Improving Native American children’s listening comprehension through concrete representations Presenter: Shiao-Ling Tsai Instructor: Dr. Pi-Ying Hsu Date: March 30, 2009

Native American Children American Indian

Citation Marley, C. S., Levin, R. J., & Glenberg, M. A. (2007). Improving Native American children’s listening comprehension through concrete representations. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32, 537-550. 3

Contents Introduction Method Results & Discussion Reflection I. II. IV. 4

Introduction Humans make sense of their environment through three modalities: (Marley, C. S., Levin, R. J., & Glenberg, M. A., 2007) action imagery language 5

Introduction Text-relevant motor activity enhance indexing process, improve students’ ability to generate visual images to represent the passage’s events, and have positive cognitive consequences. (Glenberg, Gutierrez, Levin, Japuntic, & Kaschak, 2004) 6

Purpose to determine whether recent findings documenting the benefits of text-related motor activity on young children’s memory for reading passages could be extended to the text processing of Native American children 7

Method Participants 45 Native American 3- through 7-grade students in southwestern United States 3 conditions Free-study Visual Manipulate 15 students 15 students 15 students Four 12-sentence stories Toy objects Materials Period Each strategy condition is for 35 minutes. 8

Procedure---Strategy 1 Free-study condition Story 1 Story 2 Story 3 Story 4 listen to the story listen to the story close eyes think about what was happening in the story free recall think about story events think about story events cued-recall 9

Procedure---Strategy 2 Manipulate condition Story 1 Story 2 Story 3 Story 4 manipulate toys or close eyes manipulate toys manipulate toys free recall close eyes make pictures in head about the story think about think about cued-recall 10

Procedure---Strategy 3 Visual condition Story 1 Story 2 Story 3 Story 4 see the toys see the toys see the toys close eyes close eyes close eyes close eyes free recall think about make pictures in head think about cued-recall 11

Results & Discussion Students’ recall of orally presented text passages was greatly enhanced by manipulate activity. A comparable degree of facilitation was produced by visual representation of story events. Adjusted mean number of items recalled and cued recall percentages Story 2 Story 3 Free study Visual manipulate Free recall Propositions 5.46 8.92 7.97 5.55 8.34 Objects 9.49 16.88 13.84 9.77 13.97 14.45 Actions 6.60 10.81 8.93 6.49 10.64 10.82 Locations 2.74 4.37 4.26 3.04 4.09 4.24 Cued recall 53.0 77.2 86.2 53.8 78.8 87.0 12

Results & Discussion Adjusted mean number of items recalled and cued recall percentages Students were not able to produce their own visual representations for story 4. Story 4 Free study Visual manipulate Free recall Propositions 5.21 3.33 4.30 Objects 9.15 5.97 8.21 Actions 6.21 4.27 5.79 Locations 2.05 1.37 2.07 Cued recall 41.2 38.9 40.9 13

Possible explanations Students had inability to generate text-relevant visual imagery. Students did not fully understand the directions. Students lose attention, interest, and effort. 14

Reflection ? ? Are three groups of students at the same level Is it necessary to conduct the study with 4 stories ? ? 15

Thanks for your listening!