8 February: "Intelligence"

 (28 February: please read the new material at the end of the post. Thanks)Notes on "Intelligence"

This post has rather less in it than I expected, because most of what we talked about is at least touched on at: http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/intelligence.htm where you will also find a range of onward links, specifically including the Flynn effect, and a brief mention of Gardner on multiple intelligences.

• The "Flynn effect" is discussed at http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eintell/flynneffect.shtml and also here. Note that the latter article tackles Spearman's g head on.

• The two different forms of thinking identified by Hudson--"convergent" and "divergent"--are discussed here (just in case you missed it first time).

• The distinction between Gf (fluid intelligence) and Gc (crystallized intelligence) originates from Cattell in 1967. As the initials suggest they are both seen as aspects of Spearman's g factor. There is a brief summary here. At the time of writing (last updated 8 Feb.) the Wikipedia article was pretty sound, but of course you can't rely on it.

• The inherent problems of any kind of assessment are discussed here.

• The Dweck mindset idea has its own website here, and there's a good summary--with practical implications--from Geoff Petty here. It's perhaps too simplistic and pitched in the discourse of the "personal growth" and "positive psychology" movement, but it does tie up with some of the recent research on what works best in teaching, which we shall return to later.

• See Gould S J The Mismeasure of Man for the best critical account of the concept and history of intelligence.

• Raven's matrices are introduced here, and there is an online test here.

Asides

• Wordle is actually at www.wordle.net (I'd said wordle.com)

• On eugenics, you may be interested in this review, from as late as 1952, and these videos (sample those related examples in the right-hand column, and the comments--which is why I have linked to the source rather than embedding it--which need to be read for what they say about the authors and their times rather than their explicit content).

• The contentious book on IQ (in part) I mentioned was The Bell-Curve (1994) by Herrnstein and Murray: it so happens that Charles Murray is making ripples again with another new book published this week in the States, although not much concerned with IQ this time. It's reviewed here.

• The link with  Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (raised by Jackie) is noted here. The scene of classical conditioning of babies against flowers is in this chapter.

• The other dystopian view I referred to was Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870-2033 reviewed here, and (via his obituary) here.

• De-sensitization therapy is outlined here. 

In three weeks' time:

We shall be looking at two more aspects of cognitive theory.

• Gestalt, and

• Deep and surface learning

These pages are of course just starters. In all probability I shall be adding further recommendations during the break, so please keep watching this space.

Have a good break!

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Additional points (28 February)

I've just been reviewing the pacing of this unit, and bearing in mind that you want time on application and indeed preparation for the assessment, I think we need to quicken the pace a little. So I'd like to look at learning from experience tomorrow, too. We've already touched on it several times, but not looked at it systematically. I know the web-page looks dense, but remember, we are interested in the underlying ideas, not in memorising the detail.

That should mean that we can go on to humanistic and situated ideas about learning the following week (again, they just need to be put in context, because we've already mentioned them), and we shall by then have an overview of the field, ready to start exploring its relevance with reference to your own practice.

Ready for that: please give some thought to one or two critical incidents from your own teaching, which you are prepared to share and "mine" to see what the ideas have to say about them.

By "critical incidents" I don't necessarily mean "problems". They may be occasions on which "the penny dropped" for someone. Why?  Or when you tried teaching something differently, and the results were unexpected. Why, and how?

We'll talk about this in more detail tomorrow. See you then!

Supplemental: more on memory

You may be interested in this recent article: "Enjoyable essay review of new book that charts a century of memory research. From Frederic Bartlett, who concluded in 1913 that we remake our memories each time we remember them, right up to contemporary research on memory erasure."

1 February: Behaviourism

Sorry a few of you missed some of the material; I've made rather greater than usual use of video this week to help you to catch up, but do bring your questions to next week's session.

Here is an annotated version of the full presentation, of which we saw only a few slides;

Notes on Behaviourism

My summary page on behaviourism is at www.learningandteaching.info/learning/behaviour.htm, with links in the side-bar to other pages on the site and external links in the main body of the page.

If you are searching for yourself, remember that "behavior" will get many more hits than "behaviour". If you come across anything particularly good, let me know, please.

For a fun simulation of Pavlov's original experiment, try:http://www.simplypsychology.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pavlov.swf

Books! Look at;
SLATER L (2004) Opening Skinner's Box; great psychological experiments of the twentieth century London; Bloomsbury --on Skinner and the myths surrounding him, and lots of other good stuff in a popular-science style.

Here's a reasonable short overview:



Here’s a rather sanitised reconstruction of Pavlov’s set-up!



This half-hour silent film, however, is authentic.

(Pavlov, Watson and Thorndike were interested only in stimulus and response (S-R) behaviour; Skinner paid more attention to the organism as part of the chain (S-O-R), which is why he is sometimes referred to as a "neo-behaviourist".)

Here’s a bit more detail on Skinner and his pigeons and free will…



Some videos I referred to can be viewed here:

• YouTube playlist "Skinner and Behaviourism"http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6439B7CD9DD445F9&page=1

• Basic chicken training (QuickTime movie: download free version here) 

• Shaping chicken behaviour (also QuickTime)

(Note: be careful when downloading movie players: they use sneaky tricks to get you to sign up for more than you bargained for!)

There's a very straightforward overview of clicker training for dogs here:



Note that there are two stages, which I think I should have spelt out more clearly:

• The first is classical conditioning, establishing the association between the sound of the clicker (conditioned stimulus) and the treat (unconditioned stimulus) 

• The second is using that conditioned response to reinforce and then shape behaviour in a desired pattern.

...and here is a training session in real-time showing how long it takes (once the conditioned response to the click has been established):



at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC367wKGi4M there are as many related videos as you could wish for.

Here is original footage of the case of Little Albert (1920). Forgive the intrusive music, and trust what you see, and not what the commentary tells you to make of it!



Here is a postscript on the case, which is even more disturbing, but does make sense of the film you just watched.

It is very easy, as we discussed, to get hung up on the details of behaviourism, partly because it is so experimentally focused, and there seems to be a lot to remember. Don't worry about that--concentrate on what you can do with it.

Points 

• Here's the latest take on Robert the Bruce and the spider. 

• There is an outline of the principles and practice of token economies here. 

• A propos of nothing (except that it is a very interesting novel), Never Let Me Go is by Kazuo Ishigoru.

Next week 

We shall move on to some selected aspects of cognitive theories of learning.


In particular we'll be looking at the fraught topic of intelligence, so start here and follow the links. You may also get into the idea of multiple intelligences, convergent and divergent thinking, and--heaven help you--learning styles.

If you have time to take in a book on it, from a critical stance, see:

• Gould S J (1997) The Mismeasure of Man (rev. ed.) London; Penguin

Gould also describes the eugenics experiments which we discussed briefly this week.