Weekly articles related to brain-based learning and learning styles, problem-solving and creativity, kids, families, and parenting, gifted and visual learners, dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, autism, and more.
fMRI studies show that people who score on novelty seeking scores (high exploratory, extravagant response to potential pleasures) also score the highest on emotional expectancy and activation of the medial prefrontal cortex (reward).
Not surprisingly, novelty seeking has been associated with the dopaminergic system and ADHD.
When we see kids with a strong novelty-seeking personality, it's interesting to watch them explore our waiting area. They always seem to find the most interesting things in the room right away - it definitely can be a strength in the right situation, but not surprisingly it's a poor fit with non-entertaining, non-salient teachers. What these kids often need is time to explore, an animated teacher, and lessons that whet the interest - What's unexpected, what's extreme, what's funny.
If a novelty-seeking student has no problems learning from a teacher who teaches with a high salience approach, is it a disease?
"Without experiment, I am sure that the effect will happen ... because it must happen that way." -Galileo Galilei
A thought experiment is an experiment in the mind that is usually a test of a theory, principle, or hypothesis. Many breakthroughs in physics and mathematics are due to thought experiments, but thought experiments have also been important in the advancement of mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. The importance of thought experiments seems somewhat counter-intuitive because why should a non-performed experiment be expected to yield new or better information?
John Clement offers an interesting theory why this is so.
"...these simulations can generate new knowledge using several sources, including the 'extended application' of perceptual motor schemas, implicit prior knowledge, and spatial reasoning operations, in contrast to formal arguments."
Clement goes on to speculate that thought experiments tap into implicit (not expressed) 3D spatial knowledge using analogous mental models. Important thought experiments in science were not flights of fantasy, but rather "distillations of practice, based on real-world experience."
Other interesting features of successful thought experiments were that they could used to expose conflicts in an existing theory - and so play destructive as well as constructive roles in the modification process.
In studies of engineers doing thought experiments such as the one at right (will a wire with coils twice as wide stretch more or less with the same weight?) , kinesthetic and visual imagery were used to solve the problems, and as the engineers used twisting motions of their hands, the actions seemed to tap into implicit knowledge about how the springs would behave.
It's interesting in his video recordings of the engineers that most also seemed to manipulate the springs beyond the condition in the problem for instance: Now I'm confirming (moves clenched right hand toward clenched left hand) that, by using this method of limits. As (moves right hand to left hand until they almost touch at the first word "closer") I bring my hand up closer and closer (keeps holding clenched right hand next to left hand, making slight vertical punctuating motions at the words "hold," "clearly," "harder," and "harder") to the original place where I hold it, I realize very clearly that it will get harder and harder to twist. So that confirms my intuition so I'm quite confident of that."
Adding extreme cases to thought experiments allowed the engineers to test out their predictions and change their theories appropriately depending on the results.
What are the take-home points for education?
1. Thought experiments can be valuable both as a source of new ideas and in critical analysis of existing theories. 2. Because success at thought experiments often employ perceptual-motor knowledge that can only be gained through direct hands-on experiences, we should not consider a complete education 'hands-off' education. 3. Imagery is essential to many types of generative thinking; practice in imagistic reasoning might be a valuable addition to the educational arsenal.
From Stonybrook University and a collaboration with China, comes this latest study showing that people self-reported as "Highly Sensitive People" on the Aron's HSP Questionnaire (see below) do have more sensitive brains when looking at visual stimuli. The effect isn't just higher levels of brain activation, but also high performance scores on tests of visual detail.
Our understanding of sensory processing sensitivities and disorders has taken a leap forward in the past few years though the field is still messy because people come to the topic from so many different disciplines and viewpoints. Aron's work described "SPS" or Sensory Perception Sensitivity, a personality trait only partly associated with introversion or emotionality. Sensory Processing or Sensory Integration Disorders have been defined by professional occupational therapy associations to be dysfunctions in the normal modulation, discrimination, and organization of the body's sensory systems (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, balance / proprioception). Some of the most severe instances of sensory processing dysfunction seem to be in the setting of autism spectrum disorders and genetic disorders such as fragile X or Williams Syndrome. But among gifted parenting and educational communities, sensory sensitivities are also well known, especially with the high overlap of Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities with conventional sensory processing disorder or HSP checklists. All of these conditions also overlap with attention deficit disorders because attention functions (among other things) to coordinate responses to outside stimuli.
This study doesn't do much to clarify the mess between different professional and lay descriptions of sensitivities, but it does give credence to the subjective reports of many that they can be overwhelmed by sensory inputs that others might find inconsequential. It's interesting too, that more sensitive people did notice more when studying visual stimuli, so that although the sensitivity can be seen as a burden, it also seems to come with some gifts.
High sensitive person self-test (Aron):
I am easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input.
I seem to be aware of subtleties in my environment.
Other people's moods affect me.
I tend to be very sensitive to pain.
I find myself needing to withdraw during busy days,into bed or into a darkened room or any place where I can have some privacy and relief from stimulation.
I am particularly sensitive to the effects of caffeine.
I am easily overwhelmed by things like bright lights, strong smells,coarse fabrics,or sirens close by.
I have a rich,complex inner life.
I am made uncomfortable by loud noises.
I am deeply moved by the arts or music.
My nervous system sometimes feels so frazzled that I just have to go off by myself.
I am conscientious.
I startle easily.
I get rattled when I have a lot to do in a short amount of time.
When people are uncomfortable in a physical environment I tend to know what needs to be done to make it more comfortable (like changing the lighting or the seating).
I am annoyed when people try to get me to do too many things at once.
I try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things.
I make a point to avoid violent movies and TV shows.
I become unpleasantly aroused when a lot is going on around me.
Being very hungry creates a strong reaction in me,disrupting my concentration or mood.
Changes in my life shake me up.
I notice and enjoy delicate or fine scents, tastes, sounds, works of art.
I find it unpleasant to have a lot going on at once.
I make it a high priority to arrange my life to avoid upsetting or overwhelming situations.
I am bothered by intense stimuli, like loud noises or chaotic scenes.
When I must compete or be observed while performing a task, I become so nervous or shaky that I do much worse than I would otherwise.
When I was a child, my parents or teachers seemed to see me as sensitive or shy.
"If you answered more than fourteen of the questions as true of yourself, you are probably highly sensitive. But no psychological test is so accurate that an individual should base his or her life on it. We psychologists try to develop good questions, then decide on the cut off based on the average response."
From TR Miles' Dyslexia at College: "From our discussions with dyslexic students we have noticed that many of them have had at least one person as a 'prop' during their school career. This 'prop' is often a parent or other relative...Such a person will have guided them in a variety of ways, for instance by showing them how to fill in forms, by reminding them of appointments, by supplying them with addresses and telephone numbers, and by making suggestions to how they might plan their studies and their revision..."
Helicopter parents were a negative term for parents who hover around their teen and young adult children "overparenting", trying to clear obstacles out of their childrens' paths and make their kids' decisions for them. The College Board even published a 'Quiz' to encourage parents to "rethink" their helping habits.
Undoubtedly there are some extreme cases, more recent research says that many so-called helicopter parents are getting a bad rap. Now there seems to be a change in the winds. The College Board has now added Helicopter Parents Revisited, citing research from the Harvard Family Research Project that teens whose parents play an active role do better in school and more likely to enroll in college, and parents who are more involved while their students are in college are more engaged in their studies and more satisfied with their college experience. Because researchers found that the children of "helicopter parents" performed slightly worse than those with "non-helicopter" parents, it was theorized that the helicopter action was taking place because the students were really struggling in school.
Because of our interest gifted dyslexics, we read a lot of early life histories of individuals who later became eminent - and more often than not, a parent's unconditional support seemed to make the difference in that child's success - when John Yeats could not read, his father took it upon himself to read him Macaualay, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Rossetti, and Blake into his teen years when he began to write verses of his own. When Pierre Curie struggled with multitasking, slow processing, and dysgraphia, his father took it upon himself to homeschool him, supplementing his studies with tutors and work he could do along with his brother in their dad's lab at the Museum of Natural History. More recent examples include dyslexic head of the Intel Reader creator team, Ben Foss JD MBA. In the video at the bottom of this post, Foss admits that he used to fax his papers home so his mother could read them to him.
These biographical studies still have a ring of truth today. Whenever we meet with a twice exceptional student who has made some remarkable accomplishment in higher education, more often than not, there's also a remarkable parent behind him or her. This shouldn't be surprising, but with all the negative press about 'helicopter parenting', many well-meaning people can get the wrong idea. A much more common mistake is that parents try to give their 2E child more independence after entering school, only to suddenly find out it was all too much, there're failing grades and their student wants to throw in the towel. What these kids often can't do well are lower order cognitive tasks - like decoding read quickly, writing by hand or note-taking, retrieving math facts etc. And the gap between high school and college away is too great. College professors often receive no training in the LD needs of their students, and college freshman find themselves buried under core requirements with outrageously long reading lists and tests that require fact regurgitation and trivia more than thinking.
Parents may often know best what their child's strengths and weaknesses actually are. If they think they are college / grad school material, they are probably right. Research from Drs. Linda Silverman and Karen Rogers has found that parents are excellent identifiers of giftedness in their children. In the setting of Gifted with LDs, that must also certainly be true. Not only can the see the promise, but they knew how much work went into keeping on schedule and writing papers and how many assists were necessary.
The truth is that parental support at university and grad school levels (if necessary) may be very important to these very talented students. What many of these students can do well is think - and they just need to reach high enough levels of education that thinking reallymatters (usually upper division courses).
So hooray for helping parents - and don't get down about your help - and share these stories with your students.
We don't mean to say it's not important to have these older students advocate for themselves or make independent decisions - there are of course common sense distinctions about all this business, but our take-home point to you is that the over-the-top helicopter parent is more an exception than a rule, and the truth is that many of you good parents are really making a difference in your kids' lives. Many twice-exceptional students are also developmentally late bloomers. College might be better suited to them in their early 20's rather than right out of high school, but delaying college for years may be impractical. This also means too that the help may not necessary forever. Thankfully, a lot of life is not the same as freshman year at college.
From Thompson's Reading Disability -
"When the writer interviewed the (medical) student, he admitted that he "never could read much." Throughout his education his mother had read everything to him, and in medical school his wife was reading aloud all books and references. His father had had the same trouble, but he graduated from medical school with the aid of his wife's reading to him. However the father could not pass state board examinations, because he could not read them. Later he became a professor in one of the preclinical sciences and wrote a textbook for his field...From interviews, it was obvious that the student had a specific reading disability. Arrangements were made for him to have expert and intensive remedial reading instruction during vacation time...there was some opposition to his continuance in medical school on the part of the dean and one other faculty member, but the opposition subsided...After his graduation a report came from a distant medical school hospital stating that this man was the best intern they had had for some time. He passed his American boards in internal medicine and became the head of a group practice clinic in a large city..."
