Last Wednesday, I had a meeting with two professors, one from the mathematics department and one from the psychology department. The psychology professor had a lot to say in regards to doing a research project/experiment and what considerations I will have to take into account when preparing this project. After talking with both professors, I believe that my best experimental group would be elementary students because it is a homogeneous group with little to no specialization yet. We discussed the option of elderly people, but the variability of test subjects is too vast, especially when it comes to differences in memory disorders. We also discussed and experiment with college students, but the psychology professor didn't seem too keen on that because college students are specialized, so their brain already has specific functions and actions.
After this meeting, I felt a little more comfortable about working with elementary students as my test subjects. They asked me to do a little bit of research before our next meeting, which I have been doing this morning. As I was browsing through some of the sources, I realized that there is a lot more information on adolescents than young adults, so the elementary group may just be the way to go. I found a few articles and purchased a book for a bit of"light reading" over the summer. Out of four sources I found in PsychInfo EBSCO Search, I was able to find three of them. One book is called "The Learning Brain: Memory and Brain Development in Children." This book talks about the neuroscience of the brain and focuses on working memory and its correlation to math and reading skills. I also found an article entitled "The Role of Mathematical Homework and Prior Knowledge on the Relationship Between Students' Mathematical Performance, Cognitive Style and Working Memory Capacity," and a dissertation discussing gender differences in math performance. Needless to say, I've got a lot of reading ahead of me, but these few works will get me a jump-start on where I want to be heading.
That sounds fascinating. I hadn't even thought of the fact that specialization could skew your results. Of course it might also be interesting to look at individuals who are specialized (e.g., math majors versus art majors) to note the difference in types of memory, although I don't know how that would work. You probably couldn't compare them to your elementary schoolers since they'd be at vastly different stages of development.
ReplyDeleteI also love how you're involving two departments as well. I think it's really important for your project that you have someone from the psych department on board, since you're going to need to get a lot of guidance from them regarding surveys and brain function. Sounds like you're picking up speed, though! Keep us updated.