Neuroscience and education: motivation and attention in the acquisition learning of scientific concepts

• Grant number: 12/20202-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: June 01, 2013
• End date: September 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Cognitive Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Gilberto Fernando Xavier
• Grantee: Luana Lira Righi Quachio
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims at evaluating to which extent the students' interests in topics discussed in class play a motivational role, thus modulating orientation of attention. Participants interested in a Physics topic but not in a Biology topic, and other participants interested in a Biology topic but not in a Physics topic, will watch to a video class in Biology and another in Physics, both with "irrelevant stimuli or distractors" (stimuli not related to the class); the participants' eye-movements will be measured during the classes. When watching to an interesting class, one expects that the participants' eye-movements trajectories deviate away from the video class less frequently and that the durations of the eye-movements towards distractors are shorter, as compared to when paticipants watch to an uninteresting class. In the Experiment 2, covert attention will be evaluated. The participants will be required to react to a target figure related to the Biology and the Physics class, presented among distractors; in parallel, the electroencephalogram will be recorded in order to evaluate N2pc and Pd components. When responding to a target figure related to an interesting topic, the participants are expected to exhibit a larger N2pc to the target and a smaller Pd to the distractor. If confirmed, these figures would indicate both that orientation of attention to a target is more efficient when this latter is related to the interesting topic and that in this case inhibition of orienting of attention towards the distractor is more efficient. Together the results will help to understand to which extent student's interests influence the efficiency of attentional orientation during a class. (AU)