Author Archives: sierrahorton

Speed Reading: Does it Work?

http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/reading-fa

If you’ve ever had to read for work, a class, or even chosen to read for pleasure, you’ve probably pondered the idea of reading more quickly. Some of you have probably even attempted to speed read; however, maybe you hesitated because you were scared that you would skim over some key information or miss out on the author’s tone and the emotion behind the piece. Or if you’re anything like me, you are intrigued by this talent but have no idea how to do it or where to begin. These are all valid worries and, luckily, speed reading has been a large topic of interest to researchers around the globe for decades.

What is speed reading anyway?

According to Bernice Leary’s article on speed reading, the goal of this technique is not simply to read the material quickly or how many words and pages you can read in an hour. Leary argues that speed reading is all about, “Aiming for the ‘speed of comprehension’, ‘speed of organization’, ‘speed in using the index’, etc..” It is important to remember that while the goal is to read more material in a smaller amount of time, we must focus on the comprehension, organization, and understanding of the material as Leary speaks about. Without comprehension, there is no point in reading the material in the first place.

When should you use this technique?

Before diving into learning the “how to’s” of speed reading, it’s also extremely important to understand why you should speed read and when it is appropriate to use this technique. In many cases, speed reading can actually do more harm than good. In Milena Tsvetkova’s article, The Speed Reading is in Disrepute, Tsvetkova discusses that the use of this technique may be the thief of knowledge and how the advantages of reading more slowly often outweigh those of speed reading. For instance, in a study discussed in Tsvetkova’s article, people who used speed reading remembered: “too little of the perceived information, because the messages [were] generally submitted chaotically, fragmentary, [and] out of any logical order or structure.” According to Tsvetkova, this is because, “The physiological truth is that the visual analyzer perceives the letter, the word only when it stops, and when the eye is fixed.” These gaps in cohesive sentences cause the reader to comprehend less information and read blindly, but, despite these negative outcomes, there are still instances in which speed reading is beneficial. For example, it is still a helpful technique to use when you have a general idea of the topic at hand and you do not need to comprehend too much of the information, like when reading for a review. Mostly, the question of when speed reading is appropriate is a complete judgment call.

So how do you do it?

According to Daniel Reisberg in “Cognition: Exploring the Science of the Mind”, it is possible to teach people to speed read, and it is actually quite easy. Reisberg claims that speed reading is not about reading faster, but instead about skipping more words in the material. In turn, you are not reading faster but reading less, and there are four steps to this process:

  1. Girl, Books, School, Reading, Learning, HappyFlip through the text quickly, look at the figures and figure captions, read the summary if one is provided, and gather a broad sense of what the material is about.
  2. Rely on inferences, not word-for-word ideas.
  3. Use your finger or an index card to guide you down the page. Make sure to use it to lead you instead of following it exactly.
  4. Don’t move too quickly. If you realize you don’t know what is going on, slow down.

Even though there are advantages to reading quickly, I believe that I will stick to reading more slowly in order to make sure that I understand the material I am reading on a deeper level. I will probably only try this technique if I have an enormous amount of reading to do in a short period of time and keep Leary’s tip in mind too, “only read materials that can be read speedily” like topics I am familiar with or things that are not of much importance.

 

 

Reisberg, D. (2016). Cognition: Exploring the science of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton &.

Feature Nets and Word Recognition

 

This brain expanding meme, also known as Galaxy Brain, has been all over social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook since 2017 and it seems to only be gaining popularity as time progresses. The concept behind the meme is that the brain metaphorically “grows” as the variable that it is presented with becomes more intellectually involved. The irony of the meme and the information or variables that each image is paired with is what makes it so comical. 

 

Using the conceptual foundations behind this ironic trend, I have created a meme to simplify the feature net model and represent the intricate layers of the hierarchical system of word recognition in the brain. According to Grainger and colleagues, the feature net model, originally known as the Pandemonium model, was created by Oliver Selfridge in 1959. Grainger, states that the hypothesis of which Selfridge based this work off of inferred that “letters are identified via their component features”. With this hypothesis, Selfridge was able to create a model that is still used today when discussing word recognition. 

Even though the basics of Selfridge’s model are still used today, it has evolved with time and additional research. Recent research has discovered the simplest and possibly most important layer of this complex hierarchical chain of word and letter recognition called feature detectors. Grainger and his colleagues describe these feature detectors as, “the part of our word recognition system responsible for acknowledging and interpreting lines of varying curves and orientations”. This article discusses different research on these feature-based detectors and concludes that this additional layer to Selfridge’s original model is pertinent. Based on new research using a more psycho-physical approach to break down and dissect this complicated system, Grainger claims there is strong evidence that letters are identified by their varying features of lines and curves. 

In addition to the first layer, we currently understand this process of word recognition in four basic components: feature detectors, letter detectors, bigram detectors, and word detectors. Moving up from feature detectors, letter detectors are the pieces of this model that string each feature into a letter. According to “How the Brain Works: Explaining Consciousness” by Ben Salzberg, this letter recognition occurs because of the firing of different neurons based on which ones are used more frequently and, therefore, have a higher starting activation level and fire more easily.

After these letters are recognized, the same process happens with the next step in our recognition system: bigram detectors. Bigram detectors connect the letters we previously recognized based on the frequency of firing and threshold levels just like letter detectors. However, just as Salzberg concludes in his article, these bigram detectors are based more on the typicality of our specific language. For instance, in English, “Q” rarely ever comes after “L”, so this neuron would have a much higher threshold and not fire as easily as “CL” would in this situation. Finally, bigram detectors are stringed together with word detectors, using the same neuron-firing principles to make a full word.

Even though this process is so complex, using so many different detectors and neurons at the same time, this happens unconsciously at a rapid speed each time we see a word. The way this complexity increases with each step is the very reason and explanation for the meme that I have created. It is a way to represent this process of word recognition in a manner that anyone who is familiar with the meme world and has knowledge of word recognition can understand.

Understanding Illusions

Are these images different?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/crystalro/this-optical-illusion-is-hurting-my-head

Optical illusions have always fascinated me. The way our eyes and brain work together and often trick us into seeing things that aren’t really there or that are different than they really are is hard to understand, or is it?

In April of 2018 Buzzfeed employee, Crystal Ro, wrote an article about this image that she found on Reddit. She wanted to try and see if the rest of the world was experiencing the same headache-inducing confusion that she was when staring at this image. After using photoshop to copy the image at 50% opacity, she laid the right image directly on top of the left. This is when she realized that these images were in fact perfectly identical, pixel by pixel. With knowing this, why is it still so difficult to look at them as if they are the same image? Why does the image on the right look like it is taken at a different angle than the one on the left?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/crystalro/this-optical-illusion-is-hurting-my-head

The article mentions that one Reddit user, All-Cal, says this illusion is, “because the two streets come together at the bottom of the pictures. Your brain tries to perceive this as one image with a fork in the road and therefore the street in the picture on the left must be at a different angle than the picture on the right.” So, is this Reddit user making a correct assumption?

According to an article from Science Daily about how our brains see the world, this illusion could be due to the interaction of the visual system, through parallel processing, with the brain. This article mostly discusses a study about our perception of motion; however, it also mentions key information about how the visual system works. For example, the key finding from this research explains parallel processing as, “[how] the brain’s two visual pathways interact with each other instead of being separate.” This means that we resolve the vagueness that we see by making inferences through the application of our visual system and our brain.

It also turns out that our brains like to interpret things in the simplest ways possible. Sometimes this simplicity leads to errors in our perceptions of visual stimuli. In an article about unconscious inference, this phenomenon is discussed to explain how the perception of our vision is often problematic or even incorrect. For instance, we look at this image and try to understand it in a simple way based on the spacial cues. The depth of this image, perceived by the distance of the van in the background, the lighting and shadows, and the angle of the street that seems to meet at a point in the bottom left corner, cause us to perceive the image as one street. These features of the image that indicate position are called binocular cues. Our eyes are seeing it correctly, but because we are trying to make inferences based on these binocular cues, we interpret it in a way that makes the most sense to us. Therefore, we perceive the image as a simple fork in the road, just as All-Cal said. In short, this illusion can be described as a misinterpretation of visual stimuli.

When I first saw this image, I was skeptical that it was the same picture. Even so, using research articles, I was able to further understand the way our brain interprets the things that we see. I find it very interesting that we can look at an image like this and our eyes take in the correct view of it, but our brains change it slightly based on unconscious inferences and binocular cues. Just as the Reddit user All-Cal pointed out, we see roads that come together at a point almost daily, so using the shadow and movement of the picture, we interpret a simple fork in the road even when that isn’t the case. This makes me wonder, how much can we really rely on our brain when it comes to inferring our visual intake?

Can understanding the forgetting curve help you achieve a 4.0?

Imagine what your grades would be like if you could remember things more easily and ensure that all your study methods are working to their fullest potential? Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered the method of savings and the forgetting curve by testing his ability to memorize a list of syllables in a longitudinal study. An article from the Independent News of International Students explains why understanding Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve is essential for improving your memory and boosting your grades.

https://www.psychestudy.com/cognitive/memory/ebbinghaus-forgetting

The article begins by discussing the steepness of the forgetting curve, which means that as soon as we learn something, we quickly begin to forget the majority of that information. The article compares this progression to cramming for a big exam. When attempting to memorize a large amount of information in a short period of time, you only hold onto the information until it isn’t necessary anymore (i. e. a few days later). However, this article gives a few tips on how we can improve our memory and ensure that the information stays with us for a much longer period of time.

The first tip the article gives is to connect new information with what you already know. They claim that the knowledge you already possess is not affected by the forgetting curve; therefore, connecting new memories to older memories that are already fully integrated would result in quicker memory gain. In one study, A Replication and Analysis of Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, they found the same correlations as Ebbinghaus’ original research. However, this tip cannot be backed up by this research because there was no instance in which the new information being learned was connected to previous knowledge. Even so, we can assume that, since the forgetting curve pertains to new memories, previous knowledge is most likely unaffected by this theory. Therefore, the article was accurate in saying that integrating new information to previous knowledge would positively impact your studying and information retention.

The second tip the article gives is to keep accessing and activating the information in regularly spaced intervals. They claim that this will ensure that the knowledge becomes fully integrated. I completely agree with this tip based on the replication of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve which had near-identical results that supported the original findings of Ebbinghaus’ method of savings or savings affect. In this study, the researchers activated the information at twenty minutes, one hour, nine hours, one day, two days, six days, and thirty-one days. Congruent with Ebbinghaus’ findings, the subjects memory improved significantly as time progressed. Therefore, this tip of repetitively accessing information on a schedule should impressively increase your memory!

https://giphy.com/gifs/game-memory-WgM4yPZQneYZa

The final tip the article suggests is to download memory games that integrate information that you’re studying. The writer claims that through this memory testing software, you can train your brain to turn learning into an engaging activity and, therefore, increase your chances of remembering. However, in one study about the effect of brain training games on working memory and processing speeds in young adults, the results do not indicate that brain training games would work for everyone. Some games might improve some cognitive functions, but this is not a strong enough correlation to support this article’s tip that brain games will improve learning.

Overall, this article applied Ebbinghaus’ research fairly well. They understood the large aspects of his studies and used this knowledge to come up with a few good tips on improving memory for students. This said, the writer did not have research to back up a few of these tips and, therefore, wrongly assumed that brain games always improve memory. Even though this could be the case in some individuals, based on the research I found, we cannot apply this to the general population.

Nonetheless, I believe this is a very relevant article that contains a few great tips that everyone could begin to integrate into their studying routines. The most reliable tip is to access the information your studying on a regular basis to ensure that you are retaining the information, just as Ebbinghaus’ original research found with the savings affect. An easy way to do this is to plan your studying strategically each week, staying on a routine schedule. What tip will you start using in order to make your studying becomes more efficient in order to boost your grades?