Sian L. Beilock - US grants

Stereotype threat occurs when awareness of a negative group stereotype in a particular domain reduces the quality of performance exhibited by group members. The current work (a) examines how stereotype threat undermines women?s math performance and expression of math proficiency in education situations and (b) employs laboratory and education-based interventions to alleviate the deleterious impact of negative group stereotypes. Only by understanding how stereotype threat hurts performance can training regimens and performance strategies be designed to ameliorate its impact. The current studies build on earlier work suggesting that stereotype threat affects performance on difficult academic tasks (e.g., math) by inducing situation-related worries that consume working memory (WM). The first set of studies in the present project investigate why math performance changes when WM is impaired, specifically examining how problem solving strategies are altered when WM is limited. The second set of studies attempt to prevent WM limitations to begin with by reducing ST-related worries and altering views of the ST situation. The work draws on literatures exploring how individuals regulate unwanted emotions (e.g., fear/disgust) and tests how these same emotion regulation strategies can be successfully applied to ST.

This FIRE project brings cognitive scientists together with physicists. The goal is to improve high school and college students' physics proficiency through specific types of lab experiences that allow the student to become part of the physical system being studied. Lab experiences where students have direct experience with physics quantities (e.g., feeling forces--as opposed to reading about force, seeing forces being exerted on someone else, or even measuring forces with instruments) may lead to the use of brain areas devoted to sensory and motor (sensorimotor) processing when students later think and reason about the physics concepts they experienced. Recent research shows that when these sensorimotor areas are involved in thinking and reasoning tasks, people's understanding of those concepts improves (Beilock et al., 2008). The research institutions involved in this work are the University of Chicago and DePaul University.

This proposal addresses two inter-related questions: (1) Can learning methods that involve the sensorimotor system enrich physics knowledge and understanding? (2) If so, is this because sensorimotor representations are accessed when students recall (e.g., during tests) concepts learned via movement? A total of five experiments will be conducted. First, three laboratory experiments are used to substantiate the special contributions that the sensorimotor system has to students' understanding of the physics of mechanics. Specifically, the relationship between changing angular momentum and torque is explored as students manipulate a rotating bicycle wheel. Experiment 1 compares how direct sensorimotor experience with the forces related to torques (versus observing forces or measuring their effects with instruments) impacts student understanding. Experiments 2 and 3 explore the cognitive and neural substrates that drive the link between experience and understanding using behavioral dual-task procedures and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm. Experiments 4-5 move to the classroom to explore how sensorimotor experience relates to learning, and to indentify the optimal time (before vs. after lecture) for sensorimotor experience to occur. In Experiments 4, students' experiences in high school physics labs will be manipulated to explore how sensorimotor experience relates to students' understanding of the physics of mechanics. In Experiments 5, introductory-level college physics students will be tested to investigate (1) how sensorimotor lab experiences impact performance on numerical test questions, (2) when this type of lab experience is most beneficial, and (3) for which type of questions this benefit occurs.

This work uncovers the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which certain lab experiences work. The focus on sensorimotor learning mechanisms is exciting as students are themselves the most critical piece of lab equipment. The findings from this work will advance physics education and also have the potential to impact learning in other STEM domains as well. For instance, understanding complex molecular structures in chemistry or structural relations in engineering may benefit from the types of sensorimotor experiences explored here. In sum, the knowledge acquired from this grant will aid in the design of quick, effective, and generalizable guidelines that educators can use in their own teaching to advance student learning and STEM achievement.

The goal of this EHR Core Research project, focused on the area of STEM learning, is to use cognitive science theories of embodied cognition to enhance student learning in physics. A central hypothesis being investigated is that providing students with direct experience with physics quantities (e.g., feeling the mass distribution in an extended object through balancing techniques designed to locate an object's center of gravity (COG)), as opposed to reading about the concepts in a textbook or using more traditional hands-on activities (e.g., hanging weights from an extended object to visually determine an object's COG), enhances learning. Laboratory experiences where students feel physics quantities may lead to the recruitment of brain areas devoted to sensorimotor processing when students later think and reason about the physics concepts they experienced. When these sensorimotor areas are involved in thinking and reasoning, people's understanding of the concepts in question may improve. In the cognitive science laboratory, experiments 1-4 investigate whether and how direct engagement with physical objects through balancing activities can promote the conceptualization of extended objects as discrete components, thus enhancing students' ability to locate a system's COG. Experiments 5, 6, 8, & 9 move to the physics classroom to explore how sensorimotor experience may relate to understanding the COG topic and ameliorate common misconceptions, and to determine the optimal time (relative to lecture) for sensorimotor experience. Experiment 7 explores the cognitive and neural substrates driving the link between experience and understanding using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm. Overall, this work seeks to uncover how and why certain laboratory experiences are effective, facilitating the design of easy-to-implement guidelines that educators can use in their own courses to enhance student learning.

This Science of Learning Collaborative Network brings together a diverse group of experts to examine how math knowledge and attitudes together affect early math achievement, and to develop tools to promote math learning at home and in school for children in kindergarten to grade three. The network focuses on early math because achievement in this domain is a powerful predictor of future academic success. Moreover, math is a cornerstone for careers in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and our technological society has a high need for a STEM workforce that can push the frontiers of innovation. Success in mathematics requires learning content, but also has social and emotional dimensions. Yet math instruction does not typically address the emotional dimension, instead focusing exclusively on content. This is particularly problematic because many parents and elementary school teachers have both high levels of math anxiety and less-than-optimal knowledge of how to promote math learning and interest in young children. The end result is a cycle of inter-generational transmission of low math achievement and high math anxiety.

To break this cycle, the network brings together: (a) researchers who study the knowledge and attitudes that support math achievement; (b) developers who translate research findings into effective educational tools; (c) practitioners who implement educational tools in real-world learning settings, and (d) experts in the dissemination of such tools. By combining these different kinds of expertise, the network will increase understanding of how young children learn math and develop attitudes about math. Further, the network will use this knowledge to support children's math learning at home and in school by developing a toolkit for parents and teachers to help them more effectively provide math instruction to children from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. The network will evaluate whether the toolkit improves children's math learning and math attitudes as well as teachers' and parents' math attitudes, and will refine the toolkit based on feedback from those who are using it. Finally, the network will widely share the toolkit via a publicly available website.