Browsing by Subject "Cognitive learning"
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Item A descriptive study of the relationship of selected neuropsychological factors and cognitive learning styles of alcoholics(2003) Sanders, Nick; Shorkey, Clayton T.; Hudspeth, DeLayne R.Educational theories and practices that substantiate effective learning and development are seldom emphasized in the psychoeducational component of recovery programs for alcoholism. The primary purpose of this research was to study the relationship between selected neuropsychological and personality variables and cognitive learning styles of alcoholics during different lengths of time alcohol free. The whole population in this study consisted of 126 male and female self-selected subjects ranging in age from 18 to 65 years. Ethnic backgrounds were mixed. All subjects identified themselves as alcoholics. Subjects were associated with a psychoeducational treatment center and Alcoholics Anonymous. The whole group had from 0 days of sobriety to 35 years of abstinence. Subjects completed a demographic instrument, two cognitive tests (Shipley Institute of Living Scale-Vocabulary and Abstraction Test-SILS and the Group Embedded Figures Test -GEFT) and one learning styles inventory (Kolb Learning Styles Inventory-LSI). The mean IQ scores on the SILS for ethnic subjects and the group with 28 days or less sobriety were significantly lower than the white-non-Hispanic with 29 days or more sobriety. A need for more ethnic representation in the study limited some results. Interaction effects were identified between those subjects with less than 28 days of sobriety and 29 days or more sobriety on SILS vocabulary and abstraction scores. The two sample groups (newly sober and longer term sober) did not show a significant difference in abstraction skills on the GEFT. Field dependence was not a significant outcome. The SILS T- scores were higher than the average scores suggested in the SILS testing manual. Interaction effects between ethnicity and education were identified suggesting these variables may be as significant in this group as length of sobriety. More research was recommended to identify the vocabulary of recovery since addiction literature indicates that alcoholics with higher cognitive restructuring skills may have longer terms of sobriety. No specific learning style was identified for the group by the data from the Kolb LSI. Since the LSI pointed toward more individualized instruction for the group, the study suggests Vygotskian theories of dynamic assessment and attention to the curriculum and instruction of recovery programs may be applicable when designing instruction for the psychoeducational component of recovery programs and may be as important in recovery as length of sobriety during treatment.Item Goodbye, Afghanistan : learning over time and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan(2022-08-12) Jovanovic, Alexandra T.; Avramov, Kiril; Suri, JeremiThis thesis investigates the factors influencing Soviet decision-making leading up to the 1988-1989 withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. It asks whether and how cognitive learning theory can explain why Soviet leaders made the decisions they did, and specifically why they agreed to withdraw troops under the conditions of the 1988 Geneva Accords, which contained provisions they had previously considered unacceptable. I use Soviet government documents drawn from two different digital archives to analyze the evolution of Soviet thinking on Afghanistan and to trace patterns of change and continuity across ten years and three successions of power. I evaluate the evidence for two different types of learning in Soviet decision-making: strategic learning, which includes changes in the overall perception of Afghanistan and the long-term goals of the Soviet intervention, and tactical learning, which involves learning about the conditions under which withdrawal is possible and the concessions that are necessary to secure it. I also compare cognitive learning theory against a competing explanation: changes in Soviet internal politics that empowered advocates of withdrawal. I conclude that both strategic and tactical learning influenced Soviet behavior in Afghanistan and contributed to the decision to withdraw under the terms set at Geneva. I suggest that cognitive learning explanations are not incompatible with the influence of internal politics, and that both factors played important causal roles. I then discuss the implications of this research for an understanding superpower intervention and withdrawal more generally.Item Listening comprehension in the foreign language classroom: the cognitive receptive processes in the development of Spanish phonological perception(2006) Mayberry, María del Socorro; Koike, Dale AprilThis dissertation examines how the acquisition of the Spanish phonological system by English-speakers contributes to the development of learners’ listening skills. The study addresses theoretical and pedagogical issues regarding the understanding of the receptive processes from cognitive perspectives of learning and language comprehension. The investigation departs from previous research that has examined almost exclusively the development of higher-level processes of listening comprehension (O'Malley, et al., 1995; Goh, 2000). This approach, however, fails to recognize evidence of the difficulties novice listeners face at the perceptual and parsing levels of processing (O'Malley, et al., 1995; Goh, 2000; Field, 2003), and the effect that these low-level difficulties have in the overall listening task. The present study explores a learning approach to understand why some linguistic elements are more difficult to learn than others. Expanding on Ullman’s Declarative/Procedural model (2001, 2004), it explores the role of the declarative and procedural learning systems in the development of the phonemic awareness of L2 sounds (i.e., the perceptual phase) and the rules of L2 lexical segmentation (i.e., parsing phase). The role of practice in the development of L2 listening skills in the classroom is also examined. The assumption in this study is that adult learners have a schema of their L1 phonological system (prior knowledge); therefore, learning the L2 phonological system (new knowledge) implies identification of L1 knowledge, awareness of L2 input, and a restructuring of the L1 knowledge structure (McLaughlin, 1990) in a phonological accommodation process (Gonzalez-Bueno, 1997) that integrates the L2 system. The results show that regular linguistic elements of the language (e.g., Spanish intervocalic /d/ phoneme) are acquired by the procedural learning system, while idiosyncratic linguistic elements (e.g., /x/ phoneme and L2 segmentation rules) are dependent on declarative mechanisms such as awareness, practice, and memorization for acquisition. The findings also indicate that, with an instructional approach that includes explicit instruction of L2 sounds and lexical segmentation, learners’ low levels of processing can become more efficient, allowing them to concentrate on higher levels of processing and facilitating their overall listening comprehension.Item Self-regulation in L2 oral narrative tasks performed by adult Korean users of English(2001-08) Kim, Young-Woo; Garza, Thomas J.; Schallert, Diane L.When second language (L2) users experience difficulty in performing a task in English, they often engage in efforts to overcome their difficulties through strategic behaviors aimed at achieving the goals of the task. If those efforts take the form of, or are accompanied by, verbal expressions, these verbal expressions are often referred to as private speech, and their function described as selfregulatory, by second language researchers taking a Vygotskyan perspective. In this study, these claims were inspected and re-defined by linking a Vygotskyan perspective on self-regulation with a metacognitive perspective. Eight Korean graduate students enrolled in a U.S. university participated in this study. They were videotaped as they performed two narrative tasks, one using a series of pictures that had no words and a second, a recall task in which they watched a movie clip and retold the story they had seen. They were also interviewed as they watched their narrative performance. During the interview, they provided their thoughts on using English and on engaging in self-regulatory behaviors. Their utterances and gestures in the narrative tasks were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The interviews were recorded, partially transcribed, and analyzed. Results and discussion included the finding of support for previous studies that L2 users’ private speech functions as a self-regulatory process and plays an important role in the process. There were also findings that revealed limitations in explaining L2 users’ self-regulatory behaviors from a simple Vygotskyan conception of private speech. Several theoretical concepts from a more general metacognitive perspective, including aspects that refer to contextualization and frame, were effective in explaining the social context in which L2 self-regulatory behaviors occur. Theoretical and practical implications of the results of this study and possible future research topics are also addressed.