1. Discovering a Valid Behavioral Evaluation of
Discourse Gist Reasoning Skills in Adults
August 13, 2014
Dorothy MacFarlane, Alison Perez, Sandra B. Chapman
4. The Evaluated Discourse Gist Reasoning Skillset
Gist reasoning entails 3 higher order cognitive functions
• strategic attention
• integrated reasoning
• elaborated reasoning or innovation
Equation Representation: a + b = Ǿ
5. Literary Abstraction Rubric
Did They State…
Score
Example
Source
A Definition of Success/Failure (with no "?" after)
1 Each
"Success cannot be measured at times by money or someone else's
definition." AND "To try nothing might actually be the definition of
failure."
BH0049
Was He a Success/Failure (and why, if relevant)
1 Each
"He was a failure because of his ethics and moral attitude." AND
7. Future Directions: Why is a Behavioral Method
Needed?
- Established a Possible Control Group
- Troubleshooting
- Baseline for Future Standardized Testing
8. Citations
Anand, R., Chapman, S. B., Rackley, A., Keebler, M., Zientz, J., & Hart, J. (2011). Gist reasoning training in cognitively normal
seniors. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 26(9), 961-968.
Chapman SB, Zientz J, Weiner M, et al. (2002) Discourse changes in early Alzheimer’s disease,
mild cognitive impairment, and normal aging. Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders
16(3): 177–186.
Chapman, S. B., & Mudar, R. A. (2013). Discourse gist: A window into the brain’s complex cognitive capacity. Discourse Studies,
15(5), 519-533.
Chapman, S. B., Aslan, S., Spence, J. S., Hart, J. J., Bartz, E. K., Didehbani, N., ... & Lu, H. (2013). Neural mechanisms of brain
plasticity with complex cognitive training in healthy seniors. Cerebral Cortex, bht234.
Johnson-Laird PN (1983) Mental Models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lorenz, J., Minoshima, S., & Casey, K. L. (2003). Keeping pain out of mind: the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in pain
modulation. Brain, 126(5), 1079-1091.
McLeod, S. A. (2007). Cognitive Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive.html
van Dijk TA and Kintsch W (1983) Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York:
Academic Press.
van Dijk TA (1995) On macrostructure mental models and other inventions: A brief personal history of the Kintsch–van Dijk
Theory. In: Weaver CA, Mannes S and Fletcher CR (eds)
Discourse Comprehension. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 383–410.
Zwaan RA and Radvansky GA (1998) Situation models in language comprehension and memory.
Psychology Bulletin 123(2): 162–185.
Editor's Notes
The reason I would like to introduce cognitive function is because this is the area of the brain that discourse gist reasoning mostly targets.
Centers around language, perception, attention, interpretation, memory and thinking (McLeod S.A., 2007).
Located primarily in the Frontal Lobe
Psychologically, it is how humans discern and apply information-that has been supplied from components of their environment-to solve a problem, create an idea, store for future reference, or discard as irrelevant.
In essence, we study the variables applied in the mind between the reception of the data and the our response to it.
Image Citations: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/test_procedures/orthopaedic/magnetic_resonance_imaging_mri_of_the_spine_and_brain_92,P07651/
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/126/5/1079/F2.expansion
Gist reasoning is a concept coined and introduced by Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman of UT Dallas who runs the Brain Health Center.
Formal Definition: A higher-order cognitive function that entails a constructive/integrative knowledge-driven process in which a situation model is generated by combining a variety of information sources including the details stated or portrayed in the stimuli, prior knowledge, and situational and other sources” (Chapman et al., 2002; Johnson-Laird,
1983; Van Dijk, 1995; Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983; Zwaan and Radvansky, 1998).
Ex stimuli: Literature
Studying results of gist reasoning training could be useful in differentiating normal brain health from a brain impaired by disease/injury [Chapman, S.B and Mudar, R.A., 2013].
There has been a marked improvement in verbal fluency and coherence in subjects who have undergone gist reasoning training. These are both indicators that more efficient synapse connections have occurred [Anand, R. and Chapman, S.B. et al., 2011].
Since gist reasoning is important for maintaining an efficient brain, i.e. efficient synapse connections, a future direction is viewing it’s effects on white matter.
Training in cognitive improvement that is similar to gist reasoning has been found to improve cognitive switching, fluency, and concept abstraction, all of which were not originally anticipated [Lustig, C. et al., 2009].
Assessing complex situation or text, comprehending the overall implied/referenced subject. In essence: understanding the BIG PICTURE then getting into more complicated sublevels of it.
Filtering the unnecessary information from the input data and then purposefully organizing it such that retrieval is facilitated.
Adhering inexplicitly stated data to presented key concepts within the viewed material in order to form a well-structured abstract.
Innovative/Creative Global application of acquired data in order to develop an expanded view on preconceived ideas and experiences [Anand and Chapman, 2010]
“…where a and b are explicitly depicted, and Ǿ represents a self-formulated, unstated, uniquely novel, generalized meaning” [Chapman, 2013]
The behavioral evaluation that we utilized in this project was a measurement of the level of discourse gist reasoning in written literature summaries. Untrained participants of varying race, age, and gender received a short text about a historical figure’s life story and given 10 minutes to read it. Immediately after, participants were asked to write a high-level overview of what they had just read. These overviews were then recorded and given a coherence score by three parties familiar with gist reasoning. From these original scores, I established a grading rubric for one particular story. The rubric outlined key themes from the text that the participants had received points for mentioning. Each theme received one point if mentioned directly [NanoExplorer Abstract].
Prior results of cognitive improvement due to discourse gist reasoning:
There has been a marked improvement in verbal fluency and coherence in subjects who have undergone gist reasoning training. These are both indicators that more efficient synapse connections have occurred [Anand, R. and Chapman, S.B. et al., 2011].
The real issue lies with establishing a valid standardized test of gist reasoning skills. For this project, we focused on the behavioral aspect of gist reasoning by first pulling 133 untrained participants from the Dallas Fort Worth Area.
Important Criteria:
Mini mental state exam
F(1, 130)=2.89, p=0.012
Age(s): 27 to 85
Average age: 52.5
Average score: 3.03 with Standard Deviation of 1.56
F(1, 130)=2.44, p=0.032
X female, Y male (Not taken into account when grading)
DFW pulled
BDI II Average (Depression Affects Cognitive Function)
What is important in any research involving human testing is establishing a control group. With these findings, we can establish the level of discourse gist reasoning within an untrained population from the DFW area.
While testing only these individuals may seem counterintuitive, this experiment was necessary for creating a baseline from which future experiments can be conducted. From this experiment, we learned that it is necessary to limit the age range in the future so that we can clarify the results age-specifically.
Ex: From our findings, we discovered that
