Brain Basics II: Attention and Memory

©Ruth Ferree, PhD

Curry School of Education

University of Virginia

Experiment

Keep that experiment in mind

• I. Hard –wired or learned?

• II. Getting information into our brain-the senses

• III. Why doesn’t our head explode? The reticular activating system.

• IV. Top down influence

I. Hard-wired or learned?

The synapse

• Neurons do not touch. There is a microscopic gap, a synapse, between them.

• Chemicals called neurotransmitters flow across the synapse. Those biochemicals are the messengers between neurons.

The neuron that “fires” releases an action potential, a measurable electrical pulse that flows down the axon. “What fires

together, wires together.”

Genetics and the Environment

Current thinking puts the ratio at 50/50

Epigenetic development

• Biology, genetic inheritance and age, may place constraints on the influence of the environment.

• As part of a dynamic system, everything matters.

II. Getting information into our head – the senses

Each of our senses has a unique sensitivity to our environment, but

The brain deals with the information in a similar way, by establishing neuronal pathways.

• We are hard-wired to recognize some patterns-

Such as speech sounds (Chomsky and Pinker)

Such as faces ( Infant studies)

• We learn to recognize other patterns because of frequency of encounters and/or emotional state when we encounter them.

The Moony Face Experiment

III.Why doesn’t our head explode?

The reticular activating system

The world is full of stimuli, we just don’t pay attention to it all.

• Feel your big toe.

• Selective attention

The reticular activating system is our environmental radar.

• Alert to three main things:

• Is it novel?

• Is it important to me?

• Does it fit a pattern I’m familiar with?

Novelty

• Even little babies notice when things change.

• Movement is “novel.”• Think about shocking

commercials.

Is it important to me?

• Consider “the cocktail party effect” or “the airport effect.”

• “Not in my neighborhood.”

• This is why you learn students’ names as quickly as you can.

Is it related to something I already know?

• Priming.

• Our brain starts firing in a familiar pattern.

Like advertisers, teachers can take advantage of these attention-

getters.

IV. Top down influence• When we pay attention to something, we

have a better chance of remembering it.

• Top- down influence means we consciously think about something. If I tell you to look at what the child in red is doing in the next picture, you’ll focus on her.

Sometimes top-down influence can make us perceive or

remember something incorrectly.

Think about expectations teachers have for ESOL students.

Implications for teaching• One reason for the popularity of creating

concept webs, semantic webs, is that they seem to parallel our brains’ networks.

• When we give students advance graphic organizers, we’re taking advantage of top-down influence.

• The more patterns we tap into, for instance if we give visual, physical and auditory cues, the better: “gifted” thinking.