Cue the Brain

Don Dansereau teaches a class in the Mini-University offered to parents by TCU. He has summarized his main points for the Thinkerer:
http://thinkerer.org/Parenting/ParNewLight.htm

I have elaborated on some his points in earlier blogs. Here I take up a fifth.

Children and adults are strongly and often unconsciously influenced by the physical and social environment. Parts of the environment prime and cue the brain to be in certain states. For example, lying in bed typically cues sleep. Your child’s environment while doing homework can be cultivated to cue motivation and concentration.
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You brain responds to your environment by powering up the systems it needs to deal with that environment. That’s why you can walk into a room and wonder what you were looking for. And why you can remember what you were looking for by going back to the environment that triggered your quest.

When you are trying to recall something, you need to turn on the same brain systems that you used to store it. (See my recent blog about time travel with your brain). The easiest way to set up learning for recall is to provide prominent cues that will be present at recall. That doesn’t mean go to the classroom to do homework. It means anticipate how the memory will be used and have the child duplicate or imagine the cues at that time.

Will the teacher ask for oral recitation? Have the child give the recitation.

Do the students stand up to recite? Have the child stand up to recite.

Will the child have to write something? Have the child sit at a table and write as if for the teacher.

Will the child have to do a show-and-tell to the class? Have the child imagine the class and do the show-and-tell to the imaginary class.

Will the child have to narrate a story (historical events, for example)? Have the child imagine an audience and tell the story out loud. (If a child can narrate a story, the child can usually answer questions based on the story: Why did Washington cross the Delaware?)

Will the child have to explain the work (for example, “Tell the class how you got this answer.”)? Have the child explain (with satisfaction) how the work was done. Encourage the child to imagine the class listening.

Will the child have to do some mathematical operation on a test? Be sure the child does similar operations in homework.

Will this same strategy work for adults? Only if they try it.

Creativity is a skill

Don Dansereau teaches a class in the Mini-University offered to parents by TCU. He has summarized his main points for the Thinkerer:

http://thinkerer.org/Parenting/ParNewLight.htm
I elaborated on some his points in earlier blogs (one in my Cognitive Engineering blog). Here I take up a fourth.

Creativity is enhanced by incubation (time away from the problem or task) and by shifting perspective (thinking about how someone else would view the problem). Children’s impulsiveness resulting from immature frontal lobes may keep them from using these techniques.

Or perhaps they don’t know about incubation or shifting perspective. Or maybe they just don’t know how to do it. In any case, using these techniques is a skill that people learn. To help your child learn these skills, watch for homework that calls for creativity. A typical example is a writing assignment. Then use one of these methods.

Incubation. Use the Startalittle maneuver. The trick is to spend a few minutes getting started. (Example: write down words that remind you of ideas you want to put in.) Then set the whole thing aside for a while.

You might model this maneuver yourself, in front of the child, while solving a problem the child wants solved. The child will probably come up with ideas that contribute to the solution. Be sure to point out that the ideas took a while to develop.

Encourage the child to use the Startalittle maneuver on creative homework jobs. If the child does not want to do job immediately, make a bargain: “Spend five or ten minutes on it. Tell me how you are going to finish it. Then go play.” Do that a few times and the child will probably come home with that “finish it” plan already worked out.

Shifting perspective. It is a kind of pretend. Daydreaming. What would Superman do? How would your (father, mother, older sibling, other relative, classmate, teacher, etc.) do it? Encourage the child to pretend to be one of these and talk about how to do it.

You may want to join in the pretend. Pretend, for example, to be the child. If you get it wrong, the child will tell you. If you imitate something you don’t want the child to do, the child may notice. If you imitate something that has bad consequences, the child may anticipate the consequences.

Creativity. Incubation. Shifting perspective. Not particularly homework skills. Also adult skills. Parents who practice them with their children may even benefit from the refresher course.

The Goldilocks model of parenting

The Goldilocks model of parenting
Don Dansereau teaches a class in the Mini-University offered to parents by TCU. He has summarized his main points for the Thinkerer:
http://thinkerer.org/Parenting/ParNewLight.htm

I elaborated on two of his points in earlier blogs (one in my Cognitive Engineering blog). Here I take up third.

Children seem to learn best when given the “right amount of help” with homework. In effect, just enough to get them past motivation and understanding barriers. Too much creates dependence and slows growth. Too little can lead to frustration and confusion. Help with planning and thinking about long-term consequences may be especially important.

So how do you know what is the “right amount of help?” Now here is a reassuring answer: You will get it wrong. How can that be reassuring? Because everybody gets it wrong. Even the three bears got it wrong. How many bowls of porridge? How many were just right? Batting average .33. (By the way, if you were playing baseball, what batting average would you be happy with?)

“Right amount of help.” Here is a great example of the power of language to create the wrong amount of credibility. You would think, from the term, that help exists in an amount, that the amount is measurable, and that people could somehow know what amount is right. After all, that works with sugar, doesn’t it?

But children are changing. Today’s right amount of help may be far too much next month. The right amount in May could be inadequate in September. Besides, help comes in kinds as well as amounts.

So what do you do with homework? Start by planning. Not in the privacy of your own head. Work out a plan with the child. Ask the child where you help is needed. Ask what kind of help is needed. Get the child to put the request for help in the form of a question that starts “How can I (the child) find out what I need to do to…”

And do this planning on your own schedule. Early, ahead of time. As soon as possible. The rest of the homework may come later. An early start gets both brains to work on the job. And gives the child a little practice in planning ahead.

Follow that routine and you will soon notice that the child has the plan before you ask. And you will have found the flow around this boulder: Sugar is easier to measure, but cake batter can’t tell you what it needs.

See You Later, Procrastinator

Here is a blog basket for all those people who have been meaning to do something about procrastination. That includes parents who have been intending (for the past year) to help their kids stop procrastinating.

NPR: Talk of the Nation, December 14, 2005. A helpful discussion. Maybe you want to put it on an mp3 player. Not necessarily yours.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5053416

Procrastination, article in Psychology Today

Procrastination help, website.

Some Thinkerer pages:
Get the best out of procrastination

The Next Meeting of the Procrastinator’s League…

The Startalittles versus the Putitovs

Your Putitov

Time control

The Startalittle maneuver is the best route to a quick fix. Whenever you have something that you want to put off, start it a little. Plan to spend about 20 minutes on a quick survey of what you are going to do. For example, do a search and collect some links. This helps to warm up your brain for the job. (See Headwarmers.) Besides, it gives you a better feel for how long you can put the main job off.

People who prefer to work under pressure may want to check my brief on stress.

God must love procrastinators. He made so many of us.

The Sound of Thinkering

A while back, I commented on this statement from a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons:
http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm
5. Multi-sensory input is desired by our brains.

Passive evasive voice again. Has anyone really gone out and asked brains about their desires? You can ask people about their desires, of course. They probably use some part of their brains to answer. But I suspect that multi-sensory input is way down on the list of what people desire. Probably right down there with smellavision.

What really struck me here was the futility of advocating multi-sensory input by writing papers about it. If you really think multi-sensory input is important, wouldn’t you try to communicate with multi-sensory output?

I have been trying to give the Thinkerer more multi-sensory output. Recently I have been adding audio files (mp3 format). People can download these files and put them on their mp3 players. The content comes from the slogans and sparks available in text form in the Head View venue.

Or people could use the files as examples of how to make homework helpers. Parents might make audio files for their children. Teens might make them for themselves. Entrepreneurial teens might make them for sale to other teens. Entrepreneurial College juniors might make them and sell them on E-Bay. Maybe mixed with jokes and podsafe music.

To help other people get started, I put in a brief explanation of how I used my Creative MuVo N2000 for recording and Audacity (free software) for editing. Since I already had the MuVo, the arrangement was cost free. I have a microphone, so I could have used Audacity for recording. I tried that, but it picked up too much fan noise from my computer.

Of course, doing things is a lot harder than writing about them. Which is probably why people prefer to write about the need for multi-sensory inputs to the brain.

A brain takes 25 years to grow

Don Dansereau teaches a class in the Mini-University offered to parents by TCU. He has summarized his main points for the Thinkerer:
http://thinkerer.org/Parenting/ParNewLight.htm
I will elaborate on one of these points here.

Children’s impulsiveness, lack of planning, and lack of concern with long-term consequences may be largely due to the natural physical development of the brain. Brains don’t fully mature until about age 25 and the frontal lobes of the cortex that are responsible for “looking to the future” are among the last areas to develop.

More of the modular brain story. http://thinkerer.org/Background/BakBrainMods.htm

Different modules develop at different rates. That can be confusing. You see some adult skills emerge in teens and you begin to think of them as adults. Then you begin to expect them to act like adults. (Are you being a bit impulsive with that expectation?)

So you just stop expecting them to act like adults? Only if you lack concern for long term consequences. Brains follow the same developmental principles as muscles, bone and reflexes. They develop with time and exercise. People don’t stop expecting toddlers to walk just because toddlers fall down.

The basis for development is challenge. A challenge takes people near the upper limit of what they can do. Preferably not beyond. But if you want to extend that limit, you have to push on it.

Push on it. I always hate vague metaphors like that. They roll easily off the keyboard. They are great if you just want to sound like you know more that the people you are talking to. But here, now, in this world, we do not do metaphors. We do concrete actions.

We know how to challenge (and guide) teens in football or cooking. But how do you challenge and guide teens in abstract things like planning or long term consequences? You translate those things into concrete events that everybody can see.

Instead of forecasting things in the privacy of your own head, you start forecasting out loud. In front of the teen. You invite the teen to supply additional forecasts. Maybe you lay out a fan of possibilities. Maybe you turn forecasting into a brainstorming session.

You do the same with plans, especially plans that are important to the teen. If plans are too complicated for traditional brainstorming, use semi-structured brainstorming.

You may be surprised by what teens can do with brainstorming. If you want some novel, creative, original ideas, you may get them from teens. That self- discipline and impulse control that takes 25 years to develop can get so effective that it inhibits ideas as well and actions.

So you can think of brainstorming as engineered adolescence. A method of cognitive engineering that helps adults to readjust their impulse control to suspend the control of ideas. Meet teens in brainstorming and they may have a home-field advantage.

Do threat and anxiety impair learning?

That’s the kind of question that might scare a student. It would really scare me if I had to take a test on this material. Because the answer I would give from experience is wrong, according to Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm

8. Threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness impairs learning.

For starters, try this scenario. Night. A curving rural road. A blind curve. A car approaching in its proper lane. I enter the curve and see headlights approaching in my lane. I swerve into the ditch just in time to avoid the crash. Will this experience impair my learning about the risks of blind curves?

The question does not threaten me because I know the answer. And it is not the one given by Clemons. Threat and anxiety are excellent at teaching you to avoid circumstances like those that produce the threat and anxiety. They are not good at teaching you to to make fine discriminations about the conditions or to find the best way to avoid the threat.

A few people might respond to the road experience by trying to avoid driving on a curved rural road at night. Most people would respond with a cognitive analysis of the conditions. That would lead them to the conclusion that “I want to notice blind curves and be careful in approaching them.” If you had to go to a therapist to figure that out, you would call it cognitive therapy and pay a bunch of money for it. If you can figure it out for yourself, you call it common sense. Common sense is free. At least for some people.

Now back to brain-based learning. Would education be designed to induce threat and anxiety? I doubt it. The most likely thing you would learn from such threat and anxiety is to avoid education. In an educational situation, threat and anxiety are not induced by learning but by tests. And they do not come from what you learned but from what you did not learn.

A cognitive analysis of this situation indicates that the best way to avoid threat and anxiety is to learn the material. And to know that you have learned the material. Sometimes people don't get that right. Then they may pick a failure mode.

One failure mode is like avoiding country roads at night. Psychologists would call that over-generalizing. At this point, trying to study the material might well induce anxiety. That could cause the person to study less. Or to study less effectively, because threat and anxiety do interfere with effective study methods.
If you dig yourself into a hole, stop digging.
The difference between a trial run and a failure lies in what you get out of it.
Thinking about what you can’t do is worry. Thinking about what you can do is planning. Trouble-shooting

A second failure mode is to “study harder.” What? Will we tell people that “study harder” is not good advice? Well, here’s some other good advice:
If you always do what you've always done, you’ll always get what you've always got.
The Bounce-Back Routine.

Or they may find the winning mode: Don’t study harder. Study smarter. In the long run, smarter works better than harder. And smarter is easier.

Does helplessness impair learning?

Here is another statement from a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm

8. Threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness impairs learning.

Our last episode ended with an obligatory wait for the entrepreneurs to come to the rescue and fix the problem of threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness as they go about impairing learning. As promised, this post will deal with the Godot question: “What shall we do while waiting?”

Why deal with a question that may be better left to “them?” When I don’t know what to do, I get a sense of helplessness that would no doubt impair my learning if I let it continue. So I start figuring out what to do.

Since we already have a head start on that sense of helplessness, let’s start there. I suspect that the main reason why learners sometimes have a sense of helplessness is that they are helpless. Someone else, older and wiser, can look at the situation and say, objectively, that they are not helpless. Someone else, with skills of problem solving, would easily analyze the situation and come up with several things to do.

Before you can walk in someone’s shoes, you must first be barefoot.

Someone else would not feel helpless. But here, now, this person, feeling helpless, does not know what to do. Come to think of it, I am not even sure that it is the feeling of helplessness that impairs learning. I hate to be so obvious, but maybe not knowing what to do would impair learning no matter how the person felt about it.

People do not design instruction to cause students not to know what to do. They set up curriculum paths and prerequisites to see that students have the proper content preparation for a specific class or course. This kindly, paternalistic plan seems to work most of the time. But one of the omissions from this curriculum is a course in Knowing What to Do.

This idea reminds me of Thinking 101, the class you didn’t get in school. I suppose if they left thinking out of the curriculum, it was reasonable also to leave out Introduction to Studying. Don Dansereau, at TCU, teaches a course in Techniques of College Learning. But maybe there are techniques of high school learning. Or techniques of online learning. Maybe some of them are the same as for college learning. The Studying venue in the Thinkerer has a collection of common techniques for studying. That might be a start for Knowing What to Do. Find out what other people do. That’s probably better that a sense of helplessness.