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- Creators: Department of Psychology
Description
The premise of the embodied cognition hypothesis is that cognitive processes require emotion, sensory, and motor systems in the brain, rather than using arbitrary symbols divorced from sensorimotor systems. The hypothesis explains many of the mechanisms of mental simulation or imagination and how they facilitate comprehension of concepts. Some forms of embodied processing can be measured using electroencephalography (EEG), in a particular waveform known as the mu rhythm (8-13 Hz) in the sensorimotor cortex of the brain. Power in the mu band is suppressed (or de-synchronized) when an individual performs an action, as well as when the individual imagines performing the action, thus mu suppression measures embodied imagination. An important question however is whether the sensorimotor cortex involvement while reading, as measured by mu suppression, is part of the comprehension of what is read or if it is arises after comprehension has taken place. To answer this question, participants first took the Gates-MacGinitie reading comprehension test. Then, mu-suppression was measured while participants read experimental materials. The degree of mu-suppression while reading verbs correlated .45 with their score on the Gates-MacGinitie test. This correlation strongly suggests that the sensorimotor system involvement while reading action sentences is part of the comprehension process rather than being an aftereffect.
ContributorsMarino, Annette Webb (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Blais, Chris (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The present studies experimentally compared the effectiveness of self-explaining versus taking notes for improving comprehension of a difficult science among readers who varied in prior knowledge, reading skill, and later vocabulary skill. Study 1 (N = 70) examined how instructions to simply “note-take” or “self-explain” influenced text-based and inferential comprehension. Task did not influence comprehension performance but, as expected, readers with higher science prior knowledge outperformed their less knowledgeable peers, who also earned lower scores on inferential questions compared to text-based questions. To replicate and extend these findings, Study 2 (N = 60) provided readers with more specific, distinct instructions and examples for self-explanation and note-taking tasks prior to engaging in the same task. The results showed that, in the self-explanation task, high-knowledge readers outperformed low-knowledge readers on the text-based questions. These results suggest that self-explanation supported more knowledgeable and skilled readers for text-based questions.
ContributorsGoblirsch, Emily (Author) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis director) / Butterfuss, Reese (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2022-05