Ryan Lab Group Meetings

Fall 2008 (20093)

First Week of Fifteen, Tues. 8-26-08

Tues. 8-26-08

CP3 crew

Present: Blake Miller

Last subjects ran were 83 and 84. Coded up to about 72.
So far, with 72 subjects' data analyzed, there is some evidence that training with analogy-analogy pairs is superior to training with analogy-mere-appearance pairs (at least on the easiest test problems). There is also solid evidence that subjects' judgments were that the analogy-mere-appearance pairs would have been more useful.

Live Local/Global crew

Present: Bevin Lustman, Kirsten Williams

We presented at Chicago.

A colleague found that the Navon letters (which she presented on index cards) produced more local detriment than global facilitation. Our data looks similar, although we did not include a control condition to verify that.

Ashley Dailey and Shawn Griffiths have collected more data over the summer using new target test sets. They should be here next week to report on that.

As a next direction, set a time limit - examine the effects of social conformity? Bevin and Kirsten will start looking at the most recent Local/Global literature and try to find out what are the important questions that have been raised that need to be answered. Then we can start to devise a method to answer such a question.

Fear and Disgust crew

Present: Melissa Gilbert

Nikita Driscoll is still available for this project. Sara Windfelder will be gone this semester. Melissa will consult with Nikita to see where the various projects are right now. There was an effort to run more subjects in the lab in the hostility rating study PR2 to compare lab subjects' data to the data we had collected on the web. There was also an effort to collect more fear and disgust ratings, but from both male and female subjects identified as such to see if there are any gender differences in the fear and disgust ratings, as there were with the hostility ratings from the web.

New Members

Present: MacKenzie Geary, Josh Kigma

Josh has already been looking at the CP3 materials and could get started sitting in when Blake runs subjects.

MacKenzie will start looking at the literature on applying cognitive principles to educational research.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Second Week of Fifteen, Tues. 9-2-08

Tues 9-2-08:

No meeting. No classes Monday. Ran the Monday schedule on Tuesday.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Third Week of Fifteen, Tues. 9-9-08

Tues 9-9-08:

CP3 crew

Present: Blake Miller, Sarah Willard, Josh Kingma, Nkoug Kue

Blake will create timeslots this week for the fourth week. Josh will sit in.

Need to email Steve to see why he isn't running subjects. Need to email Dana and Howard Splitt to run subjects.

Live Local/Global crew

Present: Bevin Lustman, Kirsten Williams, Shawn Griffiths, Ashley Dailey
Bevin and Kirsten have a lot of articles. Have yet to read them. They will set up a time to meet with me to get some direction on how to proceed.

Shawn and Ashley have their data from the 96 subjects they ran in an Excel file. Just need to combine it with the other data an analyze it.

Fear and Disgust crew

Present: Melissa Gilbert, Nikita Driscoll, Lisa Scala

Regarding PR1 with gender indications: We need to look at the data that has already been collected to determine if we need to run more subjects. About half of the data is in an Excel file. They will set up a time for me to look at that data as soon as it is in.
Regarding PR2: Need to check to see if there are materials in paper to use. Melissa and Lisa can help if materials need to be made.

New Members

Present: MacKenzie Geary, Stephanie Martin
MacKenzie will set up an appointment to meet with me to get started on the lit search. She will confer with Stephanie about a time they can both meet.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Fourth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 9-16-08

Tues 9-16-08

CP3 crew

Present: Blake Miller, Nkoug Kue, Dana Young

Blake is running this Friday and next. Dana can sit in to get a refresher. I put her in the system as a researcher on CP3 and showed her how to create a time slot. Once she feels comfortable, she will start running subject.

Live Local/Global crew

Present: Kirsten Williams, Shawn Griffiths, Ashley Dailey, Bevin Lustman
Ashley and Shawn will email me - we will get together to look through the new, larger data set.

Kirsten found a paper on Local/Global processing, summarized it and sent it to me. I'll check it further to see how it could help and get back to them.

Fear and Disgust crew

Present: Melissa Gilbert -

Still need to look at the data that has already been collected to determine if we need to run more subjects. About half of the data is in an Excel file. They will set up a time for me to look at that data as soon as it is in.

May still need to check to see if there are materials in paper to use. Melissa and Lisa can help if materials need to be made. Nikita may have done this - we don't know.

Update as of 9/18/08 - Nikita reports that there are materials for PR2 (face to face)

Literature Search on Applying Cognitive Principles to Education

Present: Stephanie Martin, MacKenzie Geary

Stephanie will search PsychINFO for articles related to using and supporting analogies in actual classroom instruction. MacKenzie will look for more on the generation effect, and maybe also the spacing and testing effects. Both will look for recent articles and try to find well motivated questions that we could potentially answer.

New Members

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Fifth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 9-23-08

Tues 9-23-08:

CP3 crew

Live Local/Global crew

Present: Bevin

Shawn and Ashley showed me their data. They found some miscodings and Shawn will get them corrected. Also, Shawn and Ashley's data goes in a different direction than the previous data. We need to delve into the paper about how the visual angle, and conspicuousness, and possibly spatial frequencies in the stimuli affect whether or not they manipulate local/global processing. If that provides a potential answer to our failures to replicate, then there could be another study, or perhaps a paper just describing that problem.

Fear and Disgust crew

Present: Nikita Driscoll, Lisa Scala,

Nikita is working on making sure the data that was already collected is correct. The raw data needs to be put in subject number order. Then the rest of it can be entered into an excel file.

We determined that the best way to get running PR2 face to face is to use the public web version, but do it in a lab. We can determine which data came from the lab by looking at IP addresses, and date stamps, and comparing them to the IP addresses of the computers we used and the times that we ran in the lab as recorded in the session log. We will, however, hand out a paper informed consent and a paper debriefing.

Literature Search on Applying Cognitive Principles to Education

Present: Stephane Martin,

Stephanie came up with Hummel and Holyoak 2005 - How do people learn new relational concepts (Current Directions 14, 153 - .), a neural network modeling paper - the one that uses synchrony of firing to model instantiating semantic roles?

Also, Seigler, (2003). Ch. 20 in Kilpatrick J, Martin W B and Schifter DE (Eds) "A research companion to principles and standards for school mathematics" pp. 219-233. Reston, VA: NCTM.

Stephanie will get me copies of both papers. Also, Steve Howell would like a copy of Hummel and Holyoak.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Sixth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 9-30-08

Tues. 9-30-08:

For everyone: In two weeks I will change the combination to the lock box for the lab key. Those of you who need access to the lab will need to see me to both sign an updated lock box agreement, and to learn what the new combination will be.

CP3 crew

Present: Dana Young, Blake Miller, Josh Kingma,
Josh will do the online subject protection training, then will set up a time to run with Blake at a time I can attend. Dana will let me know when she wants me to sit in on a session to double check her before she starts running again. Other than that, this crew can just keep in touch via email unless there is some need to attend a meeting.

Live Local/Global crew

Present: Kirsten Williams, Shawn Griffiths, Asheley Dailey, Bevin Lustman
We need to find out exactly how other researchers have been presenting their Navon letters for the local/global task - This could lead to a study in which we compare different methods of presentation.

We also need to catch up on the Local/Global processing literature generally, and find a question we could answer.

This crew will meet with me next week to share what they have found and get some further guidance. Shawn and Asheley will join the lit search work.

Fear and Disgust crew

Present: Melissa Gilbert, Lisa Scala

They are continuing to enter data from PR1 with gender.
Mellissa and Lisa will begin running subjects in PR2 face to face. They will email me with a time to meet in my office to put the experiment back on the subject pool and get them in as the researchers.

This crew will not need to come to these meetings until there is a need to attend.

Literature Search on Applying Cognitive Principles to Education

Present: None present today. They have been keeping in touch via emial. They will probably be the crew to meet with me two weeks from now.

New

Meredith Thomas - will join those working on the Local/Global lit search.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Seventh Week of Fifteen, Tues. 10-7-08

Tues. 10-7-08:

For the Local Global crew only unless you hear otherwise.

Present: Bevin, Kirsten, and Meredith Thomas

I found the info on what Love, Rouder, and Wisniewski mean by a global advantage. Global letters were identified more quickly than local letters. But also, making the global letter the same as or different from the local letter affected the speed with which the local letter was identified. When they matched, identification was faster than when they were different. On the other hand, that change did not affect the speed of identification of the global letter. All of this is on the second page of their paper )p 292)

I also found the info on the visual angle on the same page. When the letter takes up more than 7 degrees of visual angle, then the global advantage disappears. Thea Vanags told me in an email that she thinks that this effect on the global advantage, as described above, extends also to the global processing shift.

We know that the stimuli from earlier successful local / global studies were about 6 inches high and 5 inches wide. Now we need to find out how far away the stimulus was and apply a little trigonometry to calculate the visual angle.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

For the Applying Cognitive Principles to Education Lit Search crew unless you hear otherwise.

Eighth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 10-14-08

Tues. 10-14-08:

Present: Stephanie Martin, MacKenzie Geary

Stephanie brought in an excerpt from a paper. The excerpt had a question, but we don't know if it is one that has already been answered or not. She also included a list of questions that she distilled from other papers. Again, the questions look like they might be promising, but we don't know if they have already been answered or not. She will get copies of the papers (or, at a minimum, an abstract and the reference). She will work on determining what those papers say, and what the questions are.

MacKenzie brought in a paper comparing training in the multiplication tables for second graders through either generation (students actually worked out the problems) or reading (students used a calculator to do the problems and read the answers off the display). This paper was okay for learning how to summarize a paper. However, it is on a very small question and not that recent.

MacKenzie will look for articles more on the lines of a review article on the use of technology in math and science. She will use what she learned today to summarize articles. But the articles will need to be broader and more recent. Psych Bulletin is a journal consisting of all review articles. Other good sources are available, for example Current Directions in Psychological Science.

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For the PR2 group.

Fall 2008 (20093)

Ninth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 10-21-08

Tues. 10-21-08:

Present: Nikita and Melissa

Lisa and Melissa began running subjects in PR2 in the lab. They had set up time slots of 30 minutes for one person. Subjects are only taking about 5 minutes to do the study. So they will change the timeslots to every 10 minutes to be safe.

There is still data to be coded in PR1 with gender. There were about 300 subjects run with gender, and about half of them are already coded. Nikita will finish that coding, but will then leave the group.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Tenth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 10-28-08

Tues. 10-28-08:

New member

Present: Greg Lanciotti

I will send Greg's info to Rick Miller to have him put on the Lab Group folder. Greg will start studying the answer keys so he can get the data coding caught up.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Eleventh Week of Fifteen, Tues. 11-4-08

Tues. 11-4-08:

No meeting - Election day

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Twelfth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 11-11-08

Tues. 11-11-08:

Just the Local/Global group.

Present: Bevin Lustman

Before the meeting, Kirsten stopped in my office. We talked about the possible reasons for why we didn't get very strong results in the Local/Global live study, and for why there is a three way interaction between Processing (Local vs. Global), Type of lineup (simultaneous vs. sequential) and Experimenter. One possibility for the interaction could be differences in the appearance of the lineup tests. Another possibility could be differences in the way the different experimenters interacted with the subjects.

The overall pattern of results for all six experimenters was that there was an interaction between Processing (Local vs. Global), and Type of lineup (simultaneous vs. sequential). There was a Global over Local advantage for the sequential test, but not for the simultaneous test. The Global advantage for the sequential test only was significant.

In regard to target person, the overall pattern also held for Bevin only. For Kirsten only the pattern was in the same direction and the global advantage for sequential test only was significant, although the interaction was not. For Sam, the interaction held, and was in the same direction as for Bevin and Kirsten, but the simple effect test was not significant. For Samantha and for Shawn, the pattern was different and nothing was significant. For Ashley, there was a main effect global advantage across both simultaneous and sequential, although it was not significant as a simple effects test for the sequential test only.

Therefore, it was the lineup test for Samantha and Shawn that produced results that were the most different from the overall pattern. However, an inspection of their lineup tests did not show any common difference in appearance that distinguished their lineup tests from the others.

On the other hand, the experimenters running the procedure in the cases where the different pattern occured were Sam and Ashley. If they interacted differently with the subjects than the other experimenters, then that might account for why the pattern was different.

The other question was why we didn't get a stronger global advantage. That is, we got the global advantage for the sequential test, but not for the simultaneous test. Perhaps there is some way that the large visual angle we used could explain that, but at this point I'm not sure how.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Thirteenth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 11-18-08

Tues. 11-18-08:

We should discuss the visual angle angle. Do we know what the visual angles were for Macrae and for Perfect?

The previous literature says that viewing a Navon letter at a larger than 7 degree visual angle eliminates (or just reduces?) the global advantage in speed for identifying the large letter. Does that mean that it also affects the extent to which a person's processing is shifted to global? Is there a way to measure how globally or locally a person is processing other than with the face recognition task? One possibility is to look at hemispheric activation, but how would we do that? We should check the literature to see if anyone has already done that.

A search of PsychINFO and the two other psychology databases using the search terms "global processing" in any field and "hemisphere" in any field produced 180 references. Some of them may be helpful.

We determined that Macrae probably had a small visual angle - Their Navon letters were presented on index cards, but we don't have any more detail than that. Perfect used the same letters that we used. They projected them on a 3.5 meter square screen. They probably had a large visual angle.

Kirsten and others will look in the literature for as much information as they can find on how all of the studies were done. They will look for any consistent differences they can find between the studies that were successful and the studies that were not successful. She should definitely look at the Lawson paper that talks about failures to replicate.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Fourteenth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 11-25-08

Tues. 11-25-08:

No meeting.

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Fall 2008 (20093)

Fifteenth Week of Fifteen, Tues. 12-2-08

Tues. 12-2-08:

Last meeting. Pizza was served.

Present: Stephanie Martin, Ashley Dailey, Shawn Griffiths, Kirsten Williams

I'd like to touch base and see where we will go from here. I'll need to know who will be with me next semester and beyond that.

For the CP3 group, we need to continue running subjects, but we also need to get the data we have so far scored and coded so that we can present it at APS in San Francisco in May.

Blake will be able to code data this Friday. Sometime during finals week, etc. So we should be able to have a result by the end of the winter break.

For the PR1 and 2 group, we need to look at the data from PR1 with Gender, and the data from PR2 run in the lab. If the lab study gives us results similar to the web based study, then that will give us something to present in the future.

For the Local/Global group, we need to figure out how the successful studies appear to differ from the unsuccessful ones, determine what kinds of predictions that makes, and design some studies to test those predictions.

Kirsten compared Lawson 2007 to the studies that were successful. She will make up a grid of successful and unsuccessful studies and all of their characteristics. I sent her the Brand's dissertation (one of the failures). She will divy up the papers between herself, Shawn, and Ashley. They will also look into getting money from the URC and any other ways to raise money.

For the Math and Analogy lit search people, I need to find out what questions you have identified so that, again, we can design some studies.