Article:Dual Coding Theory and Education
From unthinkMedia
Clark, J. M., Paivio A. Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1991
Dual Coding assumes that that there are two separate mental representation consisting of imagery and verbal.
- Verbal codes are represent concrete objects and events of abstract ideas. (book, text)
- Non-verbal codes include actions, environmental sounds, modeled visuals, any non-linguistic object or event.
The links between both verbal and visual representations is called a referential connection. This connection allow for such things as:
- Labeling a picture
- Visualizing a word.
The associative connection links representation with both verbal and visual.
- Verbal: words are linked to related words or categories. For example the word "school" might elicit "hate" and "gold", "silver", "copper" elicits "metals".
- Visual: images are linked to other images. For example an image of a baseball bat, might elicit an image of a baseball glove.
Linking of these objects is governed by DCT processing assumptions that could range from highly active to low. Bellow are a few example on how processing could be influenced.
- At any given time a word such as "scary" could result in high processing, where a more unfamiliar or non-meaningful words. Processing of these objects *may also be influenced by the context* in which they are presented, or by explicitly instructing a person to increase there processing. For example. telling a student to process images in their heads would result in more visual representations being created in the students mind.
- Another factor to processing relates to how concrete the word is. For example the word "ball" is easier to create a visual representation for compared to the word "truth".
- A third factor is a persons individual preference and ability with dealing with visual mental representations. Some people are better then others when dealing with spatial content such as geography.
According to several educational research outcomes, imagery and concreteness are important factors in sentences and large blocks of text. Various test, have attest that abstract words may be less distinctive than concrete words, being more prone to confusion. In one test, when asked to define a set of words, abstract words contained more hesitation. Concrete words, on the other other hand allow for quick generation of mental imagery to contribute to word and text comprehension.
This difficulty with abstract word representations might complicate comprehension in school subjects such as social sciences, which revolves around many abstract concepts. By comparison, the natural sciences revolves mainly around concrete concepts making them more easy to define and categorize.
Visual information in schools would include: maps, graphs, geometric shapes and principles, and theoretical models for many constructs in biology and other sciences (e.g., cells, atoms, chemical molecules).
According to DCR, semantic relationships between words and image contribute to comprehension. By relying on a complex collection of associative relationships, abstract words could find meaning. The authors state that, "The use of imagery to represent verbal associative knowledge demonstrates the strengths of DCF's emphasis on the collective and interactive effects of the verbal and nonverbal systems."
According to some of the studies on the image processing, generating images produces better recall verbal repetition. This was also suggest by testing the recall of people who translate text into another language which requires deep encoding.
It was interesting to learn how elaboration in text, with other words that elicit imagery proved successful with some students. The example give in the text is "The tall man grabbed a cookie" could be elaborated to "The tall man grabbed a cookie, from the top shelf". This creates a more vivid picture.
Using mnemonics and keywords and other imagery techniques are used a lot in classes regarding language and science. This is due to the amount of vocabulary that is required.
Education faculty tends to not delve deep enough into demonstrating research practices. As a result, many of the experience are abstract in nature. This may be explained by teachers focusing on the "how" and not the "why". Thinking more scientifically about education could lead to more concreate examples.
"Education depends on a complex and subtle interplay between course content, individual differences, and instructional factors" (p. 193)
Challenges
- Concrete sentences do not always work better then abstract sentences
- Concrete sentence do not always result in learning
- Criticized for being an ad hoc explanation
