Abstract
How does STEM knowledge learned in school change students’ brains? Using fMRI, we presented photographs of real-world structures to engineering students with classroom-based knowledge and hands-on lab experience, examining how their brain activity differentiated them from their “novice” peers not pursuing engineering degrees. A data-driven MVPA and machine-learning approach revealed that neural response patterns of engineering students were convergent with each other and distinct from novices’ when considering physical forces acting on the structures. Furthermore, informational network analysis demonstrated that the distinct neural response patterns of engineering students reflected relevant concept knowledge: learned categories of mechanical structures. Information about mechanical categories was predominantly represented in bilateral anterior ventral occipitotemporal regions. Importantly, mechanical categories were not explicitly referenced in the experiment, nor does visual similarity between stimuli account for mechanical category distinctions. The results demonstrate how learning abstract STEM concepts in the classroom influences neural representations of objects in the world.
Highlights
Seminal work in cognitive psychology has demonstrated that when given the same set of physics practice problems, individuals with advanced knowledge of physics categorize the problems according to the abstract concept knowledge underlying each problem, whereas novices categorize problems according to the perceivable surfacelevel features of each problem[2]
A large body of neuroscience research has focused on the neural representation of visually perceivable categories[3,4,5,6], the way in which abstract STEM concept knowledge is represented in the brain remains less explored
The results of the present study demonstrate that classroombased knowledge and experience inform the neural representations that students access when applying this knowledge in a naturalistic context
Summary
A large body of neuroscience research has focused on the neural representation of visually perceivable categories[3,4,5,6], the way in which abstract STEM concept knowledge is represented in the brain remains less explored. Using a cross-sectional design, we investigate how prior classroom-based and lab-based learning experiences influence the neural patterns that represent abstract conceptual categories when presented with naturalistic stimuli. In a naturalistic test of conceptual understanding, an important outcome of successful learning should be the ability to observe real-world stimuli and implicitly retrieve conceptual category information not available to novices[1,2]. Because prior fMRI studies of physics knowledge have focused on explicit retrieval of information about non-naturalistic stimuli, the question of how abstract physics and engineering knowledge is implicitly activated by real-world stimuli remains unresolved
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