On Thursday 18 September, our Year 10 VCE Psychology students had the opportunity to engage in an incursion presented by Therapy Animals Australia. This incursion is designed to enhance students’ understanding of content taught in Unit 2 Area of Study 2, by unpacking the role of attention together with top-down and bottom-up processing through the use of a canine training model. Presented by Dr Brad Rundle, students were able to apply their understanding of sustained, divided and selective attention and how these are used to train an animal.
Students found the incursion particularly helpful for strengthening their understanding of the two types of perceptual processing through the visual demonstrations provided by Dr Rundle and Radar, his German Shepard. Radar was a real hit for our students who were amazed by his extremely high levels of training and obedience (and continued motivation to play with his ball!). Here is what Year 10 student Charleen Andre had to say about the incursion experience:
The incursion involved a dog with his trainer that demonstrated the concepts of perception, attention, and top-down and bottom-up processing through the multiple games that the trainer showed the dog participating in. I enjoyed the incursion because the dog doing tricks and games was very engaging and cute and the explanation that the trainer provided us with allowed us to make comparisons and use the dog’s behaviour to better understand the topics that we are exploring in VCE Psychology.
The way that the dog was able to recognise what he needed to do next to get his reward, which was the balls that he was playing with, displayed bottom-up processing when the dog received sensory information and top-down processing when the dog knew to ring the bell even though he had not been trained to. I also really liked how the trainer let us respond at times, such as showing us objects and letting us guess what it was, then comparing the student’s perception of the objects to the dogs. It deepened my understanding because we were able to see it happen when the dog was using memory or sensory information in order to dictate its behaviour and complete tasks.
