The Art of Reading and the Reading of Art – Christian Steciuch

Christian Steciuch

What do you think about the hourglass-shaped sculpture that lies between Founders Memorial Library and the Holmes Student Center on the NIU campus? During Spring, vines can be seen growing up its sides. Is the sculpture interesting? Pleasurable to view?

Did you know that its title is “Balance of Equality” and it is a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the principles and values that he stood for? Did you know that its artist, Dann Nardi, won a $75,000 prize for the work in 1991, almost 30 years before the Black Lives Matter movement?

Does knowing this information influence your liking and interest in the sculpture?

Christian Steciuch, a CISLL graduate student affiliate, thinks that it might.

Steciuch, a Ph.D. student in Psychology, was last year’s winner of the CISLL Outstanding Student Scholar Award (COSSA).

Steciuch is interested in factors that affect the understanding and appreciation of artwork.

Although art may not be typically associated with language and literacy, it is if we think of literacy in a broader sense.

“There are many similarities between understanding artworks and understanding the written word,” explained Steciuch. “In both cases, the reader or viewer must activate and integrate ideas from the explicit work and their world knowledge in order to create a coherent mental representation of the piece.”

Without the background information about the MLK sculpture, one might only activate the ideas of “hourglass” and “time” assuming the viewer even recognizes it as an hourglass. But with the added information, the viewer may activate and consider other ideas that could lead to a richer interpretation of the sculpture, connecting it to such concepts as race, equality, balance, growth, Martin Luther King and, perhaps, the forward-thinking nature of NIU.

“I am particularly interested in how background information in the form of accompanying text influences reactions to art,” said Steciuch. “By accompanying text, I mean information like who is the artist, when and where the artwork was created, the title, and other information that is typically conveyed beside paintings in a museum.”

He is currently planning his dissertation, which examines the role of inferences in appreciating art.

“Prior research has shown that accompanying text typically increases the viewer’s liking and interest in the work. One possible reason is that the text may trigger inferences about the artwork that would not be drawn without the accompanying text,” explained Steciuch.

His dissertation will ask questions like: Does the amount of accompanying text affect liking and interest? Which types of inferences matter? If accompanying text does affect the viewer’s reaction, what types of reactions are affected? And do these effects depend on the processing style of the viewer?

To assess processing styles, Steciuch, along with fellow graduate students Ryan Kopatich and Daniel Feller and NIU professors Richard Siegesmund (Art Education) and Keith Millis (Psychology), recently created a psychological inventory that measures people’s preferences for thinking about artwork.

“We found that some individuals do not like ambiguity in artwork. It elicits negative reactions. Others enjoy more complicated artworks, and still others seek out contextual information, like historical events, to make meaning from art objects. It is possible that accompanying information may increase appreciation by decreasing ambiguity and by providing a meaningful context,” described Steciuch.

Earlier this year, Steciuch published a paper in the American Psychological Association journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, which showed that when people move past their gut reaction to abstract artworks, their pleasure and interest goes up.

“Prior research had shown that when people are asked to create a title for abstract art, their interest in the artwork increases. In our paper, we showed that a similar finding occurs when the person is merely told that viewing art has cognitive benefits to the viewer. When people think about an artwork, they make connections in their mind, and for many, this is a positive experience, resulting in greater appreciation,” explained Steciuch.

Perhaps accompanying information serves to increase interest in a similar way—by activating ideas that the viewer can integrate with the art object.

We will need to wait for Steciuch to complete his dissertation for further answers. But in the meantime, maybe you’ll appreciate Nardi’s sculpture just a little more than you did before reading this spotlight.

About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a Professor of Psychology at NIU.

The Magic of Music to Enhance Language Production - Jamie Mayer

Jamie Mayer

Jamie Mayer makes magical things happen.

No, she is not a magician.

Rather, CISLL affiliate Dr. Mayer is a professor in NIU’s Speech-Language Pathology program within the School of Allied Health and Communicative Disorders.

She studies individuals who suffer from acquired neurogenic cognitive-communicative disorders, including dementia. Dementia is an umbrella term that refers to several types of neurodegenerative conditions that affect memory, language, and learning, such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“Around 40 million people around the globe suffer from dementia, and that figure is expected to double in the next 20 years,” remarked Mayer.

Mayer is one of many speech-language pathologists who are trying to identify and test nonpharmacological treatments for individuals who suffer from neurodegenerative conditions.

She has been exploring how listening to and engaging with music can improve cognitive functioning in this population.

“There are a number of reasons why music can help,” Mayer explained. “Crucially, music engages parts of the brain that tend to be preserved even in the later stages of dementia, including areas involved in emotion and implicit memory. So people with dementia can still sing, even when expressive language is severely impaired. Music also increases psychophysiological activation that increases attention to moment-to-moment processing,” she added.

Mayer, along with Elizabeth Lanza, then a graduate student in the Speech-Language Pathology master’s program, co-founded the Bridges Choir at NIU in 2017 (with a little help from a CISLL Proposal or Pilot (PoP) grant. Rehearsals were held at the at the Oak Crest Living Facility in DeKalb.

At that time, the choir consisted of individuals primarily afflicted with aphasia, a language impairment that can result from a stroke or head injury. Last year, Mayer expanded the choir to include individuals suffering from moderate to severe dementia who live at Pine Acres, another facility in DeKalb.

Depending on the season, the Bridges Choir sings either traditional holiday tunes or songs that were popular when they were younger. “Research shows that musical memories peak between ages 10-30,” Mayer shared. These are songs that they remember.

There are usually two performances per year, one in December (around Christmas time) and one in May.

It is not uncommon for friends and family who attend the concerts to choke up as they see and hear their loved ones sing.

“We have had several individuals who are almost completely nonverbal, but yet they can sing,” expressed Mayer.

Watching a loved one who cannot talk yet sings in a choir is indeed magical. You can see and hear the choir here.

Of course, Dr. Mayer is a scientist. Conducting rigorous scientific research out in the community is challenging because one cannot easily implement randomized controlled designs. Nevertheless, the seemingly positive effects on language production she has observed in her choir participants persuaded her to develop more rigorous designs.

Then COVID-19 hit.

“Some of these individuals have not been out of their rooms for six months,” laments Mayer, who obviously feels for these folks and their family members.

However, not all hope for the choir to continue is lost in the time of COVID.

“We are in the process of trying to create a virtual version of the Bridges choir, using Zoom,” explains Mayer.

Trying to get people with dementia to use Zoom is not easy, as one can imagine.

However, Mayer has a plan.

“If every choir participant had a basic tablet, such as an Amazon Fire, they could get on Zoom (with help from facility staff) and access choir rehearsals while staying safely in their rooms,” Mayer explained. “They could then see and hear the choir director and sing along just as they did during in-person rehearsals.”

Mayer explains that she has tested configurations of the virtual choir to support data collection, as well. “We’re hoping to measure engagement from the Zoom videos during rehearsals, and can place participants in different breakout rooms with student volunteers at the end of rehearsals to collect language samples.”

Let us all hope that the sparkle and love that Dr. Mayer brings to others will magically reappear this fall.

About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a professor of psychology at NIU.

April is Autism Acceptance Month. CISLL colleagues are advancing autism research.

 April is Autism Acceptance Month

We are proud of our CISLL colleagues who are dedicated to advancing research that optimizes language learning for all individuals.

During Autism Acceptance month, CISLL affiliates Allison Gladfelter and Kacy Barron have published an article titled “How Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Developmental Language Disorder, and Typical Language Learn to Produce Global and Local Semantic Features” in the journal Brain Sciences (https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/10/4/231). Individuals with autism spectrum disorder are often thought to be more attuned to detail-specific information at the expense of processing more holistic, or global information. This project explored how this unique cognitive style impacts the way children with autism learn the meanings of new words. The overarching goal of this research is to learn the optimal ways clinicians, parents, and educators can teach children with autism new words.

In fact, this work was funded by a CISLL graduate student PoP grant awarded to Kacy Barron (formerly Kacy Kreger) during her master’s program in speech-language pathology at NIU. Kacy Barron continues to serve families of individuals with autism clinically as an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) specialist and practicing speech-language pathologist in Florida.

If you want to learn more about autism month and autism in general, please visit https://www.autism-society.org/get-involved/national-autism-awareness-month/

Find out more about CISLL PoP grants by going to https://www.niu.edu/language-literacy/funding/index.shtml.

Pulling Back the Covers of Children’s Literature - Melanie Koss

Melanie Koss

Imagine yourself as a young child reading picture books that never depict a character like you. Also imagine that the characters who do resemble you in some way are often depicted in a negative, stereotypical light.

You may implicitly learn that you do not matter or that you are inadequate.

This concerns Dr. Melanie Koss, a CISLL affiliate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction who studies how diversity is represented in children’s and young adult literature.

Koss is interested in whether children’s literature mirrors students in our classrooms, and whether the ways that diversity is represented impacts children’s identity development.

There are several reasons which, taken together, validate Koss’s concern and her research interests.

One reason is that, according to Koss, “Literature presents a window into humanity.” Consequently, children (and adults) learn about humanity via reading.

This is a powerful idea.

Koss is fond of Rudine Sims Bishop’s metaphor that literature can act as “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors”.

“A child can read a book in which they see a character reflected back – that is the mirror. The mirror validates the child’s importance,” according to Koss.

For example, if a young member of the LGBTQ community never encounters a character from their community, then that child may think their sexual orientation or gender identity is not important, wrong, or something to hide.

Literature can also serve as a window. A child can learn about the experiences of another group. The reader peers into another world and encounters what it is like to live through the eyes of someone else.

The sliding glass door is more than looking through the window of another group. The book draws you into another world.

The sliding glass door, according to Koss, also pertains to “the feeling that I am not done with this book because it has changed me. It is more than empathy. It can be a call for action.”

A second reason for Koss’s concern is that there has been a lack of diversity in children’s books.

“Typically, the characters have been White, and if there is diversity, the characters have been very stereotypical,” elaborates Koss. For example, African Americans are often depicted as belonging to gangs or a lower socioeconomic status or, in historical fiction, as enslaved people, and that does not accurately reflect all African Americans.

If anyone knows about the representation of diversity in children’s and young adult literature, it is Koss. She is busy with many projects, using and revising complex coding schemes, as well as multicultural analysis and critical theory, to analyze literature.

According to Koss, there is some good news in that diversity in literature is increasing.

“If you look at book lists and the American Library Association Youth Media Award winners, you see some increase in diversity, and that is exciting,” said Koss.

Increasing diversity in children’s literature is important because racial diversity is growing in the United States. This is a third reason for Koss’s concern.

“Over 50% of public school K-12 kids are nonwhite. And that is projected to increase by 2024,” mentions Koss. She also emphasizes that diversity in itself is diverse. It should not just be limited to race, religion, and gender.

If you were the only kid in your third-grade class who wore glasses, you know what that means.

As the United States becomes more diverse and hate speech becomes more accessible via the Internet, it is important that children learn appreciation for other cultures and peoples.

“Literature can help students see things differently in a safe way when teachers and students talk. A child can ask about a character’s actions or features in a way that does not seem threatening,” Koss explained.

Koss mentions that her coding scheme, along with critical theories, can be applied not just to literature, but also to TV and movies.

In sum, the next time you shop for children’s or young adult books for a loved one, you may want to peel back the covers to see whether and how diversity is presented.

About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a professor of psychology at NIU.

Can Diagrams of your Knowledge Help you Learn? - Kyung Kim

Kyung Kim

You probably already know that knowledge is not stored willy-nilly in our minds. Rather, it is structured.

How knowledge is structured in the human mind fascinates Dr. Kyung Kim, a CISLL affiliate in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, housed in NIU’s College of Education.

“Knowledge structure refers to how the concepts in a domain are related to one another in memory. We believe knowledge structures can be represented in a network form that can be depicted visually,” explains Kim.

To get an idea of how a knowledge structure can be depicted visually, imagine a diagram consisting of a dozen or so circles haphazardly placed on a page, with lines connecting some of the circles.

If the topic of the structure is the “heart”, then the individual circles might represent particular concepts related to the heart, such as “blood” “pulmonary valve”, “lung”, and so on.

A line between any two concepts indicates that they are conceptually connected in the person’s memory. Some concepts may be linked to many other concepts, whereas others may be only linked to one.

This sort of visual network of a student’s knowledge organization can help instructors assess the learning of their students.

For example, if a student knows that the pulmonary valve pumps oxygen-rich blood to the lungs, then that student would connect the concepts “pulmonary valve” and “lungs” if asked to draw their network. A lack of a line, or other deviations from an “ideal” network, would indicate that student’s knowledge is incomplete and may include misconceptions.

However, having students draw out their knowledge so that the instructor can provide timely and accurate feedback is not very efficient. Imagine being an instructor with hundreds of knowledge maps to grade every night, and you can see why. Instructors get tired and may make mistakes, and it might be days before students receive feedback.

In addition, most students are more used to writing essays than creating these types of concept maps.

In response to these and other educational needs and constraints, Kim developed a computer application called GIKS, which stands for Graphical Interface of Knowledge Structure.

Based on written input (e.g., a summary essay or a transcribed conversation), GIKS uses various existing computerized analytic tools (e.g., ALA-reader, Pathfinder) that together create a visual representation of the organization of preselected concepts mentioned in the input.

That visual representation would be similar to the circles and lines mentioned earlier.

GIKS allows an instructor (or researcher) to input a “master” text that provides the information of the to-be-learned knowledge structure (e.g., a textbook passage). A student (or research participant) can write and input a summary essay about the topic. This essay would reflect the student’s knowledge. Then GIKS produces visual representations of both the master text and the student’s essay and compares them.

“GIKS gives the student immediate feedback in an easy-to-understand visual way. It gives them information as to which concepts were correctly included, as well as missing concepts, and correct and incorrect links among the concepts,” explains Kim.

With GIKS, students do not need to wait for the instructor to provide feedback. Feedback is instantaneous.

Since the tool is web-based, it is ideal for online courses, and because it uses text as input, it can be used in many content domains. Thus far, Kim has studied learning in physics, biology, geography, and foreign language.

What is also nice about GIKS is that it allows a student to input a summary essay at different points in time. This allows the student (and possibly the instructor or researcher) to see how knowledge changes as a new domain is learned.

“In addition to being useful for assessment, we have also shown that students learn by receiving feedback via GIKS,” said Kim.

In a publication with co-authors Roy Clarianay and NIU professor Yanghee Kim, tenth-grade students in an online physics course who used GIKS as a reflective tool included more relevant connections and fewer irrelevant connections in their summary essays than did students who were given explanatory videos or test questions, other known ways to increase learning.

Excitingly, GIKS is being acclaimed by educational technology researchers as well as other academic communities.

Kim was recently awarded the 2019 AECT Young Researcher Award from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, the most prestigious association in Educational Technology. The award recognized a GIKS study that analyzed participants’ text messages to explore the dynamics of online collaborative problem solving. His dissertation, which used GIKS to explore the influence of text structures on readers’ knowledge structures, also won the 2019 Timothy & Cynthia Shanahan Outstanding Dissertation Award from the International Literacy Association. A study that applied GIKS to geography was recently selected for the 2019 Journal of Geography Award from the National Council for Geographic Education.

Kim is now interested in augmenting GIKS with speech-recognition capability. This feature would allow him to examine how individuals’ knowledge structures, as revealed through their speech, can be harnessed and used effectively in real-world collaborative work settings.

“Groups spend too much time discussing information that everyone in the group already knows. However, there is little research on how unshared information can play a role in collaborative learning. Having GIKS analyze both text and speech would be an ideal way to help groups know what other members know and don’t know. Perhaps by emphasizing unique knowledge held by an individual, group learning could be enhanced,” volunteered Kim.

In sum, the answer to the question “Can diagrams of your knowledge help you learn?” is a resounding “Yes”—provided the diagrams were created by GIKS, of course.

If you are interested in learning more about GIKS, you can contact Professor Kim at kkim2@niu.edu.

About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a professor of psychology at NIU.