Johanny Castillo
Johanny Castillo is a providence native with roots from the Dominican Republic. She is a third-year student at Rhode Island College, yet will be receiving her B.A. in Psychology with a concentration in Behavioral Neuroscience this May! Her research in the McNair Program aims to determine how the ways we think about complex information helps us retain information better. Her hope is that the results can contribute new evidence-based strategies for students, especially first-generation students like herself, who are still trying to figure out which study habits can best suit their needs. She plans on expanding her interests in this area by pursuing a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology, focusing her studies on children with Autism. This kind of work is something that she believes needs to reach more communities of minority populations who don’t have access to a range of resources. For Johanny, outreach is a priority and, in her training,, she wants to find new ways to extend information to families that come from similar backgrounds as herself. Despite the disadvantages set out for first generation Latina college students, she has reaped patience and strength from her experiences. From her involvement with McNair, she has surprised herself with her academic and social growth as she expands her skill set and takes advantage of new opportunities she otherwise would not have known about. Doing this alongside such an incredible and diverse group of scholars makes it more rewarding and has been a wonderful thing for her to be a part of. In her free time, Johanny loves to watch Friends and hopes to be a pet owner one day.
ABSTRACT: The act of intentionally bringing information to mind is called retrieval practice, and has been shown to improve learning. One question is whether students need to produce the information (overt) or if they can simply bring it to mind (covert). The purpose of this research is to explore the use of retrieval practice in classroom settings and whether covert retrieval can work with complex materials. Undergraduates from Rhode Island College were recruited. Students read material related to their own classes so they were already motivated to learn. Then, they answered questions about the reading, either by writing or bringing answers to mind, and rated their confidence in their answers. They were then given feedback. In addition, a restudy control condition was included during which students read the question and then the answer. Two days later, students completed a final short-answer assessment test. Data collection is ongoing, but preliminary analyses show a trend – students who practiced overt retrieval performed slightly better on the final assessment test than those who practiced covert retrieval.
