Description and Goals
Overview: Cognitive ability determines how well people function successfully in everyday activities. This is especially true in the area of education, where individual differences in cognitive ability have been shown to predict performance in a number of core competency areas, including reading comprehension and quantitative reasoning. While cognitive ability has long been believed to be a stable individual difference variable – perhaps genetically determined – recent work in cognitive neuroscience suggests that cognitive ability can be improved through extensive training. We seek to train and improve peoples' working memory capacity and thus also improve their overall cognitive ability. Based on prior studies, we believe that visuo-spatial working memory training will lead to improvement in other cognitive abilities.
Problem: American students are chronically underperforming in mathematics in comparison to other developed nations. For example, in the recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, America's fourth grade students scored lower in mathematics than eight other countries, located in Asia or Europe, and eighth grade students scored lower than five countries, all located in Asia. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress report (2005), American students lack a basic understanding of mathematics. This has been cited as contributing to a growing achievement gap as the students progress through the education system. In addition to international performance gaps, America faces its own internal performance gaps between certain demographics. The 2005 NAEP study demonstrated that 70% of African-American students and 60% of Hispanic students fell below the standard of basic understanding of high school mathematics, compared to 30% of whites and 27% of Asian-Americans who fell below this same standard.
Hypotheses: The purpose of our study is to show that because (1) general cognitive ability and visuo-spatial working memory are predictive of quantitative reasoning and (2) general cognitive ability and visuo-spatial working memory can be improved through extensive cognitive training, (3) training on a visuo-spatial working memory task will lead to improvements in quantitative reasoning.
Process: We plan to conduct a study that will confirm former studies supporting hypotheses 1 and 2 while also proving hypothesis 3. We will recruit participants in the College Park area, assess their abilities using a pre-test, have them undergo training for a six week period, and reassess them. We will analyze and submit our findings for publication.
- Completed: We have determined the pre and post test regimen, received IRB approval, and are in the process of data collection. We have completed the first phase of our data collection and received data for our first 30 participants. We have begun to analyze the data for our first phase, recruit more participants for our second phase, and write our thesis.
- Fall 2010: We will finish analyzing the data from our first phase, continue to recruit more participants to finish our second phase of data collection and analyze their data, and continue writing and editing our thesis.
- Spring 2011: Upon completion of the editing, we will submit the thesis for publication in a psychology journal. We will also present our thesis before a panel of experts in the field of cognitive psychology to fulfill the requirements for the Gemstone Program.