Brain-Based Communication

A while back, I talked about the concept of brain-based learning and how that might apply to homework. Here I follow the method of Vulcan creativity: Seek the Superset.

What is the superset of learning? It depends on your taxonomy, of course. My view here is that communication includes socially directed learning as a subset. That’s not all learning, of course. In fact, it is only a small part of learning. But it is the part that generates homework. And lectures. And other kinds of classroom teaching. And lots of talk about how it should be done. And lots of complaining about how it is being done badly. And lots of spending that is allegedly aimed and doing it better.

The benefit you get out of seeking the superset is you find some sibling sets. You may be able to borrow some ideas from those sibling sets. Sibling sets in the context of communication are briefings, reports, PowerPoint presentations, web pages, instruction manuals, myths, maps, fables, product design, advertising, marketing, parables, fiction, non-fiction, and things like that. Granted, these are overlapping sets. We can all remember briefings and presentations that belonged in the fiction set.

These things have two things in common:

1. They are rationally (I assume without proof) planned to influence the behavior of other people.

2. They are all directed at the same kind of brains and so draw on a common set of influence methods.

Since the brain is the common element here, I will start by considering the brain and what influences might act on the behavior it produces. At this level, the consideration is not limited to communication. The brain responds to environmental influences. Rationally planned communication acts are only a part of the environment. The brain may not know or care whether its experiences are the result of rational planning, unplanned behavior, or something else.

I don’t know of any preferred place to start on this consideration of the brain, so I will start with the traditional bias imposed by rational processes: verbal operations. Later I will need to deal with the two major types of inputs, hearing and reading. But for the moment, I will skip the input method and deal with what happens after the input has been decoded.

What is generally expected to happen in a communication context is that the verbal expressions are to be converted into operations in other parts of the brain. That’s where the influence on behavior comes in.

And now for a puzzle. Above is a whole page of verbal expressions. What operations in other parts of your brain were involved in processing these expressions? You may want to read the page again to see if you can more clearly detect some of these operations.

In the next episode, my Vulcan will speculate about the operations and the brain modules involved.

Hassle-Free Homework (3)

At the end of the last episode, our mythical parent, P. A. Rant, had started on a problem-solving effort (Problems as Homework) with this goal:

My child would do the homework routinely with little or no prodding.

P. A. had reached the following question on the solving path:

4. Where do I start?
Who could tell me about how other people handled the problem?

P. A. checks the web. Searching Google for homework hassle gets 627,000 returns. Another search, for child schedule homework gets 3,850,000 returns. P. A. begins to suspect that the web has more information about the subject than anyone could use. (Everything has been thought of before. The problem is finding it when you need it.)

But P. A. does notice some common patterns. One common recommendation is to develop a schedule. This recommendation gives P. A. a new appreciation for the expression “Easier said than done.” But P. A. has already worked with the child on Semi-Structured Brainstorming. Both the method and the child’s experience are available as resources. Furthermore, P. A. understands that a schedule will be effective only if it becomes a family policy.

The power of positive policies offers background on this understanding. Family policies gives a step-by-step path for developing a family policy with the aid of Semi-Structured Brainstorming. And the Startalittle trick gives a specific suggestion that some people (including adults) have found useful.

5. Route: How I will get what I want (Initial plan, trial run)
P. A. I will do these things myself:

I will help the child develop a homework schedule with help from the plan in Family policies.

P. A.: I will pay attention to the child’s homework environment and study practices to see if I can find ways to make them work better for study. Best Practices Clipit ; Study Skills Ratem.

P. A.: I will arrange for some way to know that the child is on schedule in time to intervene before it is too late.

I will get somebody to do these things.

P. A.: Teacher. I will ask the teacher for a weekend forecast of the homework for the next week and for guidance as to how I can tell when it is done properly. How? I will offer to help with internet arrangements as needed. Examples: provide a scanner to the school, offer to set up a blog, website, or e-mailing list to distribute the forecast to all parents.

Hassle-Free Homework (2)

At the end of the last episode, our mythical parent had worked through the original series (Problems as Homework) and reached a dead end. Might have found a way to make some part of the homework more palatable, but was left with other parts of the homework just as hassle-heavy as before. Unless…

Our mythical parent, P. A. Rant has returned to original objective: “I want my child to do the homework with little or no prodding.” Another job for Semi-Structured Brainstorming. The structure is in Problem-Solving is Hard: If it were easy, you would have already done it. Here I will show the questions and the answers P. A. produces.

1. Problem: What's wrong?
P. A.: Already passed that point. I am tired of the hassle in getting my child to do the homework.

2. Goal: How I could tell if the problem is fixed?
P. A.: My child would do the homework routinely with little or no prodding.

2. How do I explain my goal to anybody?
P. A.: Already done. No fuzzy words in the goal above.

3. Who will do this?
I will do these things myself:

P. A.: I will help the child develop a schedule.

P. A.: I will give the child some incentives to comply.

P. A.: I will pay attention to the child’s homework environment and see if I can find ways to make it work better for study.

P. A.: I will arrange for some way to know that the child is on schedule in time to intervene before it is too late.

P. A.: I will pay attention to the child’s study practices and see if I can suggest changes that may make them more effective.

2. I will get somebody to do these things.

P. A.: Who? Child. I will get the child to work out a schedule. How? I will work with the child on this and I will provide incentives for the child to get it done.

P. A.: Who? Teacher. Teacher. I will ask the teacher for a weekend forecast of the homework for the next week and for guidance as to how I can tell when it is done properly. How? I will offer to help with internet arrangements as needed. Examples: provide a scanner to the school, offer to set up a blog, website, or e-mailing list to distribute the forecast to all parents.

P. A.: Who? Child. After the child and I have worked up a schedule, I will ask the child to agree to take responsibility for meeting the schedule. How? I will provide incentives and a rationale to support the child’s efforts to meet the schedule.

Where do I start?
Who could tell me about how other people handled the problem?

(To be continued.)

Hassle-Free Homework

I recently posted a series of pages on how to help a child practice problem solving by treating homework as a problem. That series is now included in the Thinkerer under the title Problems as Homework. The main change is the graphic display of the problem solving poster in the stages of development.

The series did not close with a solution to the problem. That missing solution illustrates another common task in problem-solving. Following the standard practice in problem-solving, I will start with what is wrong.

Chasing a subgoal. The goal, as seen from the parent’s viewpoint was, “I want my child to do the homework with little or no prodding.” To illustrate the process of problem-solving, the parent engaged the child in the problem-solving task. That changed the focus to the subgoal of making the homework more palatable to the child. That path might work for some children and some kinds of homework.

But in many cases, a parent who follows this path will reach a dead-end. The standard bounce-back rule for the dead-end is: If you hit a dead end, turn around. In problem-solving, this advice means:

Go back an figure out why you wanted to solve this problem. The answer is the main goal. The dead-end was on a subgoal path. Look for another route to solve the main goal.

Making the homework palatable to the child was a reasonable subgoal to investigate. But turning around gives a better view of the original goal. And calls to mind some comments I made in The Truth about Homework. One function of homework is to teach self-management: Learning to do what you don’t want to do.

“I want my child to do the homework with little or no prodding.” This goal is not going to be very attractive to the child. It will turn out to be a schedule for doing the homework. Maybe some aids will make the homework go faster. Maybe some long term planning can “make the homework easier.” (Another one of those hard truths. The only way to make homework easier is to be better prepared when you get to it.)

But one of the problem-solving slogans applies again here: “If other people are part of the problem, you may need them as part of the solution.” (It applied to the previous series. That’s one of the convenient things about slogans. They don’t wear out. You can reuse them as often as you need them.)

So our imaginary parent has worked through the original series and reached a dead end. Perhaps found a way to make some part of the homework more palatable, but is left with other parts of the homework that will be just as hassle heavy as before. Unless…

Brain still changing at age 18,

Dartmouth Researchers … have learned that anatomically significant changes in brain structure continue after age 18. Abigail Baird, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and co-author of the study, explains that … the study closely tracked a group of freshman students throughout their first year of college.

The results indicate that significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition. Specifically, these are areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world.

"The brain of an 18-year-old college freshman is still far from resembling the brain of someone in their mid-twenties," says Bennett.
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Psychologists have long known that the brain continues to develop into legal adulthood. Improvements in technology let these researcher follow the development of individual brains. The individuals in this case had just moved from home to college. They were learning to adjust to a new life context. The brain development may have been fostered by this experience. Or it might have been simple maturation that would be observed in most people of that age. Or it might be a combination of these.

Fortunately, the technology will be used in the future to settle this and other issues. What we can do with this information right now is to understand that children and adolescents do not have fully developed brains and cannot muster the same capabilities that are available to adults.

Ok. Some adults don’t muster those capabilities, either. Having a fully developed brain module does not ensure that you use it when you need it. But that is just a matter of practice. Meaning, of course, that adult brains can keep developing as long as the person keeps developing new capabilities. There may be no clear point at which maturation is complete for the brain. At least not until senility sets in or the person dies.

Your Resources Know Where You Will Start

In our previous episode of Problems as Homework, P. A. Rant began helping the child with Lesson 3 of elementary problem solving: The Who of Solutions. And the child immediately saw ahead to the next step: “I don’t know where to start.”

The Vulcan in P. A.’s brain was about to say: “It does not matter where you start. What matters is where you finish.” But the Empath module knew that the child did not need deep insights at this point. The child needed a place to start. So P. A. added to the Semi-Structured Brainstorming paper on the wall a new box. Label: RESOURCES

P. A. “Your first layer of resources is whatever can tell you how other people have handled the problem of homework. That may point you to other resources.”

P. A. expects that the child will eventually list teachers, adults, classmates, parents and older children in school. Perhaps the child will also list the web, but the child will need help and supervision on this. P. A. expects to be available as a resource to help explore the web.

By now you will have seen that the main story of problem solving is translation from the language of complaints to the language of action. You will also have noticed that this translation brings on a growing sense that the solution will take effort. This is a discovery people make many times over.

Here, then, is a summary of the first five lessons in elementary problem-solving.

Look at the goal, not the problem.

Translate complaints into goals.

The only who is you.

You will start with your resources.

If it were easy, you would have already done it.

That’s all I can think of to say about problem-solving at the beginner’s level. The Thinkerer offers specific resources about problem-solving and about studying. That’s in case you want to start with your resources.