Soo SongSenior Thesis 1_Fall 2011

October 17. 2011Julia Wargaski

Cognitive, emotional, and social capacities are inextricably intertwined

throughout the life course, and there is the human brain in the center of them.

The human brain is a highly integrated organ, based on its multiple functions

operating in a richly coordinated fashion, that is built over time, from the bottom

up. The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing

process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood.

First idea: early Childhood development

Early childhood is the most intensive period of brain development during

the lifespan. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that rich learning

experiences and influences of the external environment during early childhood

are critical to the development of children’s brain, and they provide lifelong

benefits for learning, behavior and both physical and mental health.1 However,

a common error in the analysis of human capital policies is the assumption

that abilities are fixed at very early ages. This static conception of ability is at

odds with a large body of research in the child development literature. More

specifically, research has shown that, in the early years of life, basic abilities

can be altered. A more corrective view of ability is that they are developed

in a variety of learning situations and that early ability in turn fosters further

learning. Early childhood interventions of high quality have lasting effects on

learning and motivation. Thus, for my thesis, I am going to design an interactive

educational toy in order to promote healthy early childhood development

by affecting children’s cognitive, social and emotional growth with its more

supportive environment of adequate physical and psychological stimulation.

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seCond idea: memory

Information flows from the outside world through our sight, hearing smelling,

tasting and touch sensors. Memory is simply ways we store and recall things

we’ve sensed. Certain structures in our brain are critical for creating new

memories or recalling old memories. For example, the hippocampus is a

major component of the brains and it plays important roles in consolidating

informations from short-term memory to long-term memory and even spatial

navigation.7 We, humans have a one hippocampus each side of the brain.

And if both are damaged, the person can no longer make new memories

lasting longer than five minutes. Contrastingly, according to researchers, due

to an elephant has an absolutely enormous set of hippocampi (the plural

of hippocampus), they are capable of recognizing and storing information

about facial identity and retain that information for many years.- Therefore,

by applying this concept of the cellular basis of memory to human memory, I

am going to design an interactive memory dictionary in order to enforce the

user’s memory capacity by storing, organizing and retrieving his or her own

memories or moments of life.

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reFerenCes

1. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Young children develop

in an environment of relationships. Cambridge, MA: National Scientific

Council on the Developing Child; 2004.

2. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. A science-based

framework for early childhood policy: Using evidence to improve outcomes

in learning, behavior, and health for vulnerable children. Cambridge, MA:

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University; 2007.

3. National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. The timing and quality

of early experiences combine to shape brain architecture. Cambridge, MA:

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child; 2007.

4. http://developingchild.harvard.edu/

5. Nelson CA. The neurobiological bases of early intervention. In: Shonkoff

JP, Meisels SJ, eds. Handbook of early childhood intervention. 2nd ed.

New York: Cambridge University Press; 2000.

6. Middleton, David and Brown, Steven (2005). The social psychology of

experience: Studies in remembering and forgetting. London: Sage.

7. Olick, Jeffrey K., Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, Daniel (Eds.). The

collective memory reader. Oxford University Press, 2010.

8. http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/

9. Tyler, SW, Hertel, PT, McCallum, MC & Ellis, HC. (1979). “Cognitive effort

and memory”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning &

Memory, 5, 607-617.

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mind maps

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researCh and doCumentation

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prototypes

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