Chapter 7

1. Chapter 7 discusses mental images and how they can be stored in our brains; there is an ongoing debate between a propositional code and an analog code within these parameters. Interference is an issue with images and can occur between the actual visual image and the image in your mind in which these interferences can also effect one's motor imagery. Mental images are also stored in our brains as cognitive maps in which we use them to navigate images we see into storage in our memory and allow them to "guide us" when we are recalling information and visually see a map in our mind. One issue with cognitive maps is that they are distorted and are inaccurate with spatial errors.
2. When discussing the theories in the imagery debate, it reminded me of Chapter 2's distinctive features when discussing how we process a stimulus' features because I began to think that we look at those features and visually process them into our working memory, encode them using memory strategies, and process them into long term so those features are placed together and, in fact, could make a cognitive map of a location or area-or just a simple figure.
3. I would like to see those who are spatially inept or struggle with that issue to have been discussed. In most case studies, it discussed that there were always some who performed better (so I would assume they have better spatial skills) so I would like the author to have gone more in depth and looked at as to why they did not perform as well in the studies pertaining to the mental imagery. Interference was discussed and I can see that as a "disability" to the mental imagery, but I would like to know more about how and why some just don't have that cognitive spatial ability which would seem to place them into the "lower performing" groups in the studies. This would greatly help me as a teacher with students who just were not made the same way as higher achieving students.
4. The imagery debate made me more cognizant that my students are possibly storing mental images not only as pictures but possibly also as a language representation. I am also more aware that some students are not going to be good at rotating images and aligning figures in their mind. It seems more difficult for some but that can relate to my kids' reading when they may not be able to differentiate between different letter fonts because they simply cannot align or rotate the features from their "known" letters into different letters they do not recognize and they are unable to rotate those features into the letter that they know.
5. I find that the studies might be legitimate but I am unsure of all of the studies because they do not give any information related to those participating in this study. Since the book talked about the differences (although not quite as large as we thought) between genders with spatial abilities, I think the study would be more reliable if we knew the ratio of males/females. That could skew the results if more men or women participated and make the case studies researcher biased.
6. I think that this information has helped to improve how we teach to meet the needs of our students. We have learned that some students are more spatial than others and others are more visually processing. This helps us as professionals to realize that some students need to get up and move around to learn and some learn by looking at a stimulus and placing that image in their brain. And some are just going to be able to spatially move objects in their heads while others just have not been wired that way. We have to be creative and teach to different needs.
7. Again, I have to continually refer to my low reading students (since that's all I have) but this chapter helps me to see that not all of my students are going to place learned information the same way into their brain, so maybe I need to recreate and consider those differences among my students. I also need to consider that interferences can occur and maybe it's not that my students just don't "Get it," maybe it's just that at that moment during the learning process, an interference occurred between the visual and mental images.
8. I cannot imagine how much fmri's cost, but there has to be a better way of viewing the brain's activity during specific cognitive tasks. Right now I don't have the answer to that for a cheaper version of the test, but I would think that we could continue to have groups that are more "heterogeneous" and conduct studies analyzing responses rather than brain activity.