According to D'Mello, it is not advisable to intentionally confuse students who are struggling or induce confusion during high-stakes learning activities. Confusion interventions are best for higher level learners who want to be challenged with difficult tasks, are willing to risk failure, and who manage negative emotions when they occur.
"It is also important that the students are productively instead of hopelessly confused. By productive confusion, we mean that the source of the confusion is closely linked to the content of the learning session, the student attempts to resolve their confusion, and the learning environment provides help when the student struggles. Furthermore, any misleading information in the form of confusion-induction techniques should be corrected over the course of the learning session, as was done in the present experiments."
According to D'Mello, the next step in this body of research is to apply these methods to some of the more traditional domains like physics where misconceptions are common.
Source: University of Notre Dame
Friday, June 22, 2012
Confusion can be beneficial for learning
Most of us assume that confidence and certainty are preferred over uncertainty and bewilderment when it comes to learning complex information. But a new study led by Sidney D'Mello of the University of Notre Dame shows that confusion when learning can be beneficial if it is properly induced, effectively regulated, and ultimately resolved.
The study will be published in a forthcoming issue of Learning and Instruction.
Notre Dame Psychologist and Computer Scientist D'Mello, whose research areas include artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction and the learning sciences, together with Art Graesser of the University of Memphis, collaborated on the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation.
They found that by strategically inducing confusion in a learning session on difficult conceptual topics, people actually learned more effectively and were able to apply their knowledge to new problems.
In a series of experiments, subjects learned scientific reasoning concepts through interactions with computer animated agents playing the roles of a tutor and a peer learner. The animated agents and the subject engaged in interactive conversations where they collaboratively discussed the merits of sample research studies that were flawed in one critical aspect. For example, one hypothetical case study touted the merits of a diet pill, but was flawed because it did not include an appropriate control group. Confusion was induced by manipulating the information the subjects received so that the animated agents' sometimes disagreed with each other and expressed contradictory or incorrect information. The agents then asked subjects to decide which opinion had more scientific merit, thereby putting the subject in the hot-spot of having to make a decision with incomplete and sometimes contradictory information.
In addition to the confusion and uncertainty triggered by the contradictions, subjects who were confused scored higher on a difficult post-test and could more successfully identify flaws in new case studies.
"We have been investigating links between emotions and learning for almost a decade, and find that confusion can be beneficial to learning if appropriately regulated because it can cause learners to process the material more deeply in order to resolve their confusion," D'Mello says.
According to D'Mello, it is not advisable to intentionally confuse students who are struggling or induce confusion during high-stakes learning activities. Confusion interventions are best for higher level learners who want to be challenged with difficult tasks, are willing to risk failure, and who manage negative emotions when they occur.
"It is also important that the students are productively instead of hopelessly confused. By productive confusion, we mean that the source of the confusion is closely linked to the content of the learning session, the student attempts to resolve their confusion, and the learning environment provides help when the student struggles. Furthermore, any misleading information in the form of confusion-induction techniques should be corrected over the course of the learning session, as was done in the present experiments."
According to D'Mello, the next step in this body of research is to apply these methods to some of the more traditional domains like physics where misconceptions are common.
Source: University of Notre Dame
According to D'Mello, it is not advisable to intentionally confuse students who are struggling or induce confusion during high-stakes learning activities. Confusion interventions are best for higher level learners who want to be challenged with difficult tasks, are willing to risk failure, and who manage negative emotions when they occur.
"It is also important that the students are productively instead of hopelessly confused. By productive confusion, we mean that the source of the confusion is closely linked to the content of the learning session, the student attempts to resolve their confusion, and the learning environment provides help when the student struggles. Furthermore, any misleading information in the form of confusion-induction techniques should be corrected over the course of the learning session, as was done in the present experiments."
According to D'Mello, the next step in this body of research is to apply these methods to some of the more traditional domains like physics where misconceptions are common.
Source: University of Notre Dame
'Brain pacemaker' effective for years against Parkinson's disease
A "brain pacemaker" called deep brain stimulation (DBS) remains an effective treatment for Parkinson's disease for at least three years, according to a study in the June 2012 online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
But while improvements in motor function remained stable, there were gradual declines in health-related quality of life and cognitive abilities.
First author of the study is Frances M. Weaver, PhD, who has joint appointments at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.
Weaver was one of the lead investigators of a 2010 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that motor functions remained stable for two years in DBS patients. The new additional analysis extended the follow-up period to 36 months.
DBS is a treatment for Parkinson's patients who no longer benefit from medication, or who experience unacceptable side effects. DBS is not a cure, and it does not stop the disease from progressing. But in the right patients, DBS can significantly improve symptoms, especially tremors. DBS also can relieve muscle rigidity that causes decreased range of motion.
In the DBS procedure, a neurosurgeon drills a dime-size hole in the skull and inserts an electrode about 4 inches into the brain. A connecting wire from the electrode runs under the skin to a battery implanted near the collarbone. The electrode delivers mild electrical signals that effectively reorganize the brain's electrical impulses. The procedure can be done on one or both sides of the brain.
Researchers evaluated 89 patients who were stimulated in a part of the brain called the globus pallidus interna and 70 patients who were stimulated in a different part of the brain called the subthalamic nucleus. (Patients received DBS surgery at seven VA and six affiliated university medical centers.) Patients were assessed at baseline (before DBS surgery) and at 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 and 36 months. Patients were rated on a Parkinson's disease scale that includes motor functions such as speech, facial expression, tremors, rigidity, finger taps, hand movements, posture, gait, bradykinesia (slow movement) etc. The lower the rating, the better the function.
Improvements in motor function were similar in both groups of patients, and stable over time. Among patients stimulated in the globus pallidus interna, the score improved from 41.1 at baseline to 27.1 at 36 months. Among patients stimulated in the subthalamic nucleus, the score improved from 42.5 at baseline to 29.7 at 36 months.
By contrast, some early gains in quality of life and the abilities to do the activities of daily living were gradually lost, and there was a decline in neurocognitive function. This likely reflects the progression of the disease, and the emergence of symptoms that are resistant to DBS and medications.
Researchers concluded that both the globus pallidus interna and the subthalamic nucleus areas of the brain "are viable DBS targets for treatment of motor symptoms, but highlight the importance of nonmotor symptoms as determinants of quality of life in people with Parkinson's disease."
Source: Loyola University Health System
Improvements in motor function were similar in both groups of patients, and stable over time. Among patients stimulated in the globus pallidus interna, the score improved from 41.1 at baseline to 27.1 at 36 months. Among patients stimulated in the subthalamic nucleus, the score improved from 42.5 at baseline to 29.7 at 36 months.
By contrast, some early gains in quality of life and the abilities to do the activities of daily living were gradually lost, and there was a decline in neurocognitive function. This likely reflects the progression of the disease, and the emergence of symptoms that are resistant to DBS and medications.
Researchers concluded that both the globus pallidus interna and the subthalamic nucleus areas of the brain "are viable DBS targets for treatment of motor symptoms, but highlight the importance of nonmotor symptoms as determinants of quality of life in people with Parkinson's disease."
Source: Loyola University Health System
Researchers advance biometric security
Researchers in the Biometric Technologies Laboratory at the University of Calgary have developed a way for security systems to combine different biometric measurements—such as eye colour, face shape or fingerprints—and create a learning system that simulates the brain in making decisions about information from different sources.
Marina Gavrilova, the founding head of the lab—among the first in the research community to introduce and study neural network based models for information fusion—says they have developed a biometric security system that simulates learning patterns and cognitive processes of the brain.
Biometric information is becoming more common in our daily lives, being incorporated in drivers' licenses, passports and other forms of identification. Gavrilova says the work in her lab is not only pioneering the intelligent decision-making methodology for human recognition but is also important for maintaining security in virtual worlds and avatar recognition.
"Our goal is to improve accuracy and as a result improve the recognition process," says Gavrilova, a professor in the Faculty of Science. "We looked at it not just as a mathematical algorithm, but as an intelligent decision making process and the way a person will make a decision."
The algorithm can learn new biometric patterns and associate data from different data sets, allowing system to combine information, such as fingerprint, voice, gait or facial features, instead of relying on a single set of measurements.
The key is in the ability to combine features from multiple sources of information, prioritise them by identifying more important/prevalent features to learn and adapt the decision-making to changing conditions such as bad quality data samples, sensor errors or an absence of one of the biometrics.
"It's a kind of artificial intelligence application that can learn new things, patterns and features," Gavrilova says. With this new multi-dimensional approach, a security system can train itself to learn the most important features of any new data and incorporate it the decision making process.
"The neural network allows a system to combine features from different biometrics in one, learn them to make the optimal decision about the most important features, and adapt to a different environment where the set of features changes. This is a different, more flexible approach."
The research has been published in several journals, including Visual Computer and International Journal of Information Technology and Management. The work was also presented at the CyberWorlds and International Conference on Cognitive Informatics & Cognitive Computing in Banff in 2011.
Source: University of Calgary
"It's a kind of artificial intelligence application that can learn new things, patterns and features," Gavrilova says. With this new multi-dimensional approach, a security system can train itself to learn the most important features of any new data and incorporate it the decision making process.
"The neural network allows a system to combine features from different biometrics in one, learn them to make the optimal decision about the most important features, and adapt to a different environment where the set of features changes. This is a different, more flexible approach."
The research has been published in several journals, including Visual Computer and International Journal of Information Technology and Management. The work was also presented at the CyberWorlds and International Conference on Cognitive Informatics & Cognitive Computing in Banff in 2011.
Source: University of Calgary
South African daffodils may be a future cure for depression
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have previously documented that substances from the South African plant species Crinum and Cyrtanthus – akin to snowdrops and daffodils – have an effect on the mechanisms in the brain that are involved in depression. This research has now yielded further results, since a team based at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences has recently shown how several South African daffodils contain plant compounds whose characteristics enable them to negotiate the defensive blood-brain barrier that is a key challenge in all new drug development.
"Several of our plant compounds can probably be smuggled past the brain's effective barrier proteins. We examined various compounds for their influence on the transporter proteins in the brain. This study was made in a genetically-modified cell model of the blood-brain barrier that contains high levels of the transporter P-glycoprotein. Our results are promising, and several of the chemical compounds studied should therefore be tested further, as candidates for long-term drug development," says Associate Professor Birger Brodin.
"The biggest challenge in medical treatment of diseases of the brain is that the drug cannot pass through the blood-brain barrier. The blood vessels of the brain are impenetrable for most compounds, one reason being the very active transporter proteins. You could say that the proteins pump the drugs out of the cells just as quickly as they are pumped in. So it is of great interest to find compounds that manage to 'trick' this line of defence."
New cooperation between biologists and organic chemists
It will nonetheless be a long time before any possible new drug reaches our pharmacy shelves:
"This is the first stage of a lengthy process, so it will take some time before we can determine which of the plant compounds can be used in further drug development," says Birger Brodin.
Yet this does not curb his enthusiasm for the opportunities from the interdisciplinary cooperation with organic scientists from the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology and the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
"In my research group, we have had a long-term focus on the body's barrier tissue – and in recent years particularly the transport of drug compounds across the blood-brain barrier. More than 90 per cent of all potential drugs fail the test by not making it through the barrier, or being pumped out as soon as they do get in. Studies of natural therapies are a valuable source of inspiration, giving us knowledge that can also be used in other contexts," Birger Brodin emphasises.
Source: University of Copenhagen
"The biggest challenge in medical treatment of diseases of the brain is that the drug cannot pass through the blood-brain barrier. The blood vessels of the brain are impenetrable for most compounds, one reason being the very active transporter proteins. You could say that the proteins pump the drugs out of the cells just as quickly as they are pumped in. So it is of great interest to find compounds that manage to 'trick' this line of defence."
New cooperation between biologists and organic chemists
It will nonetheless be a long time before any possible new drug reaches our pharmacy shelves:
"This is the first stage of a lengthy process, so it will take some time before we can determine which of the plant compounds can be used in further drug development," says Birger Brodin.
Yet this does not curb his enthusiasm for the opportunities from the interdisciplinary cooperation with organic scientists from the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology and the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
"In my research group, we have had a long-term focus on the body's barrier tissue – and in recent years particularly the transport of drug compounds across the blood-brain barrier. More than 90 per cent of all potential drugs fail the test by not making it through the barrier, or being pumped out as soon as they do get in. Studies of natural therapies are a valuable source of inspiration, giving us knowledge that can also be used in other contexts," Birger Brodin emphasises.
Source: University of Copenhagen
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