13:10-14:25 | Room 607 (6F)
Saturday Session III Mind & Brain Session Chair: Kourtland Koch 53608
13:10-13:35 | Room 607 (6F)
Towards Better Brain Training: A Computational Cognitive Modelling Approach to Improving the Design of Executive Function Training in Educational Contexts Nigel Robb, University of Tokyo, Japan
Executive functions (EFs) are high-level cognitive abilities which coordinate lower-level cognitive abilities. Research demonstrates the importance of EFs in many contexts, including health, social functioning, and education. Aspects of EFs may predict academic performance; it has also been suggested that computerized EF training may benefit both children and adults in education and daily life. However, research on the effectiveness of current EF training programs is controversial. Recent criticism of companies that develop and market so-called “brain training games� focuses primarily on the fact that some such companies have overgeneralized the potential benefits of EF training without enough evidence to support their claims. One specific issue is that the mechanisms by which such training might be effective are not well understood. Researchers now recognize that, to ensure sound investigation of the effectiveness of EF training, it is essential that we consider systematically how specific features of these programs may contribute to improving EF. The current study demonstrates the feasibility of a novel method, using computational cognitive modelling, to investigate these specific mechanisms efficiently. Using a prefrontal cortex model implemented in the Leabra cognitive architecture, several potential EF training mechanisms (based on tasks found in popular EF training games) were simulated: in this short paper, some representative examples are described. The main contributions of the current study are (1) to demonstrate the feasibility of this novel approach, and (2) to demonstrate, in a nontechnical, accessible way, how it may be utilized to potentially offer more effective EF training in an educational context. 53410
13:35-14:00 | Room 607 (6F)
A Study on the Feasibility of EEG to Improve the Application of Educational Objectives in Vocational Education Psychomotor Domain Wen-Tsai Huang, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan Chin-Yen Lin, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan Don-Yang Fong, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan
Taiwan's vocational education values the practical skills. The primary goal is to cultivate students' abilities to meet the needs of the workplace. The psychomotor domain is a combination of "Psycho" and "Motor". The connection of basic motor will form skills for different tasks. The performance of physical activities will promote the interpretation of cognitive functions and various psychological states. The use of EEG is one of the methods to measure motor skills in psychophysiology. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of using EEG to improve skills development through literature analysis. It were found that there was a lot of improvement in athletic motor skills, including the use of EEG to improve archery targeting, and it was also found in the literature that there were also artifacts caused by body movements that the researcher could not control. Due to the nature of individual movement, even when two people are doing the same action and their brains perform the same message processing mode, they will show different levels of motor behavior because of their skills difference. This study suggested that EEG should be applied with the appropriate practical skills category in order to help the contestants or students to improve their national vocational skills and increase their level of confidence and achievement. 53083
14:00-14:25 | Room 607 (6F)
Working Collaboratively Among Neuroscience and Education to Foster Better Understanding of Cognitive Development Kourtland Koch, Ball State University, United States
To date, both neuroscience and education have focused on cognitive development, yet both sides have often neglected how they can work collaboratively to identify and monitor strategies which produce clinically based results that can be applied to educational practices. Encouraging teachers to turn their attention to social and emotional environments in which children encounter learning; it becomes possible to modify educational practices based upon neuroscience. If we can learn to appreciate the diversity of strategies that researchers apply to answer a specific question, then education may also benefit by emphasizing the importance of teaching different strategies and helping students develop the skills necessary to be able to take different approaches to a problem. Research in neuroscience, cognitive science, and educational research has intensified in recent years. These endeavors have provided an opportunity to understand and apply current research findings with the hope it may eventually be possible to identify selected teaching methods associated with specific types of brain activation. Additional outcomes may be informing teachers how the brain works and develops as the child progresses through school, based on developmental milestones from birth through the adult years. This will require teachers to become more critical when evaluating the latest neuroscience findings to avoid the misapplication of concepts which have been noted by Bruer (1998) and others (Fischer, 2009) over the past 20 years.
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