How to read and understand stuff

How do you get people to read and understand stuff?
Facilitated by: David Williams
Tuesday 7 September 2010
Barton Room, National Archives of Australia

Scope
What is the problem?
How the brain finds stuff
How we comprehend what we read?
Case Study
What are some solutions?
lots of discussion sharing experiences different opinions

What is the Problem?
How do you get people to read and understand stuff?
How can we write stuff that people will read?
How can we locate stuff where people can find it?

We have two neural mechanisms for seeing things we might want to pay attention to:
a peripheral scanning system that takes in a wide field of vision and
a focused (foveal) system that allows us to drill down to details

We have neurons that are specialists in different areas: i.e. picking out colours, shapes and disruptions in patterns
We use these recruited neuronal swat teams to identify something we're looking for in our "mind's eye" (the visual cortex)
These swat teams focus our attention on our intended targets by synchronizing their firing patterns which allows them to rise above the noise of the other things fighting for our attention.

How our brain finds Waldo

How our brain scans a website

Information scents
we use the same strategies we use to find food when we're looking for information
Just like food, information tends to come in patches online
We have a mental image of the information (prey) we seek.
We recruit our swat team of neurons to help us hunt to the part of the page.

How to read and understand stuff

by David Williams on Sep 13, 2010

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How to read and understand stuff — Presentation Transcript