Novelty Seeking and the Brain

Individual differences in novelty seeking correlate with activity in the striatum and substantia nigra. This is interesting because of the implication of striatal pathways in learning and reward / motivation as well as in "automatic" learning.

Maybe novelty-seeking should be considered more often when students are evaluated for their "learning style." For some novelty-seeking may be such a dominant trait, it may be more important to consider than auditory or visual learning preferences.

Striatal activity underlies novelty choice in humans pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Novelty in the Striatum, ADHD, and Computer games
Primitive brain smarter than we think

Strategic Memory and Reasoning Training for ADHD Teens

From Dallas Morning News:

"Using teenagers suffering from attention deficit problems, Dr. Chapman and BrainHealth scientist Dr. Jacquelyn Gamino used cognitive neuroscience findings to create a program called SMART – for Strategic Memory and Reasoning Training – to teach teens how to think critically and effectively use the information they learn.

Teens were taught techniques to block unimportant details and condense critical information into main ideas or concepts, rather than try to memorize and repeat facts verbatim.

"We've used the SMART program techniques for the past year and a half in our ongoing study, and we've seen improvement in the reasoning skills for 98 percent of the children," said Dr. Gamino."

Strategic learning is rarely taught in schools and when available, it is rarely tailored to an individual student, though the truth is, the students who need strategic training the most are the least aware they need it.

It looks as if Gamino and Chapman have not yet published their observations with teens diagnosed with ADHD (still recruiting subjects), but the benefits of training in reasoning would fit well with observations that suggest the middle school years are an ideal time to do this (see the Algebra link and Dorothy Sayers article below).

Data from Neural correlates of fluid reasoning in children and adults pdf suggest that maturation of the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex may be a necessary requirement for efficient analogical reasoning to occur. In this study, scientists noted that the older children in their cohort (ages 6-13) were beginning to show more "activity" in the RLPFC.

Better reasoning may be useful throughout our life cycle. In the ACTIVE study that looked at the effects of cognitive training in 65 and older healthy adults, only reasoning training (over memory or speed training) seemed to show long-lasting benefits on the performance of daily tasks.

Excerpt: "The improvements seen after the training roughly counteract the degree of decline in cognitive performance that we would expect to see over a seven- to 14-year period among older people without dementia,” says Dr. Willis."

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Training Memory, Reasoning, and Speed
Eide Neurolearning Blog: More higher math (algebra) in middle school and more do well
Dorothy Sayers: Lost tools of learning
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/rmiller/stories/DN-miller_14bus.ART.State.Edition1.26df6de.html
JAMA Long term effects of cognitive training on everyday functional outcomes pdf

Individual Differences in Math Sense: "Give me the child at 7, and I will show you the man..."

"Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man" - Jesuit maxim

From the Washington Post:

Excerpt -

"Scientists have for the first time established a link between a primitive, intuitive sense of numbers and performance in math classes, a finding that could lead to new ways to help children struggling in school.

A study involving 64 14-year-olds found that the teenagers who did well on a test that measured their "number sense" were much more likely to have gotten good grades in math classes.

"We discovered that a child's ability to quickly estimate how many things are in a group significantly predicts their performance in school mathematics all the way back to kindergarten," said Justin Halberda, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University who led the research, published online yesterday by the journal Nature. "It was very surprising."

It's not all that surprising to some of us, especially those of us who have a number disability. One of us (Fernette) has been woefully aware of her impaired math and estimation sense - still managed to pass out of math at Harvard by doing well enough on the AP Calculus exam, but today still counts on fingers, and is the fastest one in the family to reach for a calculator when the number crunching is really important. How did she survive advanced high school math? The old-fashioned way, driving rote memory systems, drill, drill, drill, and oh yes, counting on fingers to not make careless errors with subtraction.

In the study at left, Dehaene beautifully shows that there is more than one way to get at a math answer. If you don't have much in the way of spatial problem solving ability, you can use rote systems and grunt it out.

Strong spatial mathematicians often solve their problems intuitively, or in other words, they arrive at answers that are not easily described in verbal terms. Answers may seem to come to them instantaneously (definitely not the case for poor rote mathematicians). When questioned, many spatial math problem solvers say they "feel" math quantities or have some movement or kinesthetic imagery associated with numbers or quantity. Needless to say, this seems magical to people who have little or no sense of spatial quantity.

If you don't have number sense, rest assured it is possible to do quite a bit of mathematics by rote memory; it just isn't as quick or as effortless.

It would be interesting to see whether the latest data from this study may help customize early math instruction. Intensively driving rote systems is what many teachers and parents currently try to do, but we wonder perhaps training the spatial system (e.g. visually [e.g. computer display] or proprioceptively [weights?]) could ultimately culminate in effortless math?

References and Other Links
Individual differences in nonverbal number acuity correlate with maths achievement
Math in the News: photo
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Dyscalculia - Two Different Brain Pathways for Mathematics

Flash from the Past: "He passed in what he thought idleness..."

"He passed in what he thought idleness, and was scolded by his father for his want of steady application. He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books his way, and inclination directed him through them..."

When the teachers were interviewed about this Flash from the Past as a child, none recalled ever having corrected him except when "talking and diverting other boys from their business." Throughout his life, this Flash from the Past would be troubled by vision problems, hearing problems, facial tics, severe depression, and poverty. And yet despite these burdens, he would later be hailed as one of the "most distinguished man of letters in English history."

This was Samuel Johnson, poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and author of the Dictionary of the English language and what some believe to be the most authoritative guide to Shakespeare.

It turns out Johnson was a master at incidental learning. From his famous biographer Boswell: "...indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution...", but what he did have was a prodigious memory - and "he never forgot any thing that he heard or read."

It's hard to believe that a lazy and apparently inconsistent reader could also have such a perfect memory, but the characteristics may be linked. Some incidental learners require frequent task switching to maintain alertness and interest (these folks are not uncommonly reading several books at a time), and this trait may be especially common in the setting of Tourettes syndrome, which is seems Johnson had. Johnson could have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder if the diagnosis had been around then; but the obvious question comes to mind - if he is truly inattentive, how could he be so retentive (or why does he remember and know so much)?

For incidental learners such as these, teachers and parents are often better off making available resources and staying out of the way for the educational process.

"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good." - Samuel Johnson

The Hack as Genius: Samuel Johnson
Boswell's Life of Johnson