Recent Meetings


 

 

CCCC 2019 Pittsburgh, PA

The Future of Cognition and Writing Research 

Thursday, March 14, 2019 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.

 

The most recent in-person Standing Group meeting at the 2019 CCCC in Pittsburgh was led by all three chairs: Patricia Portanova, Michael Rifenburg, and Duane Roen. Our featured speakers were Dylan Dryer, David Russell, and Airlie Rose. 

 

 

We opened the meeting with an update on our group’s activities over the course of the year. Then Dylan Dryer presented a corpus study on different journals and when they use the term cognition. He reviewed the past decade of 12 journals for instances of cognition or cognitive. He found that use of these terms was “sparse and clumpy”. He noted that TETYC and Basic Writing were journals that offer us an opportunity to expand the reach of our scholarship. Dryer also offered the question: Do people who read RSA and RRQ have the same definition as those who read other journals?  He found that some journals are more specific in their definitions and that also presents opportunities for our group. Dryer’s work may be found in the most recent issue of College English.

 

David Russell discussed the phenomenology of perception and embodied cognition focusing on the terms embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive. He pointed us to the microphenomenology website: Varela and discussed the connection between embodied cognition and neuroscience. Airlie Rose furthered this conversation by examining free-writing. She posed the question: what does it actually do? Airlie is developing a model of what is happening cognitively and shared date from a recent study, as well as a working model of cognition. We closed the session with a brief Q&A before running out of time. For next year, we plan on shifting the focus of the session from presentations to discussion to allow for members to interact.

 

In addition to the Standing Group Session, chairs Patricia Portanova, Duane Roen, and Michael Rifenburg met with Members-at-Large, William Macauley and Patricia Medvad for a working lunch to plan the Standing Group’s focus and activities over the next year. The discussion led to ideas for a third book, should the group plan on extending our scholarship activities.

 

Finally, chairs attended our Sponsored Panel: “Performing Empathetic Rhetoric: Narrative of the Social Conscious.” Danielle French provided attendees with examples of writing exercises that will direct students’ attention to the three types of solidarity (practical, ontological, and emotional-psychological-neurological) made visible through characters’ emotions, actions, or experiences as encountered through the reading of ethnic minority literature.   Molly Fuller addressed the potential benefits of pro-social cognition and empathy for readers and writers of traumatic narratives that can be used to help students learn narrative rhetoric and empathy. Uma Krishnan presented finding from a pilot study of students, who went on study abroad programs and who posted their reaction to new sites and culture on social media and other forms of communication modes. These findings include that the experience contributed to: 1) cognitive changes toward improving an understanding of different perspectives, 2) facilitated development of empathy toward motivating students to volunteer in a campus organization, and 3) students becoming better writers in various modes and discourses as they realized the value of writing about such experiences. Dirk Remley offered two examples of multimodal communication related to office space from executives that contributed to each executive’s demise as a leader. Remley described neuroscientific implications of such multimodal messages, potentially affecting performance.

 



CCCC 2018

The most recent SIG meeting at the 2018 CCCC in Houston, Texas was led by co-chair, Michael Rifenburg and included David Russell, Irene Clark, Christopher Brown, Keith Rhodes, Bonnie Vindrine-Isbell, Greg Fields, and Peter Khost. Several SIG members were absent and cited a conflict with the Language and Linguistics SIG as rational.

 

Rifenburg began the meeting with an overview of the recent edited collection and provided group members with an update on the second collection.

 

Kurt Austin remembers our second collection proposal and apologized for the lag-time. Based on some of our recent work, Michael Rifenburg asked if we could reconfigure our proposal and resend it. We will tinker with the language of the proposal and resubmit it to get it back on his radar.

 

The conversation then focused on recent empirical studies into students’ cognitive work in and during the writing process. David Russell asked for recent studies. Peter Khost offered his study, which he has run over the past several years. Peter tracks how students engage with the Habits of Mind during in-class writing writing exercises. Gregg Fields introduced the group to the work of Yves Karlan at the University of Zurich who uses statistical analysis to capture metacognition.

 

Peter Khost pointed our attention toward the Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning for which he is a new co-editor.  He is hoping to attract more on metacognition and encouraged SIG members to submit work or send a query.

CCCC 2017

Our fourth SIG session at the 2017 CCCC in Portland, Oregon featured Dirk Remley, Ph.D., Professor of English at Kent State University who shared his institution’s efforts to promote interdisciplinary research through their Neurocognitive Research Program for the Advancement of the Humanities. NRPAH seeks to “maximize the development of personally and socially crucial neurocognitive capabilities through engagement with the humanities” (NPRAH). The program, developed and directed by Dr. Mark Bracher, Professor of English at Kent State University, includes plans for regular conferences and workshops and its membership group includes neuro-biologists, cognitive psychologists, linguists, creative writers, and historians, among others. The presentation resulted in a discussion among SIG members on ways to create similar initiatives at their home institutions    

CCCC 2016

Our third SIG session at the 2016 CCCC in Houston, Texas focused on publishing scholarship on cognition and writing. We discussed various publications interested in our work, as well as the impact of co-authored scholarship and publications in interdisciplinary journals on tenure. The group also shared their research in progress and used the opportunity to network with fellow scholars.