Week 8 & 9 Research Activity - No Letter ‘N’

Try to have a ten minute conversation with two different people in which you DO NOT use the letter “n”. Write a reflection about the experience.

I tried the no “n” conversations one with my husband and one with my coworker. I have to say the excises were really difficult for me. To avoid using words with “n”, I applied the strategy that found similar meaning words without “n” to replace what was attempted to say at first place. Not only the conversations went extremely slowly, I also had a hard time to find replacement words through my limited and “n” eliminated vocabulary database as a non-English-native speaker. While speaking, I had to search words, skip those ones with “n”, and re-search more words, my parallel processing (textbook p. 329) executed all the multiple operations all at once and apparently was overloading and performed poorly.

The subject I had with my husband was about whether we should have kept our current high-speed internet service due to the service provider tended to increase the price at an outrageous rate. I was telling my husband what the options I got from Charter Customer Service through a phone call prior to the conversation with my husband. There were many “yes” or “no” questions involved while talking with my husband. While it came to the answer “no”, I was really out of word choices without saying “n”.  “No”, ”Not”, ”Negative” all have a “n” in it. At that time, my husband and I both believed that “n” must be the most used letter in English. Therefore, I conducted my research afterward and found out that “n” actually is not the most commonly used letter, instead, it is the 3rd consonant and the 7^th letter most frequently used in English text according to Oxford Dictionary.  The following table is an analysis of the letters occurring in the words listed in the main entries of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (11^th edition revised, 2004) 

E	11.1607%	56.88	M	3.0129%	15.36
A	8.4966%	43.31	H	3.0034%	15.31
R	7.5809%	38.64	G	2.4705%	12.59
I	7.5448%	38.45	B	2.0720%	10.56
O	7.1635%	36.51	F	1.8121%	9.24
T	6.9509%	35.43	Y	1.7779%	9.06
N	6.6544%	33.92	W	1.2899%	6.57
S	5.7351%	29.23	K	1.1016%	5.61
L	5.4893%	27.98	V	1.0074%	5.13
C	4.5388%	23.13	X	0.2902%	1.48
U	3.6308%	18.51	Z	0.2722%	1.39
D	3.3844%	17.25	J	0.1965%	1.00
P	3.1671%	16.14	Q	0.1962%	(1)

 

Reference:

What is the requency of the letters of the alphabet in English. (n.d.). Retrieved Oct. 22, 2011, from Oxford Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/frequencyalphabet

Week 6 & 7 Research Activity - Detroit Images

Research activity two: Go here: Detroit images - the originals : http://www.marchandmeffre.com/index.html Reflect on the images (click on the links to navigate the Detroit pictures. What knowledge is represented in these images? What knowledge is lost in these images? What could make them better as knowledge representations?

In textbook p. 255, Sternberg states that there are two kinds of knowledge – declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge. The first one is knowledge that can be stated for example the date of your birth, the name of your best friend, or how a rabbit looks like. Procedural knowledge is that knowledge of procedures that can be implemented for example the steps involved in trying your shoelaces, adding a column of numbers, or driving a car. One important principle regards the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge is between knowing that and knowing how. (Ryle, Berge & Hezewijk; 1949) 

Declarative knowledge refers to factual knowledge and information that a person knows. The link gave – Detroit images show all the pictures with the textual descriptions of the historical and symbolic buildings or sites in Detroit have suffered and decayed from the current recession. The images give the viewers the opportunities of knowing that the industries had been developed and landmarks had been built in the 20^th centuries in Detroit and some of the sites have been abandoned in this decade. The pictures shown in http://www.marchandmeffre.com/index.html convey the information sent from the photographers that

 “Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is temporary by nature, the volatile result of the end of an era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time: being dismayed, or admiring, wondering, wondering about the permanence of things. Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.” (Marchand & Meffre, 2010).

The knowledge missed in those images is procedural knowledge, is knowing how to apply knowledge and perform certain activities. In procedural knowledge, there is an end goal that requires a series of steps to accomplish and execution of those steps driven by internal rules. Like driving a car, the driver implement his/her procedural knowledge of how to start the car, change the gears, and turn the steer wheel …etc to get the vehicle moving.  The viewers (of Ruins of Detroit) may learn from the pictures about the facts that Detroit has been ruined and what the possible causes lead to the facts. However, they don’t acquire the knowledge how to solve the problems or possess the abilities to stop Detroit’s decline.

References:

Berge, T. T. (n.d.). Procedural and Decelarative Knowledge - An Evolutionary Perspective.

Marchand, Y. &. (2010). The Ruins of Detroit - English Edition. Retrieved Oct. 9, 2011, from STEiDL: http://www.steidlville.com/books/1050-The-Ruins-of-Detroit.html

Week 4 & 5 Research Activity - Cognitive Overload

Cognitive overload is a term used to express that state that people experience as a result of distraction, stressful situations, multitasking, and data congestion related to increasingly sophisticated technologies (Leon, Lewis Jr. 2009). The exercises suggested in Activity 2 of Biweekly Research depict a perfect picture of cognitive overload.  

Driving is a high-attention-demanded task and requires full attention to ensure safely control the vehicle and respond to events happening on the roads, especially during high speed and traffic. My personal experience, any incident or element taking place not within my intention can be a terrifying factor and affect my driving since my mind flies away frequently while I am on the road. It happens quite frequently that I don’t follow what the news is saying or what music is playing on the radio with my off mind. My father used to tell me that full attention is needed when you are behind the wheel not just for your own driving but also for others’, especially for those drivers who are easily distracted or irresponsible around you.  To exercise my father’s advice and avoid any potential accidents, I don’t multitask during driving which I am not good at in order to get focused on driving. The gadget I have mainly used in my car is the radio with preset channels or preloaded CDs.  

There are three main types of distraction cause cognitive overload during driving including: visual – taking your eyes off the road, manual – taking your eyes off the road and cognitive – taking your mind off what you are doing.   For possible distracting activities including: using a cell phone, eating and drinking, talking to passengers, grooming, reading or writing, using a navigation system, watching a video and changing the radio station, CD or multimedia player, the more you get engaged with those activities during driving, the more likely you get involved into car accidents. No matter how good you are at multitasking, you best keep your eyes on the roads, your hands on the wheel and your mind on your driving to ensure your safety. 

The experiment I practiced as Activity II guided, I hardly got concentrated and retained my memory of multiplication tables through 12 under the circumstance with radio and TV on in high volume, laptop was working and smartphone notification interfered from time to time. Multiplication tables are stored as long-term memory and suppose to be recalled easily within seconds for me. The noisy radio and TV definitely get me disturbed and deteriorate my performance, the laptop is considered as visual distraction even I don’t really put my finger tips on the keyboard. On the top of it, the email receiving notification beeped from my smartphone also causes my cognition distraction abruptly.  With an influx of information processing simultaneously, my brain is apparently overloaded and wouldn’t function effectively. 

The consequences of information overload are also applied to classroom learning. When instructors give too much information or request too many tasks to learners at the same time, will result in students being unable to process the information and perform as teachers expect. While learners are bombarded with overflowed information if the instructional materials are involved with too much complexity and not managed properly, it will lead to a cognitive overload, impaired learners’ acquisition, and a lower performance on tasks.