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.
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.
posted by Selby Evans at 12:16 PM
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