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.
Need a whole brain workout? Try daydreaming and imagining solving in the future.
In this nifty research from Harvard, researchers found that college volunteers imagining future scenarios and solving problems there activated both the default network (also know as the "daydreaming network") and executive function brain regions. So it's daydreaming with a purpose.
The default or daydreaming network includes multiple bilateral brain areas that are turned down when external attention switches on.
May that's why many visionary personalities are often recalled as daydreamers in their childhood (and adulthood too if the truth be known) ...Maybe they were building better visionary brains in their youths while other more externally attentive children weren't. Wouldn't it be a pity if we don't give children time to boost their default networks?
One famous daydreamer in history was Isaac Newton: "Growing up Isaac barely maintained average grades and often lacked attention in school. Villagers looked upon his daydreaming, habits of reading for hours at a time, and keeping records of his interests as mere eccentricity.."
Isaac Newton also had the dubious honor of losing a horse that he was leading because he had been reading a book at the same time...
"Most mathematicians did not just take up math as a "job"...(most) get more pleasure out of mathematics than almost any other activity. And they often discovered this pleasure when they were young..."
While most people would agree that "math people" are not like "non-math people", it's not always easy for non-mathematical minds to recognize (and appropriately nurture) mathematical ones. The reasons for this are several - mathematical kids are often independent and internally-driven problem solvers who may or may not excel in the standard math tasks of the elementary school classroom (if he's such a math kid, how come he's getting C's on his timed drills?...) Many students with extreme talents in math may also be relatively verbal-poor, so are less obviously the "smart" children in class. Also they may be reluctant to show what they know or what they are interested in to relative strangers, and may have difficulty explaining how they arrived at answers. Many mathematical minds are dyslexic or twice exceptional in another areas, too, complicating their identification with standardized tests or screening tools.
Numbers Kids The numbers kids are perhaps the easiest to recognize - and they often come from families where one or both parents have a special affinity to mathematics (engineers, computer science, academics). It may start out with children interested in patterns and facts within mathematics (divisibility rules, cube roots, etc.), card and other games, recreational math topics (Fibonacci sequence, fractals, probability, solving problems for 'fun') or mathematics in the world of adults (e.g. Philip Davis' cousin who let him be bookkeeper at the age of 7, keeping track of a race horse's handicap and winnings).
Tinkering Kids Tinkering kids tend to enjoy conceptual science books, building and unbuilding (gears, taking apart ball point pens and toys, clocks, cameras, origami etc.), computer-related activities, projects (completed and incomplete), and beautiful and unbeautiful design.
By temperament, strong math minds will tend to be introverted and have high focus and task persistence for activities of intrinsic interest. This may mean they are difficult to direct in the traditional or even non-traditional classroom (prefer studying lines of own interest), and they may be benefited particularly by mentors (often relatives or math teachers at higher levels of education) willing to discuss topics, ideas, and problems far in advance of their years.
Silverman and Feldman have distinguished engineering / math-gifted individuals into sensor (likes facts, data, experimentation) and intuitor (prefers principles and theories) groups. Both were capable of becoming "fine engineers", but sensors with less direct success in traditional academics.
Recently, some investigators have begun to look at brain-related differences in mathematically-gifted students (to our knowledge this has not been done in professional mathematicians, engineers, physicists); in his study of mathematically-gifted adolescents, Michael O'Boyle has found that superior mathematics performance was correlated with increased bihemispheric activation (vs. unilateral activation) for mathematics tasks, enhanced involvement of the right hemisphere for information (including linguistic) processing, and strong prefrontal cortex activation. As seen in the figure above, math-gifted adolescents performing mental rotation tasks activate much more brain bilaterally than average math-performing peers.
The optimal educational pathways for young math thinkers may also vary widely. Some thrive with subject acceleration, while others plenty of free time to explore topics of personal interest - whether conceptual or technical.
Perhaps the most common feature seen in young mathematical minds is their interest is solving problems. If you have a young mathematical mind in your house and he or she hasn't seen the PBS special on Fermat's Last Theorem, check it out.It's great - sort of what Race for the Double Helix is to budding scientists. The PBS video on Fermat's Last Theorem (Youtube.com)
From Andrew Wiles:
" I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem—Fermat's Last Theorem. This problem had been unsolved by mathematicians for 300 years. It looked so simple, and yet all the great mathematicians in history couldn't solve it. Here was a problem, that I, a ten year old, could understand and I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it."
“But if they’re out of a diaper and can sit still with a Kumon instructor for 15 minutes, we will take them.” - Joseph Nativo, CFO Kumon North America
"In homes that cradle eminence, there are strong tendencies to build directly on personal strengths, talents and aims, rather than to assume that there is a large, specific body of knowledge that everyone should possess. A family, or some member of the family, is likely to take off wholeheartedly on a course of investigation or action that differs from one's contemporaries." - Victor and Mildred Goertzel, Cradles of Eminence
In Fast Tracking Kindergarten, we hear of the burgeoning trend of preschoolers attending Junior Kumon or Junior Kumon-like classes, doing reading and math drills. What's wrong with this picture?
One can think of the short term advantages that Kumon preparation might have - faster retrieval of math facts, quicker decoding of pages, and better admissions prospects to exclusive private schools, but, but...
If you really learn more about the childhoods of men and women who would late become eminent, the common factors were more that they were allowed to do what they wanted to do and immerse themselves in whatever interesting subject or idea struck them at the time. It looks very different from this scheduled routine of Junior Kumon, karate classes, and after preschool tutoring all before the age of 7.
"Many exceptionally gifted children learn in a non-linear manner in which they take in large amounts of information and integrate it into an underlying big picture. Zachery, for example, at age 7, was interested in Egyptian hieroglyphics and computers; he attempted to use computer language to study other types of language... Feldman (1986) described the learning style of Adam as both nonlinear and omnivorous in his desire for knowledge. His style is further described as being "non-Western" and untraditional so that a regular school program did not work for him. Adam grasped concepts holistically and intuitively. Once he acquired the basic framework, he filled in the particulars. His parents thought he first developed theory, then learned basic facts and skills. Later, he questioned basic assumptions about theory. Adam had a number of ongoing interests which he explored at increasing levels of complexity including symbol systems (cartography and languages), music, science and mathematics."
You don't have time to do all this if all your free time is spent in sequential and rote activities.
In fact, many research studies into the early lives of gifted individuals show that growing up on a farm or long periods of time with unstructured play were part-and-parcel of their childhoods. Children who haven't yet learned how to add and subtract or even read, can learn by asking questions of their parents or anyone more knowledgeable, and by experiencing and testing out new ideas or phenomena directly.
From Goertzel and Hansen,
"The freedom to follow paths that are non-traditional is important if one is to learn to be independent in thought and action. Parents and educators can perhaps help best by encouraging young people to explore their options and make the most of available resources as they follow their own muse wherever it leads them."
There are many pressures confronting today's parents to conform and adopt a heavily systematized advanced education, but also something irreplaceable about some of simple pleasures of under-schedulization and time for self-discovery in childhood.
In the burgeoning field of virtual psychology, researchers are finding out that they ways people act in their virtual selvesis similar to real life. Social interactions, ranging from interpersonal body space to group influences in virtual worlds seem pretty much the same as in real life (see Get a second life).
But the converse can also be true - when an avatar goes through or how he or she changes can also affect how players perceive themselves. Sometimes this would seem for the good - for instance in Psychology of Avatars, researchers describe the work of Stanford psychologists Yee and Bailenson who found that players implanted into the body of a senior citizen reduced their negative stereotypes toward the elderly significantly. This same group also found that players with taller avatars seemed to have greater confidence and those with attractive avatars were more likely to walk closer to and talk to new acquaintances.
The implications abound for children or adults who may be playing for hours in online virtual environments. What your avatars does or experiences can affect you.
Obviously there can be positive effects of positive virtual characters and environments, and there is reason to believe that children would be just as susceptible (if not more) to these positive projections than adults. For instance, studies have shown that children who are very afraid of dogs can greatly reduce their fear after watching a film clip of a child happily playing with a dog (Bandura and Menlove, 1968). After only 4 days of watching the film, more than half of the children we were willing to play in a pen with a dog while everyone else left the room.
The military is even investigating how positive psychology and team-fostering experiences in virtual environments can promote real-life changes in attitude and character here.
But what of a 'negative' avatar who is aggressive or exhibits risky behavior? Playing in virtual life may not be a harmless activity at all. For more on this, check out Negative avatars can prime antisocial thoughts.
