Sara Cordes (Peter Julian)
Boston College faculty members Sara Cordes, Joshua Hartshorne, and Jaclyn Ford of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience have received National Science Foundation grants to support their research projects that focus on different aspects of human learning and memory.
鈥ordes, an associate professor, was awarded two grants: $870,968 for 鈥淭he Developmental Emergence and Consequences of Spatial and Math Gender Stereotypes,鈥� and $479,009 for 鈥淐ollaborative Research: Social Influences of Math Learning.鈥�
鈥artshorne, an assistant professor, received $706,549 for 鈥淐ompCog: A Challenge Suite for Statistical Word Segmentation.鈥�
鈥ord, a research assistant professor, received $635,528 for 鈥淎ge Differences in When鈥擭ot Whether鈥擲ensory Regions Are Recruited During Memory Retrieval.鈥滵epartment Chair Professor Elizabeth Kensinger said the grants were a testament to the innovative research 51茶馆 Psychology and Neuroscience faculty is undertaking. 鈥淭hese projects showcase the breadth of methods鈥攏euroscientific, computational, and behavioral鈥攖hat our faculty are using to understand how humans learn throughout the lifespan, from childhood through older age.
Joshua Hartshorne (Peter Julian)
鈥淭he broadly overlapping themes of these grants emphasize that the research being led by different faculty interrelates and, together, will provide a more holistic picture of human learning and memory, with the potential to transform how we think about the human ability to learn from instruction and from experience,鈥� said Kensinger, who is co-principal investigator on the memory retrieval project with Ford.
One of Cordes鈥檚 research projects addresses the heretofore little-explored area of children鈥檚 attitudes about spatial abilities and how these, along with views on math skills, may affect female participation and career-attainment in STEM fields. A series of behavioral studies will examine the emergence of and assumptions behind spatial- and math-gender stereotypes; the real-world impacts of spatial-gender stereotypes on STEM participation and achievement in childhood; and the malleability of these stereotypes in hopes of identifying ways to ameliorate their impact early in development.
"[The research] will provide a more holistic picture of human learning and memory, with the potential to transform how we think about the human ability to learn from instruction and from experience.鈥�
Jaclyn Ford (Christopher Soldt)
Cordes鈥檚 other NSF-funded project scrutinizes the impact of social contexts in learning difficult mathematical concepts among young children (four to nine years old). This will entail assessing how social framing affects children鈥檚 learning of two traditionally counter-intuitive concepts, proportions and negative numbers; exploring factors that facilitate the transfer of knowledge between math concepts in informal scenarios in daily life (for example, sharing) and more formal, symbolic-based contexts (such as division); and determining how socio-contextual influences promote or hinder children鈥檚 learning.
鈥淭he culmination of this work should paint a broader understanding of social influences on math learning, pointing to new directions for math education practices,鈥� she explained in her proposal.Hartshorne鈥檚 work tackles the scientific puzzle of how children manage to acquire language despite limited and inconsistent explicit feedback. 鈥淣umerous mathematical results seem to suggest that acquiring a language should be impossible,鈥� he wrote in his grant proposal, 鈥淭he fact that children do it every day reveals a deep gap in the science of learning.鈥� While research has suggested that an innate ability to detect patterns assists children in learning about language, according to Hartshorne, it is unclear what methods of pattern-detection are used in such situations.
His project will involve creating a 鈥渃hallenge suite,鈥� or dataset, to systematically evaluate and compare the pattern-detection methods; in the process, he said, it will determine whether challenge suites are beneficial for the science of learning while providing valuable resources and training to the research community.
Ford and Kensinger will examine whether researchers systematically misinterpret age-related changes in memory by not giving older adults sufficient time to complete tasks during testing situations, therefore leading to ineffective strategies and solutions for their care. The project builds on recent findings that aging may hinder鈥攂ut not strip away, as has been generally believed鈥攐lder adults鈥� ability to engage sensory processes in the service of memory.
鈥淲ith the population aging and older adults staying in the workforce longer,鈥� they note in their abstract, 鈥渢he need to understand memory changes that occur with aging is more urgent than ever.鈥�
Sean Smith | University Communications | February 2020 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽聽 聽