Representational Translation With Concrete Models in Organic Chemistry

Stull, Andrew T.; Hegarty, Mary; Dixon, Bonnie; Stieff, Mike

doi:10.1080/07370008.2012.719956

Cited by 132 publications

(186 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Gesture, using visual-spatial formatting, provides extra information that is not found in the verbal-representational format of speech alone, as evidenced, for example, in problem-solving tasks involving mental rotation (Chu and Kita 2008). Likewise, the use of gestures to enact the rotation of physical models of molecules correlates with higher accuracy on a diagram translation task (Stull et al 2012).…”

Section: Enactive Metaphors In Learning Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Enactive Metaphors: Learning Through Full-Body Engagement

2015

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Building on both cognitive semantics and enactivist approaches to cognition, we explore the concept of enactive metaphor and its implications for learning. Enactive approaches to cognition involve the idea that online sensory-motor and affective processes shape the way the perceiver-thinker experiences the world and interacts with others. Specifically, we argue for an approach to learning through whole-body engagement in a way that employs enactive metaphors. We summarize recent empirical studies that show enactive metaphors and whole-body involvement in virtual and mixed reality environments support and improve learning.Some metaphors sit on a page and wait for the reader to find them. We might call them sitting metaphors, and a good example is the idea of a sitting metaphor itself (metaphors don't literally sit on a page). We can encounter sitting metaphors, for example, when we are literally sitting, reading a book or an electronic screen. We ingest the metaphor, and if it is a good one, doing its job, it will make us think or support our thinking process and perhaps help us along to understanding. It may exercise our imagination. As such, metaphors have always been important in learning experiences. A good metaphor will lead us somewhere, open up an insight, show us something that we could not see before, and this has obvious relevance to education. Educ Psychol Rev

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Section: Enactive Metaphors In Learning Interventionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Enactive Metaphors: Learning Through Full-Body Engagement

2015

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“…In an initial study, Stull et al (2012) made models available to students as they performed diagram translation tasks and found that most students ignored the models. In later studies, when they encouraged students to use the models, successful students aligned the model with the given diagram and then transformed it (by rotation, etc.)…”

Section: Representations In Chemistrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Models as feedback: Developing representational competence in chemistry.

Padalkar

Hegarty

2015

Journal of Educational Psychology

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Spatial information in science is often expressed through representations such as diagrams and models. Learning the strengths and limitations of these representations and how to relate them are important aspects of developing scientific understanding, referred to as representational competence. Diagram translation is particularly challenging for students in organic chemistry, and although concrete models greatly help in solving diagram translation problems, most students do not use models spontaneously. In 2 experiments, we examined the effectiveness of instructional interventions for teaching diagram translation using models. In Experiment 1. students drew diagrams and checked their accuracy by attempting to match concrete models to their solutions (model-based feedback). The instruction helped students in the experimental group to identify their mistakes, understand the usefulness of concrete models, and led to large improvements in performance, compared with a control group. To examine whether feedback, the opportunity to match models, or both was the critical aspect of the intervention, in Experiment 2, 1 group was provided only verbal feedback (by a tutor) and another group matched diagrams and concrete models, but not in the context of receiving an evaluation of their pretest performance. Feedback alone did not improve performance relative to a control group, but the oppor tunity to match models and diagrams improved performance relative to control. The results indicate that using models as feedback is an effective way of training representational competence in the domain of organic chemistry and more generally in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.Spatial information, such as shape, size, structure, and motion, is particularly important in the natural sciences, and certain branches of science are devoted to studying spatial properties. For example, anatomy is the study of the structure of living things, geology is the science of the structure of the earth, and stereo chemistry is the study of the structure of compounds. Understand ing spatial information is particularly challenging when the rele vant structures are not directly observable, for example, because they occur at a scale of space that is not visible (e.g., molecules) or are internal to some three-dimensional (3-D) structure that we typically only see from the outside (e.g., internal anatomy). In these cases, spatial information is represented most directly through spatial representations such as diagrams, concrete and virtual models, and animations; it is also represented using nonspatial representations such as text, symbols, and formulae.Scientists are facile in using a range of different representations of spatial phenomena that vary in their dimensionality (e.g., twodimensional [2-D] vs. 3-D), abstraction (e.g., diagrams vs. equa tions), and spatial perspective (e.g., orthographic vs. isometric projections, cross-sections) to represent, reason, and communicate about different spatial phenomena (Ainsworth, 2006;Kozm...

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“…Gestures help novices solve complex 3D spatial problems such as understanding block diagrams in the geosciences (Atit et al 2015), and translating between different 2D diagrams of organic molecules in chemistry (Stull et al 2012). The effect of gesture may be based on several factors.…”

Section: Can Gesture Improve Topographic Map Reading?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Lay of the Land: Sensing and Representing Topography

Newcombe¹,

Weisberg²,

Atit³

et al. 2015

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communica

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Navigating, and studying spatial navigation, is difficult enough in two dimensions when maps and terrains are flat. Here we consider the capacity for human spatial navigation on sloped terrains, and how sloping terrain is depicted in 2D map representations, called topographic maps. First, we discuss research on how simple slopes are encoded and used for reorientation, and to learn spatial configurations. Next, we describe how slope is represented in topographic maps, and present an assessment (the Topographic Map Assessment), which can be administered to measure topographic map comprehension. Finally, weThe Lay of the Land 2 describe several approaches our lab has taken with the aim of improving topographic map comprehension, including gesture and analogy. The current research reveals a rich and complex picture of topographic map understanding, which likely involves perceptual expertise, strong spatial skills, and inferential logic.There are many ways to navigate the spatial world. In the past decade, we have come to rely on technology to find our destinations, using computers and smart phones to provide step-by-step instructions on the best route, display an overall map, or tell us which way is north (if we choose to ask that question). But humans did not evolve in the technological world, although they eventually created it. Our ancestors used many cues for wayfinding. Some of these systems were part of a common evolutionary heritage, shared with other mammals and also with birds, insects and even with reptiles and amphibians, as would be expected given the importance of successful navigation for survival. But humans' abilities for abstract and symbolic reasoning also supported our species in the invention of complex and culturally communicated systems (Gladwin 1970;Hutchins 1995;Huth 2013), and increasingly, technological tools. Thus, for humans, understanding navigation entails both understanding shared cross-species capacities for navigation, and the uniquely human symbolic additions that augment those capacities.Modern cross-species research on navigation has generally concentrated on two navigation systems, often called the egocentric and allocentric systems (for reviews, see Jacobs & Menzel 2014;Wiener et al. 2011). These systems are distinct, but they can combine and supplement each other in various ways (e.g., Zhao & Warren 2015). Egocentric systems involve our bodily senses and body-centered encoding of spatial location, e.g., the window is behind me. Egocentric coding is useful for wayfinding only if it is updated by information about our movement through space, both in terms of direction (e.g., we know that the window that was behind us is now to our left, after we turn 90 degrees), and distance (e.g., we know that the window is now much further behind us after we walk 100 paces forward). When egocentric systems are updated in this way, they are often called inertial navigation systems, or dead reckoning. Allocentric coding does not depend on the body, but rather uses external landmarks, s...

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Representational Translation With Concrete Models in Organic Chemistry

Cited by 132 publications

References 47 publications

Enactive Metaphors: Learning Through Full-Body Engagement

Enactive Metaphors: Learning Through Full-Body Engagement

Models as feedback: Developing representational competence in chemistry.

The Lay of the Land: Sensing and Representing Topography

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