Any psychiatrists or psychologists out there? I need help on a science project!

[AmoDolphin]

Hey! My name is Maggie, and I'm a seventh grader doing a G/T science project on visual learning. I need to know several things about visual learning, and I need someone who works in a psych or learning field to interview. It can be on a PM, so if you can help on any one of these questions, that would be wonderful.

My project statement is: Does the effect of adding pictures to a list of words change the total number of correctly memorized words? Does the effect of adding the wrong picture to a list of words change the amount of correctly memorized words?

Basically what I'm going to do is have a bunch (about 75, 25 for each group-pictures, no pictures, and wrong pictures) of people over and give them a list of words. One group of 25 will have a list with just words, one group of 25 will have a list of the same words, but will have pictures of the words, and pne group of 25 will have a list of the same words, but they will have wrong pictures.

I need to know some things from an expert. These are not things I'm trying to learn in my experiment, as this is research.
1.) Who are you, what is your education, and what is your job?
2.) What makes a person a visual learner? For instance, do the brain and eyes interact to make you a visual learner? If that is the case, how do they interact?
3.) Are more people visual learners or non-visual? Is visual learning hereditary?
4.) Even if someone is a kinesthetic or auditory learner, do they still learn better with pictures than without pictures?

As I said, if you can help, please PM me. I'm using this for an interveiw, so I will need your name (preferably first and last), and your education.

Thanks!
Maggie

 

[AmoDolphin]

Please? I need this interveiw by Wednesday.

 

[Barb D]

Bumping for DD...

 

[DawnCt1]

I think that some of the questions you are asking aren't "opinions" but based somewhere in fact and can be researched, either in a basic psych. book on learning styles, an education text or on the internet. I think to form an opinion you will need statistics. One can assume perhaps that utilizing all three approaches to learning, tactile, auditory and visual, one would learn more effectively, however, perhaps the data will show that for some people, all of that together would be distracting.

 

[VSL]

Hey! My name is Maggie, and I'm a seventh grader doing a G/T science project on visual learning. I need to know several things about visual learning, and I need someone who works in a psych or learning field to interview. It can be on a PM, so if you can help on any one of these questions, that would be wonderful.

My project statement is: Does the effect of adding pictures to a list of words change the total number of correctly memorized words? Does the effect of adding the wrong picture to a list of words change the amount of correctly memorized words?

Basically what I'm going to do is have a bunch (about 75, 25 for each group-pictures, no pictures, and wrong pictures) of people over and give them a list of words. One group of 25 will have a list with just words, one group of 25 will have a list of the same words, but will have pictures of the words, and pne group of 25 will have a list of the same words, but they will have wrong pictures.

I need to know some things from an expert. These are not things I'm trying to learn in my experiment, as this is research.
1.) Who are you, what is your education, and what is your job?
2.) What makes a person a visual learner? For instance, do the brain and eyes interact to make you a visual learner? If that is the case, how do they interact?
3.) Are more people visual learners or non-visual? Is visual learning hereditary?
4.) Even if someone is a kinesthetic or auditory learner, do they still learn better with pictures than without pictures?

As I said, if you can help, please PM me. I'm using this for an interveiw, so I will need your name (preferably first and last), and your education.

Thanks!
Maggie

[highlighting done by moi]

Isn't that a form of Stroop Test?

Either way, from what I remember, yeah, mismatching words and pictures will probably cause more forgetfulness (although I think it works better with colours and words, as in Blue and Red.

I'd love to ask my BF to help but he's way too busy with his final work for his degree and sorting stuff out for his PhD (and some other non-Uni related stuff...). I'm pretty sure there are some members on this board though who are involved with psychology and they'll hopefully be along soon.

Also, it could be a good idea to just do some research on this yourself. There are some pretty good general textbooks on psychology/psychological research which will briefly cover this subject.

Good luck with your research though

 

[Barb D]

I think that some of the questions you are asking aren't "opinions" but based somewhere in fact and can be researched, either in a basic psych. book on learning styles, an education text or on the internet.

Also, it could be a good idea to just do some research on this yourself.

Dawn and VSL, this is OP's mom. She has to do an interview as part of the project. She is doing research, too. Thanks for your comments so far!

 

[AmoDolphin]

Bumping.

 

[Val]

1.) Who are you, what is your education, and what is your job?
I have a PhD in neuroscience, and I am a professor in neuroscience at a large state university.
2.) What makes a person a visual learner? For instance, do the brain and eyes interact to make you a visual learner? If that is the case, how do they interact?
3.) Are more people visual learners or non-visual? Is visual learning hereditary?
4.) Even if someone is a kinesthetic or auditory learner, do they still learn better with pictures than without pictures?

The data on visual/kinesthetic/auditory learning is actually not generally accepted in hard core neuro/experimental psych, although these theories are very popular in the educational areas. There is not a whole lot of basic neuroscience to support actually "differences" in learning.....what we DO know is that individuals have their preference. If your preference is for visual/kinesthetic or auditory, you tend to learn best that way. Certainly, individuals vary. Generally, humans learn visiually first, auditorily second, and kinesethetic third. Again, however, different individuals have different preferences and these might vary on individual differences, physical issues or disabilities (like visual impairments or hard of hearing), opportunities and experience, etc.

We do know that the more "predictive cues" the better- and these cues should all agree. Thus, if you give someone a picture + a word, those are two cues that support the association; giving a single picture or word is a single discriminative cue. Giving an unrelated picture with a word should inhibit learning, as the two don't match and thus learning should be somewhat slower (like the stroop test with the different color words written in different colors).

Hope this helps....pm me if you need more.