ABSTRACT
I have described a variety of applications of the new model relative to the kinds of instructional materials that one may compose using different new media. Those chapters were limited to content analyses of specific multimodal/multimedia instructional or training materials and based on what may be considered “normal” neural processing of those stimuli. In this chapter, I describe a variety of ways that the model can contribute to further research in education and workplace training, possibly affecting instructional and training materials. Given the inclusive nature of the model, that is, including biological sciences aspects of neuroscience and social science attributes of it, the model facilitates several kinds of research. Because it draws on scholarship and theorization from both biological sciences and social sciences, it facilitates the kinds of research that have already been conducted in each area but reframes the analyses of them. It also opens new doors to research that may include both biological as well as social dynamics of cognition. Because it is a descriptive model, rather than prescriptive, particular attributes of it may be analyzed independently of other attributes, however, theorization needs to value that the synthesis of the various attributes contribute to cognition. As I describe the ways the model may contribute to research and design of new instructional and training materials, I recall some suggestions I offered in previous chapters. As I detailed the new model, I offered ideas for possible research relative to commonly used approaches in the rhetoric and neurobiology fields, and as I described potential applications, I also suggested certain kinds of research. I elaborate on those application suggestions here. The model facilitates not just research into cognition, but it also facilitates design of productive materials to optimize cognition. Instructional technologists, technical communicators, and cognitive psychologists are all very much inter - ested in understanding how design of instructional materials affects cognition. Such materials are important to education and training. Consequently, the research indicated above should be multidisciplinary in nature. Researchers from the different fields-social sciences, humanities, and physical sciences-doing
joint projects will benefit from each others’ understanding of research designs used most in each field.
