All in For Researchers

Stress and Memory

When we are presented with a stressful event, a variety of hormones, neurotransmitters, and peptides are released in our brains. All of these things work to activate systems to help us cope with the stressor. This initial response is typically referred to as the “fight-or-flight” response. If you were walking in the woods and actually saw three bears your fight-or-flight response would put your system on high-alert. Your body diverts resources from less-pressing matters, like digestion, and focuses on giving you superhuman strength and speed…

Cold Calling and Classroom Discussions

In my last blog, I covered a paper I published (1) about questions in class, covert retrieval, and cold calling. The conclusion from this paper, and the blog post covering it, is that inserting questions into a lecture, and encouraging students to covertly retrieve through cold calling, ought to improve learning from a lesson. If time does not permit writing out the answers (one form of overt retrieval), or doing so would disrupt the flow of a discussion, then students should still benefit from bringing the information to mind if they are encouraged to do so fully through cold calling. However, it is often quite difficult to …