thinking in my cognitive communication
rehabilitation lab here at the
University of Georgia we do research
into the kinds of supports that students
needs to be successful in college after
they’ve had a brain injury and that
thinking about thinking is called
metacognition and we’re interested in
metacognition because we and others have
done some research to show that it’s
critical to those students success so
who are those students with brain injury
many times they’ve been in car accidents
recreational accidents are common as
well bike accident skiing sledding also
falls maybe falls from bunk beds Falls
down stairwells that sort of thing
you’ve probably also heard a fair bit in
the media about concussions and
concussion is a brain injury it’s a mild
one so for the most part people get
better the students that I see are those
that have had six eight ten concussions
people who have been really hard on
their brains and as a result they’re
having a hard time in the classroom so
what I want to do now is that I actually
have an audio clip of one of our
students with brain injury and we
finally got her connected to the
Disability Resource Center so that she
could have extra time for her tests and
she could also take those tests in what
are called distraction free rooms and
despite the name what you’re gonna hear
in this audio clip is that actually she
found all kinds of distractions in that
room and what I want you to do is that I
want you to listen carefully because I
want you to remember those distractions
because fair game there’s gonna be a
quiz all right so listen up remember all
of the distractions that you can I
finally want to disability service to
take
exams that’s so much better is it the
distractions for your rooms have so many
distractions in them and I like you sit
in a swivel chair and it you can like
rock it back and forth and you can dim
the lights and you can and there’s like
pencils and sharpeners too and Kleenexes
and they have like earplugs and stuff
and a light in the clock and I was like
you can just sit there yeah okay so the
good news was that our student did in
fact do better taking her exams over
there despite the fact that she found
all those distractions what I want you
to do now though is that I want you to
think about how many of those items
you’re gonna remember when I ask you
about them later so we’ve got a
handy-dandy lineup here we’ve got zero
down here that means none and then over
here we’ve got a hundred percent you’re
gonna ace the quiz when it happens
you’re gonna remember all of those
distractions so place yourself somewhere
on that line and just kind of make a
mental note of what that number is all
right so I told you that I worked with
students with brain injury but what is a
brain injury the formal definition is
that it’s a blow bump or jolt to the
head that disrupts the normal
functioning of the brain that old trope
that if you’ve seen one then you’ve only
seen one applies to brain injury as well
there’s a huge range of deficits that
people might experience as a result of a
brain injury common cognitive complaints
though our problems with attention
problems with memory and problems with
executive function so problems with
attention might be difficulty paying
attention to me and ignoring the person
wrestling in their seat behind you or
maybe the buzz of the phone in your
pocket problems with memory is not so
much problems with remembering here your
parents are or where you went to
elementary school
this is problems learning new
information after the brain injury
executive function
control processes that we use to plan in
sequence behavior to organize our
thoughts and that gets us closer to
metacognition and I told you that
metacognition is thinking about thinking
but we also have metacognitive beliefs
we know how our brain works we know what
it’s good at we know the times that it
might let us down and those beliefs are
built on lots and lots of experience
that we’ve had using our brain so this
is why you might hear people say things
like I’m really bad with names
or I have a photographic memory that
that is based on lots of experiences of
forgetting names or maybe remembering
things once you’ve looked at it for our
students with brain injury they have
also developed metacognitive beliefs
based on lots and lots of experience
living with their brain their whole
lives and then after a brain injury
their brain no longer works the way that
it did before so they have to relearn
how their brain works and at the same
time that relearning
of how their brain works is being done
by their brain the same brain that was
injured to cause the problems so you can
see where it becomes this troublesome
loop so what we do with our students
with brain injury is that we explicitly
teach them to self-regulate and we all
use self-regulation in big and small
ways on hard and easy tasks but we may
not think about it so much but for our
students with brain injury we force them
to think about it and self-regulation is
a process through which we monitor our
performance and then we exert control to
make sure that we’re getting the
performance that we want so I’ll show
you what it looks like
so the first thing we do with our
students is that we have them set a goal
and this does not have to be some kind
of big lofty goal like graduating from
college we’re talking about easy goals
that you can just pick off so maybe
paying attention through a seventy or
five minute class so
the student sets this goal the first
thing that’s going to happen is that
they’re going to monitor they’re going
to check to see if they’re paying
attention so they’re gonna check to see
if their actual performance is meeting
their goal performance so they’re in
class five minutes in and they check to
see I’m paying attention what does the
professor just say and if they don’t
know then they’re gonna exert control so
they’re not meeting their goal so now
they’re gonna come up with a strategy
it’s five minutes in the class you know
maybe it’s just something simple you sit
up straight take a sip of water refocus
your energy toward the professor so they
execute that strategy and then it’s a
loop so we’re back up around to the top
where we’re now are going to be
self-monitoring again so they’re
checking their actual performance to see
if it’s meeting their goal performance
do I know what the professor’s talking
about what just happened and if they
miss it again
they still realize I am still not with
it maybe now they’re gonna execute
another strategy like writing notes gets
them actively involved in class if
they’re gonna write down what the
professor is saying they have to pay
attention to it so they execute that
strategy come back around they monitor
do I know what the professor just said
yeah I just wrote it down I’m good so
now they’re actual performances there
and they have achieved what they wanted
to achieve and they can continue
checking the rest of class though let’s
be honest so the other thing though is
that all of this is happening within the
backdrop of our metacognitive beliefs
and it matters because if you believe
that you’re gonna do just fine you might
not ever enter into this loop you might
not monitor because why would you if you
thought that you were going to do just
fine the other thing is that we have to
activate this loop many many times of
monitoring and control lots of
experience and feedback before we start
to get beliefs to shift so let me give
you another example
let’s say that I asked you to run to the
grocery store and I say hey can you grab
milk and bread for me how many of you
are gonna write that down show hands
okay
some of you not many fair enough all
right let’s say that I say hey can you
run to the grocery store for me and can
you pick up milk and bread and
dishwashing soap and zip lock bags and
sour cream how many of you’re gonna
write that down show hands oh my gosh
you guys are all writing it down you
made that decision very quickly and you
made that decision very quickly because
you went right to your beliefs beliefs
are fast and you did that based on lots
of experience that you’ve had with your
memory lots of experience we’ve had
going to the grocery store maybe lots of
experience you’ve had writing grocery
lists and let’s be fair maybe sometimes
you’ve forgotten two good items okay
for someone who’s had a brain injury
they know that second list is hard you
won’t need that second list was hard
it’s the first list it’s the first list
that our folks with memory impairments
might miss and it’s because a lot of you
thought it was easy so why wouldn’t it
be easy they’ve lived with a brain that
remembered milk and bread for years and
years instead they might go to the store
and end up with two items but maybe it’s
milk and eggs so they still come home
with two things from the staples
category or from that category of what
you buy when the weatherman says snow so
let’s return again to our student in all
her distractions I had you judge your
learning before and now I want you to do
it again how many of those items do you
think you’re going to remember when I
ask you and again pick a number for
yourself zero hundred you’re acing the
quiz somewhere in between how many of
you changed your judgment some of you
did okay great
well the time has come remember your
items you can chat amongst yourselves
see how many of those items you can
remember so
from here it sounds like you have all
remembered all of them and maybe like
300 more that was a lot however the
answer Q key is here you can check
yourself and you can also maybe find
all right you can also grade yourself
here I trust you you can see what you
actually scored on the quiz alright okay
so I’m gonna ask you again now how many
of you were overconfident that you
thought you were gonna remember a whole
lot and then you didn’t do so great how
many were in that some of you okay how
many of you were pretty well calibrated
that you were pretty much on target okay
more hands for sure and then how many of
you were under confident that you
actually did much better than you
thought you were gonna do how’d we do
good great so typical adults tend to be
a little bit under confident and we
think that’s because that little bit of
feeling that you get that unsure sort of
I don’t know that’s what makes you use a
strategy so if you’re a little unsure
you’re gonna do the work to make sure
now the other thing that I want to say
here is that I had to make that judgment
two times and people tend to be much
more accurate the second time the first
time I asked you that information was
still very fresh you had just heard it
it was sitting in what we call working
memory which you can think of as the
chalkboard in your mind and if it’s
still written on the chalkboard you
don’t know if you’ve memorized it
because you can still see it so when
people make that first judgment they
make that based on beliefs you make that
based on previous experiences that
you’ve had with your memory maybe
listening to information the second time
that I asked you there was lots of time
in between for me to distract you think
about other things so what people
usually do is when I say or when we say
how many you’re gonna remember now you
do what’s called a covert retrieval
attempt you check you start thinking
about it like well okay well
[Music]
Jr there are some Kleenex what else was
there okay maybe half so you actually
monitored you did the work to check your
thinking at that point so if you’re
thinking about now this seems useful I’m
glad it is why I bring it up but I do
want to bring up one more point about
our students with brain injury that many
people who have brain injuries have
really nice recoveries and they look
like the person they were before and
they are not that person and so we call
it an invisible injury that you can’t
see what’s different and it’s easier to
understand why this is a problem if you
think about someone who has a physical
injury let’s say that you had a friend
who just had a knee replacement and you
say hey how’s it going and he said you
know it’s good but I got to do my
exercises all the time and I got to go
to the physical therapist every day you
probably wouldn’t say oh man I know I
really need to go to the gym I mean you
might not be wrong I don’t want to judge
but maybe you do need to go to the gym
but you probably wouldn’t say it to your
friend because you know that he doesn’t
do his exercises if he doesn’t see the
physical therapist his knee might not
work right he might not get to walk the
next day and it’s the same way for our
folks with brain injury they have to do
this work it is an imperative and that
it is an imperative that it is
compulsory feels very different it is
part of the weight of living with a
brain injury and as part of the hard
work of recovery so don’t minimize it
for the rest of us it’s a choice we have
this choice but we don’t often take it
so our beliefs are stable as a
protective mechanism our beliefs are
stable so that they’re not blown about
in the wind
every time the weather changes but they
can also trap us in a previous iteration
of ourselves that our beliefs might not
be mapping to the person that we are so
I want you to think about why you were
interested in this talk or why you were
interested in TEDx what did you want to
get out of it did you come just to hear
something interesting or did you come
because you thought you might want to
take that with you that you can learn
that maybe you believe in change that
maybe you have a goal self out there and
I’m here to tell you that you can do it
that you can think about it think about
your thinking and make the change happen thank you