Embodied Physics Learning

这个EHR核心研究项目的目标，专注于STEM学习领域，是利用具身认知的认知科学理论来提高学生的物理学习。正在研究的一个中心假设是，为学生提供物理量的直接经验（例如，通过设计用于定位物体重心（COG）的平衡技术来感觉延伸物体中的质量分布），而不是阅读教科书中的概念或使用更传统的动手活动（例如，从扩展对象悬挂权重以视觉地确定对象的COG）增强了学习。实验室的经验，学生觉得物理量可能会导致招聘的大脑区域专门用于感觉运动处理时，学生后来思考和推理他们所经历的物理概念。当这些感觉运动区域参与思考和推理时，人们对所讨论的概念的理解可能会有所改善。在认知科学实验室，实验1-4调查是否以及如何通过平衡活动直接参与物理对象可以促进扩展对象作为离散组件的概念化，从而提高学生定位系统的COG的能力。实验5，6，8，9移动到物理教室，以探讨如何感觉运动的经验可能与理解COG主题和改善常见的误解，并确定最佳的时间（相对于讲座）的感觉运动的经验。实验7探讨了认知和神经基板驱动经验和理解之间的联系，使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）的范例。总的来说，这项工作旨在揭示某些实验室经验是如何以及为什么有效的，促进易于实施的指导方针，教育工作者可以在自己的课程，以提高学生的学习设计。

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.