Cognitive Science 301

Applied Cognitive Science and Education
Fall 2006

Final Project for CogSci 301

Your final report/project will be an analysis of your own neurodevelopmental constructs and information from the literature regarding 6 of Levine's 8 neurodevelopmental constructs and the appropriate assessments.  SEE BELOW.   Alternatively, you may use another person, who is willing to be extensively interviewed.  If you use another person, you must complete authorization to release information paperwork.  If you are taking this course for CogSci 501 credit this project must involve complete analysis of two different individuals (one may be a middle school or elementary school student).

Background information: 

1. Comment on how the school system in which you were educated, private or public, used knowledge of these constructs in allowing your success.

2. How could the system be improved to allow equal access and maximum learning for all in a public setting?  Comment and explain.

3. In Chapter 10 of Learning Outside the Lines the authors state, ". . . we knew better than anyone else that our worth and intelligence were not synonymous with the narrow standards by which academic performance is measured.  School develops and values less than 10 percent of what it means to be human and to live a full life."  Use information in either of the books that we have used in this class to write a paragraph about the validity of these statements.  Please don't use your opinion, use information from the lecture notes, Levine's book, and/or Learning Outside the Lines.

IN ADDITION:  This project needs to include 6 of Levine's 8 neurodevelopmental constructs and the appropriate assessments as listed below.  Choose 6.

ATTENTION:

1. Administer the grid in Figure 2.2.  Have the person quickly circle all figures that are the same as the first circled pattern.  Observe the person by rating the testing behavior using Attention Checkpoint One, p 53.

2. Attention Control Inventory, Parts I, II and III
   ¶ Comment on the results of these different checklists.  Are there any particularly strong areas?  Are there any areas that make function difficult - especially when the task is not very interesting?
   ¶ Consult Figure 2-1 in considering the overall view of assessment of attention controls.

3. If there are any weaknesses - do you (or the student being assessed) use any bypass strategies or interventions in the classroom?  If so rate and explain their effectiveness.

MEMORY

1. ANSER System's memory questionnaire, p 91

2. Do you and/or your subject/testee use any of the facilitators of Active Working Memory described on pages 74 - 75?  Which are most successful for you?

3. Storage and Access to Long-Term Memory: Assess which, if any, techniques work best for you - and in which academic areas.  The techniques involve Paired Association, Procedural Knowledge, Rules and Regularity, Categories, Experiences and Episodes (described on pages 76 - 87)
   AND either #4 - or- #5 below.

4. Design a memory strategy to help a middle school student who is having trouble retrieving information for an English test involving grammar/syntax (using verbs, subjects, and direct objects).

5. Look at memory strategies used in Learning Outside the Lines, try a new one in one of your classes and report its effectiveness.

SPATIAL ORDERING

1. Design a simple assessment to measure spatial ordering and administer it to another student.  Report the results and analyze whether it really assessed spatial ordering.  What other neurodevelopmental constructs were involved in doing this assessment?

2. What is the level of your expertise/strength in spatial ordering?  Give examples to support your claim.  Propose strategies of how could you strengthen it further?

TEMPORAL-SEQUENTIAL ORDERING

1. Temporal-sequential ordering is important for production of reports, projects, almost everything that you do as a student.  What is one strategy that works for you when you are having trouble producing an essay or solution to a math/physics problem?  Is that strategy always effective?  Explain.

2. Design a simple assessment to measure temporal-sequential ordering and administer it to another student.  Report the results and analyze whether it really assessed temporal sequential ordering.  What other neurodevelopmental constructs were involved in doing this assessment?

LANGUAGE

1. Obtain a sample of written and oral language
2. Your assessment should include 3 of the following 5 bullets: (You realize, of course, that an assessment should include all of the following evaluations.  However, for the purpose of simplifying this task I ask you to include 3 of the 5.)
   • tests of auditory discrimination and phonological awareness
   • evaluation of vocabulary (antonyms, synonyms, meanings of words, analogies)
     • word retrieval
   • evaluation of use of syntax and morphology
     • sentence formation
   • metalinguistic evaluation: ability to understand ambiguity, figurative language, paradoxes, and proverbs
   • ability to follow verbal instructions
   • receptive and expressive language skills at all levels
3. See pages 172-175 for factors which can negatively impact your assessment.  Evaluate which, if any, of these factors may have influenced the individual being assessed.

MOTOR IMPLEMENTATION

1. Examine the diagram in Figure 6-1 with yourself in mind.  Perform a well-learned motor activity and determine which of the steps you were probably using.  Perform a new task, perhaps with your other hand or with a foot.  Which of the steps were you aware of using?

2. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses regarding gross motor function and graphomotor function.  With regard to graphomotor function analyze your pencil grip, quality and importance of kinesthetic feedback, eye-hand coordination, fine motor production, motor memory and its retrieval before implementation.

3. Design a task which would allow you to determine the specific area of graphomotor dysfunction if you encountered a second grader with very slow graphomotor processing.

HIGHER-ORDER COGNITION

1. Rate yourself in each of the component areas of Higher-Order Cognition according to Levine (p 217).  Use the description of each of these areas and the subareas to assist in your self-rating.
   ¶  Types of concepts: concrete, abstract, verbal, nonverbal, process concepts
   ¶  Critical steps in problem-solving (pages 222-224)
   ¶ Rule development and utilization
   ¶ Analogic reasoning
   ¶ Classification skills
   ¶ Divergent/Creative thinking
   ¶ Metacognition

2. What are your cognitive preferences? (pages 236-239)  How do you think that your cognitive strengths and weaknesses are involved in determining your cognitive preferences?  Explain.  According the Levine "All students need help with higher-order cognition." (p 251)  Do you use any of the items Levine shows in his Problem-Solving Planner of Figure 7-3 (pages 255-257)?

SOCIAL ABILITY

1. Comment on how attentional dysfunction would impact all of the skill/attributes listed in Table 8-1: Social competencies associated with popularity (p 275). 

2. If you assessed a child/student (even a college student) and found that one of the skill/attributes was lacking or dysfunctional, describe how would you intervene and attempt to instruct or help the person strengthen that skill/attribute.  (You choose the one skill/attribute to strengthen.)  Explain your reasoning and strategy for why you would use that intervention.