This is fascinating stuff to me and really gets my wheels turning for the class project. I have a notion of storyboarding a game for students that would allow them to measure their own FoK, calibration, JoL, relative accuracy, etc. all while working to memorize particular facts that they're interested in -- language learning might be an easy example, but this also makes me think of topics like the bones in the body or the meanings of various suffixes and prefixes in biochemistry. I've heard that medical students in particular tend to be people who are very strong at memorization and focus on large amounts of material, so targeting these knowledge domains might be very productive. The overall paper I submit could include something like a business plan. The program could calculate the key figures and allow people to choose among either a bank of items or enter their own (which could then be socially shared). The results could then give them advice on studying tips, customized to their personal situation.
I found myself wondering about the methodologies and potential datasources in something like the SAT as a 'laboratory' for analyzing FoK and JoL. Students can mark answers for review and go back to them. Surely the data is recorded and probably analyzed -- what does it tell us?
The discussion question concerning a study design for assessing metacognitive growth over time was an interesting one. As a parent, I've seen the 'lightbulb moment' and 'sudden physical leaps' in a child's development -- not only with mastery of a skill like walking, which comes in stages but also has a moment of blossoming within a short span -- but also with certain psychological and intellectual phenomena, like speaking in sentences or suddenly realizing how strings of letters make words. All this makes me think of the deliberate decision we made to take our child to try to take our kids to do psychology tests when they can. The games are ok, the pay is ok, but the payoff from our perspective was helping them to be comfortable working with adults who are assessing them -- maybe in strange ways -- to help them be ready for standardized and IQ tests. The ability to talk to them about science and to see scientists in action (often women) as also significant. Based on these readings about metacognition, it occurs to me that this might also help them to improve their own self-awareness. I always wonder if there is a way to detect and correct for 'bad faith' subjects -- people intentionally getting things wrong -- or 'testing super fans' -- people whose exposure to tests of this type makes their results less applicable for understanding the population as a whole.
One surprising thing I learned through this material was how powerful it can be to combine a fairly simple model with fairly simple and well-designed experiments. Having done a lot of psych experiments at the U of C over time, I always wondered what was 'behind the curtain' and this insight into study design was very interesting. Sometimes you read about psychological models and you wonder how much "real science" is behind the model. I suppose we can once again thank the behaviorists for calling the field into account.
One topic I have questions about is retention -- both on a personal level and overall. What do we know about retention? The text seems to gloss over this, although the MindTools discuss a cycle of information rehearsal. I'd like to dig into this topic more deeply and understand how we think it works. It seems like in general direct memory declines more quickly than feeling of knowing. What's the best technique revive faded memory, prevent memory from fading, or restore memory after it has faded beyond even the feeling of knowing, but really was once known.
One thing I don't understand is this discussion of 'gamma'. It may not be important in the longer term, but I'd like to get my hands on some more information about the math and calculations used for this type of work. I'd like to be able to do some problem sets or otherwise directly apply the formulas to data from experiments. Also, in class, I asked the question as to whether memory is all there is -- is the model we have really comprehensive. The answer, which I didn't fully understand, was essentially 'yes'. I am still struggling with this, however, because it seems like there is such a thing as instinct and other inborn cognitions/strategy/pre-wiring. And the distinction between conscious and unconscious thought is not really included in this model either. There are plenty of things that I'm thinking about, even right now, that don't have to do with pulling up memories. Fuzzy matching and pattern recognition might be another example -- things that human brains at least today seem to be better at doing then computers. The question to build on these things would then be, do we have a way to measure, enhance, model, understand, etc. those parts of the brain. There are parts of my behavior and my thinking processes that are not particularly learned, as far as I know. Hallucination is another potential example -- you're not remembering or perceiving, but rather inserting notions from somewhere else into your perception as it comes in, and not consciously so. I may not have framed the question correctly, because I am not very satisfied with the answer. So I'm still struggling with this topic.
This week's mind tools activity was about effectiveness through time management, goal-setting, and control of distractions. I found the material to be mostly review, but also a very helpful reminder. I'm aware of these techniques for getting the most out of your time, but I do fall away from time-management habits, especially when my routine shifts.
For example, when I was regularly going to work on an early schedule, 7 - 3:30 or so, the first thing I did each Monday was to create a weekly plan with goals and to-dos and so on. I felt very calm and in control of my work. But when I was no longer following this schedule, my planning time became erratic, and I started to lose some of the benefits of the approach I was taking. When I left my job, my schedule became very disrupted -- and due to a combination of personal and professional factors, I would find myself stepping in and out of routines. My life is starting to settle into a little more of a routine now, but I anticipate that it will change substantially this week, and again in a few more weeks, and even more dramatically a few weeks after that, again due to changes in work and changes at home.
Time-tracking is the same way -- when I track my time, I have more control over how I use that time. It's actually really rewarding to feel that slight resistance, when I'm just-about-to-get-distracted, and my brain says "no! focus! if you change tasks, you'll have to put the change on your timesheet!". It's very helpful as long as I stick with it. For now, I'm using the 'Mind Tools' document since it's assigned but my favorite tool for this is the toggl.com app I used at work for a similar "I want to enhance my personal effectiveness" purpose.
My overall self-assessment is that at the macro level, I'm making effective use of my time and moving in all the right directions, but at the micro level there is a lot of running back and forth without as much focus. I make the right moves, but it takes me longer to figure out that move than it should, and as a consequence I waste time. I'm just too reactive right now. I feel like actually changing my behavior is lagging about 2 weeks behind the circumstances that necessitate that change.
To address this, I need to reflect on how to carve out a little more consistency for myself despite all the changes I'm surrounded by and participating in, because the disruption and constant changes to routine will probably not end for several years.
One of the positives about doing this review is that I found that some of the 'advanced' recommendations in MindTools -- the action programs -- I'm already on top of and have been keeping up to date. I use multi-tab Google docs to keep programmatic track of each of several large identities I'm balancing right now (being a student, running two businesses, coaching soccer). Funny how my feeling about my life right now -- macro in good control, micro not so much -- is mirrored by the health of my systems, and the 'macro level' organization (big tracking spreadsheets with long-term goals and projections) is fairly healthy but the micro level is not (to do lists, weekly goals). It's encouraging to know that I'm reasonably self-aware and aligned, and it makes the micro-overwhelm seem so much more tractable. I'm not sure it will make me less reactive, although it won't hurt. And more reflection time may fill in the rest of the gap I'm experiencing. Here's hoping.
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