships between disparate
    concepts and ideas, 4) the relationships between new information and prior
    knowledge to build networks and contexts in which the new information has
    meaning.
  - Information that is not attended to, that does not engage student's cognition,
    is in fact inaccessible. It is inaccessible both in the moment – relevant
    information goes unnoticed and unprocessed – and in the future: relevant
    information is unlikely to be remembered.
  - Offering students choices can develop self-determination, pride in
    accomplishment, and increase the degree to which they feel connected to their
    learning.
  - Individuals are engaged by information and activities that are relevant and
    valuable to their authentic interests and goals.
  - Students differ considerably in their response to stimuli and events in their
    environment. The same novel event in a classroom can be exciting and interesting
    to one individual but ominous and frightening to another.
  - the external environment must provide options that can equalize accessibility by
    supporting students who differ in initial motivation, self-regulation skills,
    etc.
  - build in periodic or persistent "reminders" of both the goal and its value in
    order for them to sustain effort and concentration in the face of attractive
    distracters.
  - Providing a range of challenges, and a range of possible supports, allows all
    students to find objectives that are optimally motivating.
  - For some, but not all, students, the option of working collaboratively with
    other students is an effective way to sustain engagement in protracted projects
    and activities.
  - Assessment is most productive for sustaining engagement when the feedback is
    relevant, constructive, accessible, consequential and timely.
  - While it is important to design the extrinsic environment so that it
    can support motivation and engagement (see guidelines 7 and 8), it is also
    important to develop students' intrinsic abilities to regulate their own
    emotions and motivations.
  - Prompts, reminders, guides, rubrics, checklists that focus on
  - Such scaffolds should provide sufficient alternatives to meet the challenge of
    individual differences in the kinds of strategies that might be successful and
    the independence with which they can be applied
  - Individuals differ considerably in their capability and propensity for such
    monitoring and some students will need a great deal of explicit instruction and
    modeling in order to learn how to do this successfully.
Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist | Mail Online on 2009-02-28
- in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,' she said.
Nativism Versus Neuroconstructivism on 2009-02-26
- [a] Autism involves a damaged theory-of-mind module (Leslie, 1992, p. 21).[a] Results implicate the orbito-frontal cortex as the basis of this ability (p. 640)… specifically damaged in autism (pp. 642–643; Baron-Cohen et al., 1994).[b] Autism affects the interconnectivity among and within various cognitive systems… . In autism, functional brain development goes awry such that there is increased intra-regional specialization and less inter-regional interaction (Carpenter et al., 2001, p. 373).[b]… the crucial role of unbalanced excitatory-inhibitory networks… complex pathogenetic pathways… leading to Autism Spectrum Disorder through altered neuronal morphology, synaptogenesis and cell migration (Persico & Bourgeron, 2006, p. 349).
- There is a worrying tendency in the developmental disorders literature (as well as in adult neuropsychology) to slip from relative comparisons to absolute ones. So, for instance, a clinical group may score significantly better in Domain A than in Domain B. This is then interpreted as Domain A being intact/preserved and Domain B being impaired (e.g., Tager-Flusberg, Boshart, & Baron-Cohen, 1998). But camouflaged beneath such interpretations is the fact that the scores in both domains may actually be well below those of chronological-age-matched controls. In other words, both domains are impaired; it is simply that, because of its processing demands, one domain is more impaired than the other, not that one is impaired and the other intact,
- 16 more annotations...
- - What Do Scores in the Normal Range Tell Researchers?
    
    The study of genetic disorders has indeed identified syndromes in which certain domains of relative proficiency coexist with others of more serious impairment. This frequently leads to a research strategy in which the domains of proficiency are merely assessed by standardized tests, with little further exploration once scores fall in the normal range. Subsequently all the research effort is concentrated on the domain(s) of serious deficit. But, ascertaining that scores fall in the normal range can ignore several crucial factors that raise a number of challenging questions: (a) Are the cognitive processes underlying the proficient overt behavior the same as those used by typical controls? (b) Are the brain networks underlying the proficient behavior the same as those used by typical controls? (c) Given the potential of siblings within the same family, are the scores of the atypical sibling closer to the level expected for the family, even though they are within the normal range as well as being significantly higher than the average for the disorder? (d) Did the individual display impairment earlier in development, which has been compensated for subsequently via an atypical trajectory? (e) Is the standardized test sensitive enough to identify subtle impairments that may remain after compensation? And, in general, has the actual trajectory of development been taken into account?
  - For some researchers, face processing in WS is claimed to be no different from controls without learning difficulties (e.g., Rossen et al., 1996; Tager-Flusberg, Pless-Skewer, Faja, & Joseph, 2003). For others, face processing in WS differs from controls at both the cognitive and brain levels (Deruelle, Mancini, Livet, Casse-Perrot, & de Schonen, 1999; Grice et al., 2003; Karmiloff-Smith et al., 2004; Mills et al., 2000; Neville, Mills, & Bellugi, 1994). In fact, researcher by my colleagues and me on electrophysiological studies of face processing in the WS brain have shown that even by adulthood, individuals with WS fail to display the gradual localization and specialization of function (Grice et al., 2003; Karmiloff-Smith et al., 2004) that is the progressive brain signature of normal development (Cohen-Kadosh & Johnson, 2007; de Haan, Humphreys, & Johnson, 2002; Johnson, 2001). So, scores in the normal range do not necessarily entail normal developmental trajectories.
  - If all of the siblings in a family are particularly talented and eloquent language is continually used in the family environment, with siblings' verbal IQs being around 140–160, and if the atypical sibling has a verbal IQ of 89 and thus falls in the normal range, is that individual more impaired than one whose verbal IQ is also 89 but whose family verbal IQ average is 98?
  - The truly developmental, neuroconstructivist perspective embraces a developmental way of thinking, irrespective of the age of the population studied; even studies of infants can be nondevelopmental. In my view, to understand developmental outcomes, it is vital to identify full developmental trajectories, to assess how progressive change occurs from infancy onwards, and how parts of the developing system may interact with other parts differently at different times across ontogenesis.
  - inally, Question (e) stresses how vital it is to carry out in-depth task analyses of standardized tests before concluding that participants' scores that fall in the normal range are the same as those of controls without learning difficulties.
  - To build a full developmental trajectory, it is of course important to devise processing tasks that can be used with very young children (infants and toddlers) through to older children, adolescents, and adults or, at the very least, tasks that yield clear developmental changes across a fairly wide age range, avoiding floor and ceiling effects. The developmental trajectory approach makes it possible to carry out cross-syndrome comparisons more directly than has been the case in the past and to do so at multiple levels of analysis
  - In general, epigenesis is not deterministic under tight genetic control. Rather, as Gotlieb (2007) stressed, epigenesis is probabilistic and only under very broad genetic control.
  - It is only over developmental time that the electrophysiological activity becomes progressively fine tuned to predominantly one hemisphere (right hemisphere for faces; left hemisphere for grammar; de Haan et al., 2002; Johnson, 2001; Mills et al., 2000; Neville et al., 1994). These developmental examples clearly indicate that the brain is not a static entity. Indeed, cortical networks are not genetically predetermined or built in to be preserved or impaired in genetic disorders. Rather, they are the emergent outcome of progressively changing processes, which dynamically interact with one another and with environmental input over developmental time, ultimately to give rise to the structured adult brain.
  - But initially, brain activity is widespread for processing all types of input and competition between regions gradually settles which domain-relevant circuits become domain specific over time. Emergent specialization of function (e.g., for faces) might well be viewed as the fine tuning of initially domain-relevant but coarsely coded systems (e.g., for visual patterns), but this is for visual patterns in general, not for faces in particular. The face specialization emerges from the interaction between the environment (huge numbers of face stimuli over time) and the initial visual processing constraints, not from a prespecified, dedicated face-processing module, as some would argue (e.g., Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006).
  - In WS, for instance, the genetic mutations are present from conception (due to a misalignment on one copy of Chromosome 7 during meiosis). A half-dosage of the protein that would normally have been expressed in the brain will be missing throughout cortical regions, so the effects of the deletion are likely to be widespread, not specific to a single region of cortex nor to a single purported module. But their deficient expression will affect different regions to greater or lesser degrees, depending on how vital their expression is to the most relevant processing in that region.
  - In other words, neuroconstructivism maintains that if the adult brain contains modules, then these emerge developmentally during the ontogenetic process of gradual modularization (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992, 1998). In this sense, domain-specific outcomes may not even be possible without the gradual process of development over time.
  - A frequent question asked by nativists and behavioral geneticists is whether specific aspects of human cognition are due to nature or nurture. But from the neuroconstructivist point of view, this is clearly a false dichotomy. Genes, brain, and environment play a dynamic, multidirectional role in shaping, not merely triggering, developmental outcomes. However, a question that is rarely addressed in the developmental neuroscience literature is whether the environment is the same for individuals developing typically and those developing atypically. In other words, does having a developmental disorder not only involve genetic mutations but also subtly change the environment in which the atypical infant/child develops?
  - nformal observations of families who visit our lab reveal that parents of infants and toddlers with genetic syndromes find it difficult (compared to parents of typically developing children) to allow their atypically developing offspring to mouth objects freely and to crawl/walk uninhibited in order to fully explore their environment. This reticence is probably because of greater fear of potential danger and accidents, but it results in a less richly explored environment.
  - However, initial overgeneralization in the healthy child may actually encourage category formation, known to be subsequently impaired in the atypical case.
  - Nonetheless, the notion of impaired versus intact brain systems in uneven cognitive profiles might be considered useful for clinical practice, even if theoretically it underplays the role of development. If a patient has scores in the normal range in a specific domain, surely there is no need to consider remediation in that domain? The nativist would agree, but the neuroconstructivist would not rule out training in a proficient domain. For instance, take a patient who presents with a serious deficit in, say, number and scores in the normal range in face processing, seemingly very different domains. It would be tempting in such a case to tailor remediation solely to the domain of number. But that misses the very point of the neuroconstructivist framework. Once one explores multiple, low-level interacting processes that underpin face processing early on in development, this leads to a more dynamic view of remediation. In adulthood, the proficient behavior of individuals with WS on face processing tasks is due to a focus on features. Now, if an infant cannot plan saccades and therefore has sticky fixation (as is the case for those with WS, e.g.), then they are more likely to fixate on features than rapidly process the configuration of a face. So, despite the proficient behavioral outcome, face processing in WS is based on different cognitive and brain processes compared to controls (Grice et al., 2001, 2003; Mills et al., 2000). Thus, remediation is necessary in a domain where the outcome gives rise to scores in the normal range.
  - Neuroconstructivism does not rule out domain specificity; it argues that it cannot be taken for granted and must always be questioned. Unlike the nativist perspective, neuroconstructivism offers a truly developmental approach that focuses on change and emergent outcomes. And, every aspect of development turns out to be dynamic and interactive. Genes do not act in isolation in a predetermined way. Even the FOXP2 gene, about which there was much excitement regarding its role in human language, must be thought of in terms of the downstream gene targets to which FOXP2 binds. The profiles of those downstream genes suggest roles in a wide range of general, not domain-specific, functions including morphogenesis, neurite growth, axon guidance, synaptic plasticity, and neurotransmission (Teramitsu & White, 2007). This is a very different level from theorizing at the level of cognitive modules and points to the multilevel complexities of understanding human development in any domain.
    
    For many decades, the notion of plasticity tended to be reserved for the human system's response to damage. By contrast, it has become abundantly clear that development—whether typical or atypical, whether human or nonhuman—is fundamentally characterized by plasticity for learning, with the infant brain dynamically structuring itself over the course of ontogeny. While some macrostructures like the overall six-layer structure of cortex may well be under general genetic constraints, much of the microcircuitry of cortex turns out to be the result of complex multilevel interactions over time. Human intelligence is not a state (i.e., not a collection of static, built-in modules handed down by evolution and that can be intact or impaired). Rather, human intelligence is a process (i.e., the emergent property of dynamic multidirectional interactions between genes, brain, cognition, behavior, and environment).
Information overload on 2009-02-21
- But too much information can have the
  same effect. Especially in modern societies, we are flooded with
  information from all directions–snatches
  of information taken out of context from news broadcasts, the
  ceaseless torrent of advertising messages, and so on. We have not
  learned how to slot all this information into the appropriate levels
  in our knowledge hierarchy, so we may feel helpless to act on it.
Brain- Behaviors on 2009-02-21
- Whatever the origin of a particular behaviour, its goal is always
  to experience
  some form of pleasure or to avoid some form of pain. Whatever
  the origin of a particular behaviour, its goal is always to experience
  some form of pleasure or to avoid some form of pain.
THE BRAIN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM on 2009-02-21
- Short-term memory depends
  on the attention paid to the elements of sensory memory.
  Short-term memory lets you retain a piece of information
  for less than a minute and retrieve it during this time.
  One typical example of its use is the task of repeating a
  list of items that has just been read to you, in their original
  order. In general, you can retain 5 to 9 items (or, as it
  is often put, 7±2 items) in short-term
  memory.
THE BRAIN FROM TOP TO BOTTOM on 2009-02-21
- Forgetting is a disturbance in the retrieval of
  information, not in its storage.
  
  According to the defective-recall theory, if you are
  momentarily unable to access a piece of information
  in your memory, the reason is insufficient encoding,
  or a lack of relationship to your existing semantic
  knowledge, or inappropriate retrieval indexes.
- This is confirmed by statistics on the words that
  people forget in a language. Proper nouns, which are
  used less often, disappear first. Next come common
  nouns, then adjectives (which are used more often,
  because they can modify many nouns), then verbs, and
  then, lastly, exclamations and interjections.
- 1 more annotations...
- - Thus, together, retroactive and proactive interference
    enable us to update our knowledge of the world. New
    information can overwrite some of the older information
    in our memories, through retroaction, but not all of
    it, because proaction prevents it.

Recent Visitors (7 visits)

German Pareja

on 2009-05-08
Robin Rheaume

on 2009-03-07

Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »

Join Diigo

Becca Horan's Profile

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More »

Groups

Recent Visitors (7 visits)

Me elsewhere

Becca Horan's Profile

More » Tags

More » Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More » Groups

Recent Visitors (7 visits)

Me elsewhere

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

More »

Groups