Chapter 3

1. As I read chapter 3, I was increasingly more amazed with the capabilities of the human brain. Chapter 3 was about different types of attention and consciouness. The book explains that attention is a focus of concentration on a particular subject. Having said that, there are several types of attention. Divided attention is when one is trying to focus on two things at once. In doing this, people usually aren't able to perform both tasks well. Selective attention is when one selects a specific area to focus on and the other stimuli become the background. One example of this is dichotic listening. This occurs when two different messages are being presented in each ear. It is almost impossible to focus on one message and correctly hear the other. Another type of selective attention is noted through the Stroop effect. This is explained by having subjects read color words that are written in colored ink that does not correspond to the word itself. The subject has to become more aware of the task than the colored ink, which can be difficult. During a visual search, a target can be found if it is present and familiar to the subject. Saccadic eye movements were also described in this chapter. These are slight jumps and bumps that the eye makes when gather information. The eye moves ahead to "get a picture" of the up-coming text.

While the chapter discusses attention and its theories, it also explains the concept of consciousness. This is described as an awareness of one's environment and all of its components. The chapter goes on to connect consciousness with attention. While the two are connected, they are not always intertwined. Quite often we are not aware of our own thought processes and actions, as they just seem to happen. Thought suppression is an interesting topic because the more we tell ourselves not to think of something, the more we become conscious of it. Our consciousness is quite amazing, and that is where blindsight comes into play. Blindsight occurs when there is damage to the visual cortex resulting in a lack of vision, but the individual can still see basic components of the object.

2. This chapter fits in nicely with our other findings from previous reading. I think that most related concept is that the brain is an amazing structure that cannot be simply labled or defined. Each component is inter-connected and overlapping. Perception is a combination of bottom-up and top-down processes, just as attention is a combination of many different facets.

3. I don't think that I am confused about the chapter as much as I am how brain leisons can change the perception of what is really there. This made me wonder what my own students are perceiving when it seems quite obvious to me.

4. As for applying this to my own teaching, I think that I will concentrate on the attention aspects of the chapters. I have noticed that several of my students struggle with attention. I will need to be more aware of situations where dichotic listening occur in my classroom. Quite often, I provide instructions during small group times. I have noticed that I have to repeat these instructions several times. I believe that it is because my students do not have the abilities to listen to their group and me at the same time.

5. The author offers many studies that confirm the reliability of the material in this chapter. I was especially interested in the study regarding brain lesions and perception.

6.I believe that this chapter is important in explaining attention and consciousness. It is crucial for my own metacognition as well as my students' attention and awareness. This chapter has opened my eyes as what to expect my students to be able to attend to, and why they might struggle.

7.I believe that I would use the consciousness aspect of the chapter for character education and conflict resolution. Many of my students struggle with both of these concepts, and I am now questioning if they are really conscious of the situations. I would try to find and conduct activities that encourage awareness and consciousness in these real-world situations.

8.I am not sure that I could accomplish anything faster or cheaper than what the human brain can do.

Thanks for answers

Jill and Katwalk,
Thanks for the ideas. I do the spelling exercises, and it seems to work for a little while. The transfer with my class isn't really that great. I do like the animal activity too. We do something like this with our Dr. Seuss unit. I am going to try your ideas again. Thanks for the help!

Chapter 2 questions

As I read chapter 2, I did have to think about the errors from our own processing which cause blindness. I think that too often my students look at only the beginning letter when beginning to read. I know that some of this is developmental, but they are over-generalizing their reading. For example, every word that begins with a /c/ is the word "cat" to them. I do understand that there are blindness factors that must be considered when we are teaching. My students are experience change blindness because they don't recognize or notice the other letters. When I use strategies to encourage them to notice the other letters, only a few of the students apply these to their reading, and that application doesn't transfer to other words or settings. The students that really need to improve their reading skills are the ones that seem to get locked on this blindness. If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Chapter 2

I was very interested in the differences between the top-down and bottom-up processing theories. The bottom-up seemed to focus on starting small and working towards more complex ideas and thoughts. I tend to see a great deal of bottom-up processing in my kindergarten classroom. I found the feature analysis theory very interesting as well. This was a direct correlation to the bottom-up way of thinking because my students have a tendency to learn letters by looking at each part of the letter. For me, the top-down processing seemed to look at the big picture and work down into smaller components. My students who are ready to read seem to use more of this processing. They are looking for big clues to help them with their questions.
I connected both of these processes to the many different theories that I use in my classroom. I use more than one theory in hopes to provide successful education to my students. These processes are both needed for information acquisition. They may be used at the same or different times in the students' learning. The author validates her point of feature analysis by illustrating the chart on page forty. Looking at the chart, it was easy to see why some of my students have a difficult time identifying letters if they don't connect them to a sound. The audio-visual connection was also made in chapter two. The author stresses that using auditory and visual cues provide more learning opportunities for the students.
One part of the chapter that I found amazing was the part on blindness. Whether the blindness be "change" or "inattentional," I am sure that I fall under one of these categories quite often. In a busy world, where we are constantly multitasking, I am sure that I am missing a vast amount of details. I will have to start trying to notice more.