How the Brain Processes Multimodal Technical Instructions (Baywood's Technical Communications) - Softcover

Remley, Dirk

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0895038943 ISBN 13: 9780895038944

Publisher: Routledge, 2016

Synopsis

While Aristotle acknowledges the connection between rhetoric, biology, and cognitive abilities, scholarship continues to struggle to integrate the fields of rhetoric and neurobiology. Drawing on recent work in neurorhetoric, this book offers a model that integrates multimodal rhetorical theory and multisensory neural processing theory pertaining to cognition and learning. Using existing theories from multimodal rhetoric and specific findings from neurobiological studies, the author develops a model that integrates concepts from both fields, bridging, if not uniting, them. He also discusses possible applications of the new model, with specific case studies related to training and instruction. These applications include various media used in instructional and training contexts, such as print, slide shows, videos, simulations, and hands-on training. The book thus introduces concepts of cognitive neuroscience to multimodal rhetorical theory and facilitates theorization combining multimodal rhetoric and multisensory cognition, and serves as a vehicle by which readers can better understand the links between multimodal rhetoric and cognitive neuroscience associated with technical communication.  Integrating case studies from industry and practice, the text makes explicit connections between academic scholarship and workplace preparation. It also describes how interdisciplinary research can contribute to pharmaceutical research, as well as the development of productive instructional materials. Rhetoric is affected by how the brain of any member of a given audience can process information. This book can promote further research-qualitative and quantitative-to develop a better understanding of the relationship between multimodal messages and how the brain processes such information.

About this title

About the Author

Remley, Dirk

From the Back Cover

IN PRAISE OF "How the Brain Processes Multimodal Technical Instructions illustrates how neurobiologists research the brain’s reaction to multimodal instructions. It is a timely and useful addition to research on new media and cognition. Remley combines concepts from the fields of multimodal rhetoric and neuroscience to deliver new understanding of what happens in the brain when we encounter multimodal texts.This book will be of value to rhetoricians and technical communicators who create with new media and research multimodality. Anyone who is intrigued by how the physical makeup of neurons can influence or limit the ways in which a piece is received by an audience should take a look at this book." —Dr. Jennifer Ware, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, College of Communication Arts & Sciences, Michigan State University "Dirk Remley has written a book of admirable interdisciplinary ambition that attempts to advance our understanding of the link between multimodality and cognition. Readers will appreciate his work that links research on brain science and cognition with research on multimodality and media affordances. The result is a heuristic fusing of the fields that promises to guide effective analysis and production of multimodal resources." —Dr. Jason Swarts, Associate Professor of English, Director, Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media Ph.D. program, North Carolina State University "Dirk Remley’s book How the Brain Processes Multimodal Technical Instructions offers readers an interesting and innovative approach for viewing the writing process. By combining ideas from rhetoric and writing with concepts from neurobiology, Remley introduces a cross-disciplinary perspective on how humans compose and interpret texts in general and how they create and respond to multimodal compositions in particular. In so doing, he provides researchers and educators working in a variety of fields with a new mechanism for studying multimodal works and for teaching multimodal composition." —Kirk St.Amant , Professor, East Carolina University

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0895038943
• ISBN 13: 9780895038944
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 248