Hypermedia website

http://www.sesamestreet.org/home

The Sesame Street website is designed for developing the literacy, numerical, and motor skills of young children. I haven't asked how kids feel about this website, but from an adult's perspective, the kids should have found this site very engaging and easy to navigate.

The layout of this website is very suitable for young children. The navigation bars have larger picture icons than the literal descriptions, which is very considerate for young users whose knowledge about print and literacy is still developing. Also, this picture oriented feature caters to users from all over the world. When logging on to this site, no matter what their age, language is, they could navigate easily and locate what they intend to. Besides, the colorful and vivid design is of great appeal to young users.

The thematic organization of the materials presented on this website makes it easier for children to locate the topics, characters they are interested in. For all the games and videos, they are categorized by subject, theme and character. It also helps the users to track back efficiently without getting lost in the hyper link maze. For instance, under the "by subject" categorization, videos that serve a variety of purposes are listed under the different titles, with iconic descriptions that aid understanding.

The quality of the videos and games on this website is excellent in terms of motivating child to learn and meeting learning objectives. Most of the videos are presented in a way that relate to children's prior knowledge from life experiences. The connections between what children already know and what they need to know is established through the interesting dialogues and behaviors of the cartoon characters. Children's assimilation of new information is done in a edutainment approach. On top of all this, there are also parent tips on the side of the screen accompanying each video and game that shows how parents can improve children's learning outcomes by following some simple instructions. The involvement of parents in the learning process will definitely enhance children's achievement. This is especially useful for young children, whose self-management ability is not strong enough to support them in utilizing the website to its fullest potential.

One of the shortcomings of this website is that it mostly requires children to watch and learn rather than encouraging them to produce input or engage in interactions. If children have a chance to get in touch and share learning experiences with other learners, the motivation and engagement might be even better. For example, if children can compare their scores with other kids from the internet, or if they could exchange comments for certain videos, chances are that they might want to explore more video clips and games.

Non-linear text

Somehow, the hyperlink doesn't work all the time under this embeded mode.
try this link, and click on "start presentation:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddsqpx45_22c3c4fwch

One of the advantages of non-linear text is that it gives the reader a feeling of in control. Rather than negatively receiving input, they get to decide what comes next and what is presented. Although such decision making is not one hundred percent, at least it boosts the participation and motivation of the readers by increasing involvement.

In the "personality-teller" slides I made, I think the readers would find it more engaging and interesting when they are directed to a certain slide after making the choices, compared to the traditional slide by slide format.

However, non-linear text has several down sides, one of which is the difficulty of tracking back to a certain point in the text. Readers might lose the track of their path while enjoying the convenience of the "on demand" presentation, especially when the linkages are numerous.

Recall patterns

Two men came to a bank. A canoe came. Five men invited them to a war. One man replied and said that he doesn't have weapon. "We have arrows in the boat", they said. The man then told them that he can't go since his family had no idea where he went. He suggested the other man go with them. So the war began. People were dead fighting. The man heard someone said "Let's get out of here quickly. The Indian was hurt." The man felt really strange because he wasn't sick at all. He knew they must be ghosts. He went home later and told the others the story. He said that he had been to the war with the ghosts and saw people die. The next morning when the sun rose he fell down and black smoke came out of his mouth. People jumped up and cried. He was dead.

Two men came near to a bank. They saw a boat coming. When they were asked to go to a war, one man suggested another man go with them. The people in the boat persuaded him by saying that they've got arrows for the battle. During the war, many were killed. The man didn't feel sick or hurt. "Let's get out of here" he heard someone say. He left with the other men. He told people about the battle. He said that those people must be ghosts. The sun arose and he fell to the ground. Black smoke came out of his mouth. He was dead.

Two men came to a bank of a river. They saw a boat come around. One of the men in the boat asked them to join a battle. One of the two replied that they've got no weapon. The men in the boat said there are arrows in the boat. One of the two men said he need go home to tell his family where he went, he asked the other man to go with those warriors. During the battle, he saw people wounded and killed. But he didn't get hurt at all. Suddenly, he heard someone say that they should run away. So he ran with them and then he came home later. He told his family about the war. He said, I think they are ghost. After the word, he fell down on the ground. And smoke came out of his mouth. The man was dead.

 

The yellow mark indicates the part that appeared in the 1^st but missed from the 2^nd recall.

The blue mark indicates the part that was not in the 2^nd but reappeared in the 3^rd recall.

Cognitive economy can be observed in my recall. Numbers, names, adjectives, and figurative are often omitted when I was trying to retrieve information from semantic memory. The first recall retained most of the redundant information. These detailed descriptions are missing in the second and third recall. In general, information that is related closely to the storyline and key points that make the narrative meaningful is recalled most smoothly.

The amount of information and detail level maintained by the second and third recall was similar. This might indicate that the long term memory is stable and over time, little variation occurs during retrieval.

It seems that the unusual and unreasonable details, if retrieved at all, are done more easily and accurately. For instance, "the black smoke came out from the mouth". Compared with other additive, the color of the smoke is recalled accurately every single time. However, there was a tendency to normalize, as is stated in the Bartlette study, the irregular events. I tried to make the story more sensible by omitting the part that the two men went to a river to hunt seals. To me, it seems that hunting seals at a river is rare and unreasonable. Moreover, I even added things that are not in the original story. Smoke is not mentioned anywhere in the story, but I made this up every time I recalled.

One strange thing about the recall was that at the 3^rd time, I seemed to have picked up some detail that was omitted in the second recall. This might be considered as evidence that the stored information is not really "gone" from the memory. If something is not retrieved successfully, it's more likely that the information was not activated rather than "disappearing" from the storage.

It's also interesting to notice that the manner I recalled this story was rather visual. While working on the task, I was trying really hard to pick up the visual cues stored in the memory. And the completion of the task resembles depicting a series of pictures, as if I was going through a set of comics. It's possible that the details I gathered were merely deduction from the images that I was "seeing" in my head when I completed the recall task.

Concept map

When I asked my subject to come up with a concept map for the causes of seasons, her first reaction was to jokingly ask who needs a map for that. So I had to explain to her what a concept map is all about. Still, she keeps throwing me all kinds of questions, such as what do you mean by "the hierarchical structure of a concept." I then decided to show her a sample concept map so that she could have a concrete idea about what a real concept map should look like. Before this, I had no idea that the concept of a concept map itself takes extra time and effort to be delivered. It appears that an "anchor concept maps" is much needed when we try to engage people to complete this task for the first time.

Before reading the materials about this topic, the subject was asked to draw a concept map based on her pre-existed understanding. The map was pretty simple, with a single causal relationship between the "orbiting of the earth" and "seasons". This is a seemingly right answer, since the seasons are in some ways related to the orbiting. However, when I asked her to explain the connection between these two factors, she responded that the when earth is shielded from the sun by the moon, that part of the earth is winter. This is a blatantly incorrect response. Then I showed her the reading and suggested her to pay close attention to the earth's relationship with the sun, rather than with the moon.

I also encouraged her to put down more nodes before she started. This time the relationship between the factors that are involved in the formation of the seasons are organized with much greater detail and logical sequence. She also succeeded in labeling the connections between those factors when I asked her to.

A comparison between the pre and post concept map shows that for one thing, a concept map that requires more detailed description of the knowledge can reveal the problematic conception. For another, the understanding of a certain concept can be changed and enriched and might be able to indicate learning. But before such learning takes place, erroneous prior knowledge should to be identified and corresponding instructions is needs to be implemented.

Long term memory

My subject was able to recall 17 words from the list with an accuracy rate of 16/20.

After an hour, she was able to recall 16 words, with an accuracy rate of 14/20.

I was really surprised to see that she could perform so well at the immediate and delayed retrieval of these seemingly random words. Especially when I noticed that during the hour interval, she was filling out dozens of envelops, which is quite an interfering task for a memory test. So I asked her what she was doing during the 10 seconds interval between the presentations of two words. She said that she was trying to connecting the words together with meanings, engaging in an activity that is similar to elaborative rehearsal. Interestingly, for both immediate and delayed recall, there is an obvious sequential pattern that certain words always appear adjacently. It is evident that the subject was grouping the words during storage. This result corroborates the notion described in the Ashcraft article that "material that was rehearsed elaboratively should be more permanently available for retrieval from memory."

One thing also noteworthy is that the subject reported that it was harder to recall the words on the last part of the list. 2 of the 4 words she missed on the first recall were the last 2 words on the list. This might be due to the fact that she did not write down the last words first when it comes to recall, but was following the order she used during elaborative rehearsal. Consequently, Less time and effort was used rehearsing the last words and writing down the primary words might also have interfered with the recalling of these words at the end of the list.

Retrieval patterns

Results:

Both subjects are Chinese native speakers.

Result of Subject A, read to mostly in Chinese, with all the letters and two line of words in English.

Results of Subject B, read to in English only.

Patterns

The recalling of the numbers has the highest accuracy rate. The longest lists of random letters and random words have the lowest rate of accurate retrieval.

The results also indicate that the numbers, letters, words at the beginning and at the end of the lists have an accuracy rate close to 100%. And both subjects reported that it was easier to recall the items at the beginning and at the end of a list. They also claimed that the backward interference was most obvious for the items in the middle.

When read to using the first language, the subject performed much better on the longer word list than on the shorter list read in English. This is also true for the lists of numbers.

Semantic cue was very helpful in recalling. When one subject realized that one of the lists is actually a sentence, the recall rate was much higher than the previous lists. The other subject who failed to realize the semantic cue of this list did not perform distinguishably better on this longer list of words.

Both subjects also pointed out that when they were able to chunk the information down into groups using whatever cues there are, they would find retrieval more convenient.

Conclusions: Factors that might play an important role in retrieval

Encoding and retrieval cues

Numbers and letters are much more abstract than words. However, the task of recalling numbers was reported as the easiest. As an exception, when the letters and words can be chunked or regrouped based on semantic cues, the subjects find it easier to recall. Thus, when clues are present for encoding, the storage and retrieval can be carried out more smoothly.

When the subjects are exposed to information in a second language, extra time and effort are needed to encode the same amount of information presented in first language. This indicates the fact that prior knowledge is important in the encoding of new information. And both subjects reported that there was an involuntary tendency to translate the second language into their mother tongue, costing more time and resulted in the interference of receiving other incoming words. Therefore, the subjects' prior knowledge in this case affected their performance negatively.

One subject reported that she was trying to visualize the words I read to her, and performed better on the list of words that can be visualized.

So both semantic and visual cues can be used in encoding and retrieval. There might be an individual difference on the preference of these strategies.

The Turing Test

1. Is the Turing Test a sufficient test? That is, if a machine passes the test, would you agree it is intelligent?

It depends on how we define intelligence. If intelligence is all about making judgments based on logical deduction, then passing the test might serve as an evidence of the machine being intelligent. However, human intelligence is supposed to be much more inclusive than this. For one thing at least, it should be able to cope with variations on its own when an encountered situation is not preprogrammed. An interesting example would be, on the “talk with God” website, when I typed in “Did you have breakfast?”, it replied as “no, I don’t have any breakfast, but I do have some gossip”. Apparently, the phrase “did you have something” is misunderstood here as “did you possess something”. While programmed perfectly for many other responses, when it comes to the transformation of a verb under certain context, the program could not generate appropriate responses for this variation. Although a machine or program similar to this might pass the Turing test satisfactorily, it does not meet the broader requirements of being intelligent, such as self-generated adaptation, etc.

Also, it seems to me that the analysis skills the test requires resemble what the many data analysis software can do nowadays. There is one major difference that some preprogrammed questions are asked. Other than that, the way it collects the responses, analyses them and provides conclusions is just similar to some statistics software. But we are not considering those software as intelligent.

2. Is the Turing Test a necessary test? That is, does a machine have to pass this test in order to be intelligent?

If a machine can pass such test, it is reasonable to believe that it has certain ability in information processing related tasks. But if the machine fails, it is also unfair to conclude that it is not intelligent, since even humans can make mistakes in tasks like this. In addition, I don’t see this test as a perfect simulation of the problems we come across in the real world. Therefore, this test need not be viewed as the criteria for intelligence.

3. Will a machine ever pass the Turing Test? Why or why not?

The test is not requiring highly generic information processing skills. So if the machine is equipped with programming that enables it to analyze the responses it encounters, passing the test should not be a hard thing.

4. Will a machine ever be intelligent? Why or why not? (This may or may not be the same answer to the previous question).

I’m convinced that machines will be intelligent eventually. While I can’t really think of any sci-fi like and inspirational ideas to support this argument, I would like to point out a very fundamental common character machine and human mind share, that is, despite all the other differences, they both run on electricity. The imitation of the passage of electrical signals should be successfully accomplished in the end.

Also, breakthroughs in at least two areas are necessary for this dream come true. One is the mechanism of how human brain is functioning. This area has been vexing scientists for ages, but humans should be able to know all about themselves finally. The other could be the appropriate medium or programming methods used by machines. It is highly possible that chips are not the most appropriate material that machines should be using when it tries to perform intelligently, or that the programming methods we are using right now has already limited some possibilities of machines’ being intelligent.