Monthly Archives: January 2016

It is no secret that American students’ math and science standardized test scores don’t break any records^1,2. In 2012, the US scored below average for developed countries in math and close to average in science. We also know that many of the most pressing problems facing us today and in the future, from halting climate change to combatting terrorism, require science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) mastery and innovation. For this reason, educators and policymakers continue to increase their emphasis on STEM education.

Students’ time in school is finite, so spending more time learning to program or construct electrical circuits often means spending less time reading literature and engaging in arts, as these activities are often considered less practical. This STEM myopia can also be problematic, as those “less practical” fields may impart critical thinking and creativity³, perseverance, teamwork, and commitment⁴ in ways that STEM fields may not.

This understanding has prompted the STEAM movement, dedicated to incorporating the arts into a STEM educational framework.

I had the opportunity to talk with Nan Renner, a researcher at UC San Diego’s Center for Research on Educational Equity, Assessment and Teaching Excellence (CREATE). Nan’s work is focused on how we learn by interacting with the world – using language, objects, environments, and other people. With an initiative called the Art of Science Learning, she directed an Incubator for Innovation in San Diego to bring community members together to seek creative solutions for the water crisis in the region. She also teaches undergraduate courses in Cognitive Science. One course is called Distributed Cognition, a class that expands how we think about thinking to include our bodies and social and cultural contexts. Another is Cognitive Ethnography, a project-based research course that encourages students to understand human cognition through observing and analyzing behaviors. Collectively, her work is an exemplar for STEAM proponents, demonstrating not only a seamless integration of sciences and arts, but also working towards making STEAM a natural part of education.

What is STEAM, really?

Defining STEAM as simply the integration of arts with STEM fields is an oversimplification, especially for those of us who have been raised on the distinctions between the subjects. Traditionally, students learn science in science class and art in art class.

How could these very different subjects be combined?

There are some obvious ways to integrate them: students can use physical materials like clay or styrofoam to make models of cells or the solar system, and they can learn songs about concepts like Avogadro’s number. But Nan pointed out that we should think more broadly about what arts really are when trying to make education more “STEAM-y.” Instead of always incorporating art per se, we can incorporate an artistic spirit into STEM lessons. Art encourages and requires exploration, an emotional engagement and sense of ownership, and flexibility, all of which are key ingredients for success in science. For this reason, these same attributes should be components of STEM education.

Factor 1: Exploration

When we take a paintbrush to a canvas, a bow to a violin, or our eye to a camera lens, we are exploring. We explore the world around us, our bodies, and the media that we’re using to create the art. At an abstract level, it is this exploration that STEAM advocates promote for science classrooms. The goal of science is to predict and explain phenomena in the world, and that can’t happen without exploration.

To illustrate the value of exploration, Renner told me about the Hands On Lab, a mini science course for high school students held by CREATE at UCSD. Students learned about molecular self-assembly by creating and exploring bubbles and observing how dish soap alone could move boats across water. They also used microscopes to examine cells from fruits and vegetables, comparing and contrasting cells from the tougher outsides to the fleshier insides. By getting their hands dirty (or wet), students were able to explore the scientific principles in an unstructured way, freely experimenting with contrasts and causality. These activities create a foundation that students can build on once they learn more structured scientific terms and processes for explaining those phenomena.

Factor 2: Emotional Engagement & Ownership

Another key feature of art is that someone (or some people) created it. Regardless of whether the piece of art is a knitted scarf, a Broadway musical, a digitally rendered graphic, or a gourmet meal, the artist becomes emotionally invested in the project, leading to a strong feeling of ownership. Children especially are often rightfully proud of their artwork. These feelings of engagement and ownership are crucial to science as well, and they were central to a series of workshops also held at UCSD called Informath. Educators who participated in Informath gathered for workshops with the goal of creating professional development programs that brought art and math together to enhance learning. They received materials like paper strips, straws, and pipe cleaners, and after “playing” for a little while, had arrived at intriguing ways to teach concepts like fractals, recursive relationships, and geometric proofs.

Using the materials to make their models meant that those sculptures were now theirs – not only did the educators own the finished products, but they also owned the processes they had taken to arrive at them. As in the Hands On Lab, the lessons that the teachers created at Informath fostered ownership and engagement through a personal exploration process.

Extensive research on Self Determination Theory has focused on uncovering the social-contextual conditions that enhance individuals’ motivation and development⁵. One of these conditions is autonomy, which can be facilitated by granting students choices so that they have ownership over their exploration processes and means for expressing what they have learned⁶. Science lessons that revolve around art and exploration will introduce ownership into the classroom, instilling motivation, curiosity, and deeper understandings.

Factor 3: Flexibility

Flexibility is yet another hallmark of art. When you’re in a musical ensemble or a theater troupe, for example, you need to be constantly aware of the whole, and adapt so that you fit in. Likewise, scientific exploration requires this constant awareness of how new pieces of information fit into existing knowledge frameworks and the willingness to alter hypotheses or procedures as new information is accounted for.

These traits are central to the Incubator for Innovation, a project that Nan was involved with through the Art of Science Learning. In San Diego, the incubator’s focus was on the mismatch between supply and demand for water, a challenge chosen by public vote. The Incubator participants included scientists, artists, educators, and students who were invested in the problem. The teams learned arts-based techniques that they used to continuously come up with ideas, test them, and communicate about them. Iteration was a crucial component of the incubator: as teams tested their ideas and continued to learn about what did and did not work, they continually improved their innovations.

Similar incubators took place to address problems of access to fair and equitable nutrition (in Chicago) and new transportation solutions (in Worcester, MA). In 2016, a traveling exhibit will showcase the projects that came out of all 3 incubators and emphasize the importance of bringing creativity to science and innovation. Collaborating, iterating, and incorporating new information into prototypes are all crucial components of the incubator that drive home the importance of flexibility for innovation and success.

Creating a STEAM-ier classroom

A few times during our conversation, we circled back to a resounding theme: The most crucial part of STEAM is integration. Nan pointed out that “when we engage in real-world problem-solving, the disciplinary boundaries fade into the background. We blend and merge creative and critical thinking, representing ideas with words, metaphors, numbers, images, forms. We can be inquisitive and thoughtful about what these different modalities offer, in education and the workplace, and expand our collective repertoire for identifying and solving big challenges.”

How can we accomplish this in our STEAM lessons?

• Keep the goals of exploration, emotional engagement, and flexibility at the forefront when designing STEM lessons and incorporate hands-on lessons whenever appropriate.

• De-emphasize curricular boxes – although there will inevitably be certain topics and lessons that fall within our definition of science or math more than others, help students to be holistic thinkers by encouraging them to answer questions using whatever knowledge and tools they have available, as opposed to sticking to the confines of one traditional subject.

• Try metaphorming – a form of brainstorming that involves making multi-dimensional, freeform, symbolic models and can lead to deeper insights and more creativity.

• Promote the arts – students who learn to play as part of an orchestra, who gain confidence in ballet class, or who become comfortable getting their hands dirty with a pottery wheel will take those lessons and mindsets with them to the science classroom.

• As a teacher, take some creative liberties when planning science lessons. Students will learn best by observing a role model who incorporates arts and science (for inspiration, check out the #sciart hashtag on Twitter).

One intuition might be that the key to improving STEM education is to focus students’ time more on STEM subjects and less on the arts. However, we have solid evidence suggesting that STEM and arts aren’t incompatible ends of a spectrum, but instead can – and should – be integrated. When we integrate arts, and more broadly, an artistic mindset, into science lessons, we open the door for exploration, emotional engagement and ownership, and flexibility; indispensible skills for success in science and in life more generally.

The STEAM movement suggests that arts and sciences may have a synergistic relationship – even better when combined than each in isolation. The movement reminds us that when it comes to treasured school subjects – arts and sciences – we can have our cake and eat it too.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Chappell, B. (2013). U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science. NPR. [Article]
2. Desilver, D. (2015). U.S. students improving – slowly – in math and science, but still lagging internationally. Pew Research Center. [Article]
3. Zakaria, F. (2015). Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous. The Washington Post. [Article]
4. Williams, Y. (2014). Rhythm and bruise: How cuts to music and the arts hurt kids and communities. Huffington Post Education. [Article]
5. Ryan, R.M. & Deci, E.L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. [Paper]
6. Stefanou, C.R., Perencevich, K.C., DiCintio, M., & Turner, J.C. (2004). Supporting autonomy in the classroom: Ways teachers encourage student decision making and ownership. Educational psychologist, 39(2), 97-110. [Paper]

• Beilock, S. (2015). How the body knows its mind: The surprising power of the physical environment to influence how you think and feel. [Book]
• STEAM to STEAM [Organization]

When picturing a kindergarten classroom in America, chances are you imagine messy finger paint on tables, blocks clinking on the rug, oversized read-aloud books, and little kids climbing through colorful Rubbermaid jungle gyms. (Perhaps you imagine a young Arnold being trampled by 5-year-olds in Radio Flyer wagons).

When picturing mindfulness meditation, you might imagine a serene-faced adult seated cross-legged on an amber silk pillow. Her eyes are closed and she is perfectly impervious to distractions in her surrounding environment.

Most young children have loads of rambunctious energy, hungry for answers to curious questions. And with or without silk props, many meditation practices are designed to cultivate stillness and silence within.

It’s therefore natural to question not only if young children should meditate, but also if young children can meditate. In this article, we’ll explore the evidence for both.

Brain Development in Early Childhood

The first years of a child’s life are crucial to setting up a strong foundation for relationships, learning, and mental health. According to the Center on the Developing Child, neuroscientists have found that typically 700 synaptic connections between brain cells are created every second in a child’s beginning years of life.¹ (If you’re trying to do the math, that’s about a few hundred trillion connections by age 3.) Eventually, this period of synaptic exuberance subsides as the brain naturally prunes away unused connections, a mechanism popularly referred to as “use it or lose it.”

Brain development is shaped by biology, environment, and external experiences and is studied in a number of ways, including a growing field of research known as s. Epigenetics is a subfield of genetics that studies things like how non-genetic factors, typically at the cellular level, can affect the way a given DNA sequence, and therefore the way a gene, is expressed. According to the Center on the Developing Child, “positive experiences, such as exposure to rich learning opportunities, and negative influences, such as malnutrition or environmental toxins, can change the chemistry that encodes genes in brain cells — a change that can be temporary or permanent. This process is called epigenetic modification.”²

Young children experiencing adversity such as neglect, poverty, parental substance abuse, or prolonged periods of stress may be susceptible to a “toxic stress response.” Toxic stress can be as harmful as it sounds, destroying brain cells and significantly disrupting brain circuitry in foundational years, leading to emotional and mental health complications such as anxiety and depression in childhood or even later in adulthood.³

Development in early years often predicts emotional, academic, and social well-being and even physical health in adulthood. Jack Shonkoff, M.D., professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child explains, “Biologically, the brain is prepared to be shaped by experience. It’s expecting the experiences that a young child has to literally influence the formation of its circuitry…If a child is preoccupied with fears or anxiety or is dealing with considerable stress, no matter how intellectually gifted that child might be, his or her learning is going to be impaired by that kind of emotional interference.”⁴

Learn more about the basics of early childhood brain development with Dr. Shonkoff in this short video from the Center on the Developing Child.⁴

Shonkoff recognizes that supporting healthy cognitive development in children is not separate from social and emotional development, making the case for intervention for children in early years. So is mindfulness the type of intervention that might help?

Mindfulness as Early Childhood Intervention

Contemplative practices – an umbrella term for practices like yoga and mindfulness meditation – have been studied primarily in adult and adolescent populations over the last few decades and are associated with increased activation in brain regions related to executive functioning.⁵ Executive functions (EFs) are a range of activities such as planning, decision-making, and self-regulation of attention, emotions and behaviors. As a result of positive findings in older populations, new research investigates the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions on executive functioning in elementary and early childhood settings.

Self-regulation, a type of executive functioning, is broadly considered to be the integration of flexible attention, working memory, and ability to inhibit one’s impulses. Self-regulation in preschool-aged children has been strongly correlated with academic success as measured by progress in emergent literacy and math. An even stronger predictor than IQ, self-regulation in beginning years of life is one of many functions that can predict math and reading achievement in elementary and middle school.⁶

Mindfulness practices have had mixed results in effectiveness on executive functioning in child populations, in part due to weaker design without control groups for comparison and due to reliance on self- or parent-reported data. Without a control group that receives alternative or no treatment, it’s hard to determine if any changes are linked to the actual mindfulness treatment or whether the changes would happen regardless. And with self-reported data like questionnaire and survey responses, it’s hard to calibrate if one person’s perception of “strongly agree” is the same as another’s. It’s utility as a measure of effectiveness, however, is revealing trends and prompting further precision investigation.

In a recent study by Lisa Flook et al. (2010), for example, early elementary children received training Mindful Awareness Practices that included breathing awareness, body awareness and movement, and awareness of environment. Results revealed that, according to teacher and parent reports, children who started the program with difficulties in self-regulation showed significant improvement.⁷

This preliminary study call for more research on mindfulness as an effective intervention in even younger child populations – a way to offer children experiencing adversity a way to self-regulate their emotions and behaviors, potentially preventing disruptions to healthy brain development.

But can young children really meditate?

Given what we know about young children’s development and naturally quick shifts in attention, even 10 minutes of seated silence with children ages 3-5 seems unrealistic. To manage the concern of long periods of quiet, shorter adaptations of meditation practice have been designed to help introduce children to meditational techniques by reading a related story, participating in walking and observation meditations, playing games like “breathing buddies,” as well as reflective activities.⁸

It’s important to remember, however, that in many Eastern classrooms, children are often introduced to more traditional meditational practices at an early age. In a recent research study by Tang et al (2012), 4.5-year-olds in China were trained in integrative body-mind therapy (IBMT) sessions adapted from the original Zen training program for adults. Standard IBMT sessions consist of 5 minutes of modeling and directions by an instructor, 20 minutes of silent meditation or meditation with soothing music, and 5 minutes of reflection. Young children participated in twenty 30-minute sessions – a total of 10 hours of mindfulness practice – over the course of a month. In contrast to a control group, the mindfulness group’s performance on two stimulus-discrimination Stroop Tasks to measure attention significantly improved. The mindfulness training group also showed significant increases in effortful self-control (an executive function) as reported by their parents.⁹

Research is still required to confirm the beneficial impact of integrative body-mind therapy (IBMT) on child brain development, though preceding neuroimaging studies of IBMT in adults demonstrated promising results. After just one month of practice, fMRI on adult participants revealed enhanced functional connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and striatum as compared to a control group receiving relaxation activities, suggesting that the mindfulness training may enhance focused attention.¹⁰

Yi-Yuan Tang and her team plan to study IBMT in American settings in order to determine the impact of mindfulness on self-regulation in early childhood across cultures.

What does meditation with young children look like?

Mindfulness can take various forms, silence in a seated posture being one of them. Paying attention to the breath or sounds within our outside of the body is another form. Walking mindfully with each step is another. Mindfulness is simply paying attention, without judgment, to the present moment.¹¹

In the last decade, various organizations and programs have emerged to support mindfulness in classrooms. One such organization begun in 2008, Mindful Schools, offers certification and video resources on how to teach mindfulness to elementary-age children. The following sample video offers student-friendly listening to the sounds of bells and sharing their experiences, and it all takes less than fifteen minutes: K-5 Mindfulschools.org Lesson.¹² Scroll down and click on the K-5 Curriculum Demo. At 5:33, you can get a sense of how students receive scaffolding support to move from listening to sounds outside of themselves to listening for sounds inside of themselves).

If meditating silently on external or internal sounds feels less appropriate as a mindfulness introduction to your students, consider adapting mindful practice ideas to meet your young students where they are. For example, you might play a familiar song and have your students gently tap their noses each time they hear a particular note or word. To help encourage awareness and regulation of attention, perhaps sing overlapping rounds of “Row, row, row your boat,” allowing children to learn strategies for how to focus their attention on their part. Equally important is supporting children as they learn to re-focus their attention when they’re momentarily distracted (if you’ve played this singing game before, you know how challenging it can be!). Mindfulness is not simply sitting perfectly still; music and movement often make ideal mindfulness entry points for elementary-age children.

As mindfulness research in early childhood settings continues to grow, so shall science-based, kid-friendly resources for the classroom. Improvement of programs and refinement of research is undoubtedly the ongoing goal, but waiting for perfected materials means waiting to offer potentially life-altering resources to our children while they’re still children. Let’s help them evolve into healthy adults by offering them simple mindfulness tools now.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Center on the Developing Child (2009).Core Concepts in the Science of Early Childhood Development. [Multimedia Article]

2. Center on the Developing Child (2009).Deep Dive: Gene-Environment Interaction. [Article]

3. Shonkoff, J., & Garner, A. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress.Pediatrics, 129(1), E232-E246. [Paper]

4. Shonkoff, J. (2009, October 1). Center for the Developing Child: The Science of Early Childhood Development. [Video]

5. Lazar, S. W., Bush, G. L., Gollub, R., Fricchione, G., Khalsa, G., & Benson, H. (2000). Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation. NeuroReport,11(7), 1581-1585. [Paper]

6. McClelland, M. M. and Cameron, C. E. (2012), Self-Regulation in Early Childhood: Improving Conceptual Clarity and Developing Ecologically Valid Measures. Child Development Perspectives, 6: 136–142. [Paper]

7. Flook, L., et al. (2010). Effects of mindful awareness practices on executive functions in elementary school children. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 26(1), 70-95. [Paper]

8. Elizabeth Willis & Laura H. Dinehart (2014) Contemplative practices in early childhood: implications for self-regulation skills and school readiness, Early Child Development and Care, 184:4, 487-499 [Paper]

9. Tang, Y., Yang, L., Leve, L., & Harold, G. (2012). Improving Executive Function and Its Neurobiological Mechanisms Through a Mindfulness‐Based Intervention: Advances Within the Field of Developmental Neuroscience.Child Development Perspectives, 6(4), 361-366. [Paper]

10. Tang, Y., Lu, Q., Geng, X., Stein, E., Yang, Y., & Posner, M. (2010). Short-term meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,107(35), 15649-52. [Paper]

11. Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future.Clinical Psychology-Science And Practice, 10(2), 144-156. [Paper]

12. Cowan, M. K-5 Curriculum Demo: Class One – Mindful Bodies and Listening – 1^st Grade Classroom. [Resource]

Many believe that intelligent quotient (IQ) tests tell you something about an individual’s inherent, and perhaps unchanging, intellectual capacity. But is intelligence really fixed? Current research suggests it’s not.

IQ was once thought to be stable across the lifespan. Then, in 2011 a study tested participants twice in adolescence and found substantial changes in IQ across time for a third of the sample¹. There was an overall increase in the group’s IQ between early adolescence (12-16 years) and late adolescence (16-20 years), with some individuals gaining or losing as much as 18 IQ points! This is substantial, as by many scoring standards, that’s more points than make up a full standard deviation (for reference, approximately 68% of the population is within one standard deviation of average IQ).

These changes in IQ were also associated with changes in brain structure, suggesting an underlying neural mechanism for changes in intelligence across adolescence¹. This finding has since been replicated in a larger group of individuals covering a wider age range².

The roles of nature and nurture

Both genetics and the environment have an influence on IQ. However, this influence changes across development, with genetic influences generally becoming a greater influence as we get older³. There is also some evidence that individuals with high IQ are influenced by the environment longer than individuals with low IQ⁴.

In a study of children aged 4-12 years, both low and high IQ children showed similar levels of environmental influences on their IQ. However, the teenagers (aged 12-18 years) with low IQ were much less influenced by the environment than high IQ teenagers, who showed similar levels of environmental influences as high IQ children⁴. Both low and high IQ adults (aged 18+ years) showed similar (low) levels of environmental influence on IQ.

In other words, according to this research, the environment may have the greatest impact on IQ in childhood, have a continued impact on IQ for high scoring teenagers in particular, and then balance out again to have a lower impact across adults.

It has been suggested that the extended period of heightened environmental influence in high IQ individuals might reflect an extended period of neural plasticity in these individuals. This idea seemed to be supported by an early study investigating brain development in groups of individuals with varying IQ levels⁵. This study appeared to find evidence for more protracted brain development in groups of children with higher IQs, suggesting that children with higher IQs showed a longer period of “cortical thickening” compared to children with lower IQs⁵. Cortical thickening is related to the grey matter (made of primarily of neuronal cell bodies) of the outermost layer of tissue in the brain, which is involved in many complex cognitive functions. However, the methods involved in this study have been recently been called into question^6,7, and the results have not replicated⁸. This sort of trajectory is common in research, and a reminder to look across studies and time for potentially useful patterns.

A more recent study similarly found a relationship between cortical development patterns and IQ, but with different patterns than what was observed in the earlier study⁸. In children, cortical thinning is associated with higher IQ, whereas in adults, cortical thickening is associated with higher IQ⁸. These results highlight the importance of timing in our understanding of how brain changes could relate to cognitive changes, as one type of brain change in childhood could mean something completely different in adulthood. Indeed, changes in cortical thickness was a better predictor of an individual’s IQ than the actual thickness⁸.

Overall, the individuals with the highest IQs in this study also showed the largest changes in brain structure across the lifespan⁸. This could suggest that greater neural plasticity at any age is associated with greater intelligence.

Moving Forward

So how can we increase our neural plasticity? It has been suggested that continued education keeps the brain plastic longer⁹. This could be true, but the needed studies to test this hypothesis are lacking. To see if prolonged education affects the development of our brain, we would need longitudinal studies tracking individuals with differing education levels between childhood and adulthood.

Until that study exists, the best we can do is draw from existing studies examining changes in intelligence in relation to changes in brain structure and function. While education could theoretically change our level of brain plasticity and intelligence, recent work suggests that our genes also play a large role. One longitudinal study of twins found a relationship between changes in total brain volume and IQ, which appeared to be driven by genes influencing both IQ and brain volume¹⁰. A different twin study found evidence for the same genes that influence an adults general intelligence level are also involved in the structural integrity of brain networks¹¹.

In the meantime, it seems fair to conclude at least one thing: intelligence is not set in stone. And behaving as though our own and our students’ brains can continue to improve and learn with the proper supports certainly can’t hurt.

References & Further Reading 

1. Ramsden, S., Richardson, F. M., Josse, G., Thomas, M. S. C., Ellis, C., Shakeshaft, C., … Price, C. J. (2011). Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain. Nature, 479(7371), 113–116. [Paper]
2. Burgaleta, M., Johnson, W., Waber, D. P., Colom, R., & Karama, S. (2014). Cognitive ability changes and dynamics of cortical thickness development in healthy children and adolescents. NeuroImage, 84, 810–819. [Paper]
3. McClearn, G. E., Johansson, B., Berg, S., Pedersen, N. L., Ahern, F., Petrill, S. A., & Plomin, R. (1997). Substantial Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities in Twins 80 or More Years Old. Science, 276(5318), 1560–1563. [Paper]
4. Brant, A. M., Munakata, Y., Boomsma, D. I., Defries, J. C., Haworth, C. M. A., Keller, M. C., … Hewitt, J. K. (2013). The nature and nurture of high IQ: an extended sensitive period for intellectual development. Psychological Science, 24(8), 1487–1495. [Paper]
5. Shaw, P., Greenstein, D., Lerch, J., Clasen, L., Lenroot, R., Gogtay, N., … Giedd, J. N. (2006). Intellectual ability and cortical development in children and adolescents. Nature, 440(7084), 676–679. [Paper]
6. Ducharme, S., Albaugh, M. D., Nguyen, T.-V., Hudziak, J. J., Mateos-Pérez, J. M., Labbe, A., … Brain Development Cooperative Group. (2015). Trajectories of cortical thickness maturation in normal brain development – The importance of quality control procedures. NeuroImage, 125, 267–279. [Paper]
7. Mills, K. L., & Tamnes, C. K. (2014). Methods and considerations for longitudinal structural brain imaging analysis across development. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 172–190. [Paper]
8. Schnack, H. G., van Haren, N. E. M., Brouwer, R. M., Evans, A., Durston, S., Boomsma, D. I., … Hulshoff Pol, H. E. (2014). Changes in Thickness and Surface Area of the Human Cortex and Their Relationship with Intelligence. Cerebral Cortex. [Paper]
9. Steinberg, L. (2014). Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. Mariner Books.
10. Brouwer, R. M., Hedman, A. M., van Haren, N. E. M., Schnack, H. G., Brans, R. G. H., Smit, D. J. A., … Hulshoff Pol, H. E. (2014). Heritability of brain volume change and its relation to intelligence. NeuroImage, 100, 676–683. [Paper]
11. Bohlken, M. M., Brouwer, R. M., Mandl, R. C. W., Hedman, A. M., van den Heuvel, M. P., van Haren, N. E. M., … Hulshoff Pol, H. E. (2016). Topology of genetic associations between regional gray matter volume and intellectual ability: Evidence for a high capacity network. NeuroImage, 124, Part A, 1044–1053. [Paper]

• Fjell, A. M., Westlye, L. T., Amlien, I., Tamnes, C. K., Grydeland, H., Engvig, A., … Walhovd, K. B. (2013). High-Expanding Cortical Regions in Human Development and Evolution Are Related to Higher Intellectual Abilities. Cerebral Cortex. [Paper]
• Tamnes, C. K., Fjell, A. M., Østby, Y., Westlye, L. T., Due-Tønnessen, P., Bjørnerud, A., & Walhovd, K. B. (2011). The brain dynamics of intellectual development: waxing and waning white and gray matter. Neuropsychologia, 49(13), 3605–3611. [Paper]
• Neuroskeptic. (2012) How intelligent is IQ? [Blog Post]

Academics have a reputation for using overly technical language. Just as any career comes with its own terminology, scientific fields often use highly precise and specialized vocabulary that is not easily comprehensible to anyone else. Unfortunately, in science this poses a unique issue because findings are often interpreted and applied outside of the field.

It’s a problem with a relatively straightforward (though incomplete) solution: explanation in simpler terms.

In addition to traditional science journalism, efforts such as Ten Hundred Words of Science, The People’s Science Forum, and our very own Learning & the Brain blog address this communication barrier in part by explaining and reducing jargon in sharing scientific research.

However, for educators and scientists looking to communicate about the science of learning, there’s another complicated language issue: when academics and educators use familiar words, but with different meanings attached. Subtle differences in how these professional worlds tend to use key terms may, inadvertently or not, overstate the findings of scientific work and lead to miscommunication.

Let’s take a look at three examples.

Example 1: Self-directed learning

How do educators think about the term “self-directed learning”? Here’s how Mindshift, a popular education blog affiliated with National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), has used the term “self-directed learning” in a several 2015 articles:

• An article about Nick Bain, a student who experimented with taking a completely self-taught trimester of his junior year in high school.
• Examples of how teachers in Boise, Idaho, are structuring their classes to release responsibility to students, teaching them lead and guide their own learning even in a low-income school. This includes implementing Google’s 20% time to allow students to pursue their own interests and learning.
• A two-part series about learning environments that offer the world’s most marginalized children tremendous choice and autonomy in their schooling, from egalitarian school structures to experiments in radical un-schooling.

These articles reflect how educators use and understand the term “self-directed learning”—as a kind of learning in which students take on a high level of personal responsibility and face a broad array of choices.

How do cognitive scientists use the term “self-directed learning”?

A recent review on self-directed learning was published in Perspectives on Psychological Science¹ (results of this paper are summarized here, and point to potential pros and cons of self-directed learning). Notice how the same term is used in this context:

• In traditional cognitive science memory tasks, study participants are often presented with flashcards one at a time. As a more self-directed alternative, study participants choose the timing and order of the terms they wanted to study.
• Cognitive scientists are interested in how people learn to identify different categories, like how to tell the difference between a cat and a dog, or a nail and a bolt. Typically, this takes place by presenting people with lots of examples of objects, one at a time. Some scientists studying self-directed learning instead gave study participants the opportunity to select the objects they wanted to learn about.
• Another major topic in cognitive science is causal learning—how do people figure out causal relationships between different things? Some causal learning occurs just by observing when different variables seem to change together. Studies of more self-directed approaches to causal learning allowed participants to change one variable and observe the consequences.

Here, the term “self-directed learning” generally refers to a highly limited set of learning choices. Rather than having almost no choices as an entirely passive learner being presented with material, people in studies of self-directed learning are typically given a small number of simple choices.

While this might seem like an impoverished view of “self-directed learning,” even these simple choices introduce many new variables for scientists to study. For example, when study participants choose which flashcards to use, scientists were faced with many additional considerations—what aspect of how people used the flashcards explained how well different people learned the material? Was it the order, timing, and/or spacing of how people chose to study that made a difference?

Example 2: Executive functions

“Executive functions” is an umbrella term for cognitive processes that regulate thoughts and actions. The usage of this term in educational contexts tends to focus on higher-level processes like planning, judgment, decision-making, and self-regulation.

However, much of the work on executive functions in cognitive neuroscience focuses on more basic processes.² For example, one commonly studied component of executive functions is called inhibition, or how people suppress simple impulses. One common way of studying inhibition is called the “go/no-go task”. In this task, participants are instructed to press a button in response to some stimuli, and then not to press the button in response to other stimuli (I’ve previously written about a study using this task).

Much research on executive functions does not directly report on some of the higher-level regulatory skills educators might be interested in. Many executive functions, like inhibition, are thought to be building blocks of higher-level tasks, like planning. However, they’re not identical; while these skills are likely related, it doesn’t always make sense to lump them together.

Example 3. Musical ability

The perception of pitch is thought to have a genetic basis. On average, identical twins sharing nearly their entire DNA perform more similarly on a pitch recognition task than fraternal twins, which share approximately half of their DNA.³ And this tends to be true even when one identical twin has invested a lot more time in musical practice than the other.

Does this mean that musical ability is inherited?

It’s tempting to say so, and some articles reporting on similar findings do take this route.

But in an interview with Carry the One Radio, neuroscientist and professional musician Indre Viskontas says that using these lower-level perceptual skills to judge musical ability is “a little like testing the eyesight of a painter to gauge whether or not they’re a good painter, a good artist…I wouldn’t even say that that gets really even that close to what we’d call musicality.”⁴

What we consider a musically gifted performance of course relies in part on the artists’ sensitive hearing, but these two “musical abilities” are quite different in their level of complexity.

Tomato, tomahto. So what?

What’s the pattern here? Some of the same terms that represent highly simplified concepts in the cognitive sciences tend to signify or are mistakenly equated with very complex versions of that idea in the education world.⁵ Exaggeration occurs if conclusions from research in the cognitive sciences are, inadvertently or not, generalized to a much higher level without an empirical basis.

When cross talk happens, it’s not always clear the extent to which people are talking about the same thing. But they’re using the same words—and often nobody clarifies (or knows to)!

Preventing misunderstanding

While new studies can be incredibly exciting, we should interpret them cautiously. Neuroscience reporting is frequently exaggerated, particularly if the initial press release at all overstates the results.^6,7 Even when the reporting is accurate, plenty of published results aren’t replicable, meaning that new researchers repeating the same study don’t find the same results.⁸

In “Combating Neurohype,” Mo Costandi asks researchers to take responsibility for accurate reporting of their results.⁹ I’d argue that part of this responsibility is actively taking into account how readers might interpret word choices with varied emphases in different spheres.

For educators and others reading and talking about science, it’s important to develop a healthy skepticism with regard to the headline. Going beyond it usually reveals that the exciting result is a bit more nuanced and perhaps limited, raising critical questions about when and where such research might be applicable (or not). Developing these critical questions and getting them in front of scientists might propel what we know about learning and the brain even further.¹⁰

 

References & Further Reading

1. Gureckis, T. M., & Markant, D. B. (2012). Self-Directed Learning: A Cognitive and Computational Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(5), 464–481. [Paper]
2. Miyake, A., & Friedman, N. P. (2012). The Nature and Organization of Individual Differences in Executive Functions: Four General Conclusions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(1), 8–14. [Paper]
3. Drayna, D., Manichaiku, A., de Lange, M., Snieder, H., Spector, T. (2001). Genetic Correlates of Musical Pitch Recognition in Humans. Science, 291, 1969-1972. [Paper]
4. “The Sound of Music(ality)”. (2015). Carry the One Radio. [Audio Podcast]
5. Howard-Jones, P. A. (2014). Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 15(12), 817–824. [Paper]
6. O’Connor, C., Rees, G., & Joffe, H. (2012). Neuroscience in the public sphere. Neuron, 74(2), 220–6. [Paper]
7. Sumner, P., Vivian-Griffiths, S., Boivin, J., Williams, A., Venetis, C. A., et al. (2014). The association between exaggeration in health related science news and academic press releases: retrospective observational study. Bmj, 349 (December), g7015. [Paper]
8. Open Science Collaboration. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science Magazine, 349(6251). [Paper]
9. Costandi, Mo. (2015). Combating Neurohype. The Neuroethics Blog. [Blog]
10. Christodoulou, J. A., & Gaab, N. (2009). Using and misusing neuroscience in education-related research. Cortex, 45(4), 555–557. [Paper]

• Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2011). Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function: Working Paper No. 11. [Organization]

Education is intended to be a great equalizer, one that provides everyone with the resources that they need to be successful. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that it might not be as equalizing as many would like. There are still academic achievement gaps, for example between men and women and between European Americans and African Americans^1,2. These performance gaps can’t be entirely explained by differences in background experience. Instead, the stereotypes that students have internalized likely play a significant role.

One pivotal study by Steven Spencer, Claude Steele, and Diane Quinn¹⁰, for example, found that simply telling women that men do better on a particular math test results in worse performance, a phenomenon referred to as “stereotype threat”. Another study found that just telling a black athlete that a golf task was a test of “sports intelligence” significantly decreased his performance¹¹. Countless studies since have replicated these findings for everything from working memory capacity to test anxiety to high blood pressure. When people expect that they should have some flaw or difficulty, the expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Studies have also found that teacher expectations can have a significant impact on student performance. For example, a series of influential studies from the 1960’s showed that after teachers were told that randomly selected students were about to experience an “intellectual boom,” those students experienced major improvements in their performance, even though nothing had changed aside from their teacher’s opinion of them¹². Subtle features of the environment can shape students’ behavior and self-perception, so it’s essential that we identify ways to minimize stereotype threat in the classroom.

The Power of Values Affirmation

Combating deep-rooted stereotypes is no light task, but research has shown that there are subtle interventions that may at least begin to do this. They’re often called values affirmation interventions because they encourage students to reflect on their personal values. The most common implementation of values affirmation involves writing about one’s values, but the crucial ingredient is that students are conscious of the things that are important to them personally. In one study, half of the males and half of the females in a college physics class participated in a values affirmation activity at the beginning of the semester, while the others did not¹. By the end of the semester, there was a marked difference in the two groups. In the control group (students who did no special intervention), males significantly outperformed females. In the affirmation group, however, this gap was eliminated. This suggests that simply being mindful of one’s values can combat stereotypes that may otherwise hamper girls’ performance.

A similar study examined the effects of a values affirmation intervention in African Americans and European Americans². This study looked at change in GPA over the course of two school years. While the intervention didn’t affect European Americans — there was no difference in GPA change in the affirmation group compared to the group who did not do the affirmation — the GPAs of the African Americans who participated in the intervention increased by .24 points by the end of the two years.

The intervention was especially effective for low-performing African Americans, who experienced a GPA increase of 0.41 points on average and whose chances of repeating a grade or being placed in a remedial class were slashed from 18% to 5%.

Why do these value-affirming interventions work?

They are incredibly simple, involving only a short writing activity that is sometimes repeated a few times, but sometimes only done once. Yet the simplicity might be a key to the success of values affirmation interventions. The authors of the study investigating their effects for African Americans point out that there is often a recursive process at work: students have initial mental states or stereotypes that are compounded over time. The intervention, though small, seems to alter that recursive trajectory, leading to substantial long-term consequences².

Values Affirmation & the Brain

Work by Lisa Legault and colleagues suggests that effects of self affirmation can be seen at the neural level³. The brain’s electrical patterns can be recorded through electroencephalography (EEG), and different cognitive processes have different signature patterns. One well-known pattern is called the Error-Related Negativity (ERN). Just 100ms after people make an error on a task, there is a negative electrical spike, as their dopaminergic neurons (those that encourage us to keep doing more of what we’re doing) stop firing. They hypothesized that when we feel affirmed, we are more sensitive to our errors (in order to learn from them), and therefore that people who had undergone a self-affirmation measure should show an increased ERN response to making errors and an improved performance on a task. On the flip side, people whose self-affirmation was undermined might show a blunted ERN response and a decreased task performance.

All participants received a list of 6 values and rated them in terms of their importance to themselves. Those in the affirmation condition then wrote about their top value, while those in the non-affirmation condition wrote about their lowest one. They then performed a straightforward task: when they saw an M on the screen, they had to quickly press a response button; when they saw a W on the screen, they were to do nothing. This type of task is often called a go/no-go task. They did indeed find that participants who completed the values affirmation task had both increased performance and “neuroaffective sensitivity to task errors” compared to those in the non-affirmation group.

This research adds to our understanding of why values affirmation improves performance in groups facing stereotype threats. It seems to reduce depletion by improving our detection of and sensitivity to errors, reduce defensiveness, and motivate people to succeed.

A values affirmation intervention has also been effective for attaining weight loss goals⁴, demonstrating that the mechanism through which it works affects motivation and empowerment beyond the classroom. Another research group investigated neural activity while people were exposed to messages about ways to improve their health by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)⁵. Participants who had completed a values affirmation exercise before hearing the mentions showed more activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (a region of the brain associated with self-related processing and positive valuation) than those who did not reflect on their values before receiving the same message.

Together, these studies suggest that after reflecting on our values, our brains may process incoming information differently, allowing us to make the best of constructive feedback and motivating us to improve our performance the task or goal we’re focused on.

Facebook as an Unexpected Tool for Self-Affirmation

Are there other ways to tap into the benefits of self affirmation? Recent work suggests that Facebook may provide one way of doing so⁶. College undergraduates were placed in one of four groups: (1) the Facebook self-affirming group had 5 minutes to explore any aspect of their own Facebook profile they chose; (2) the Facebook non-affirming group had 5 minutes to explore someone else’s profile; (3) the values affirmation group wrote for five minutes about something they valued; and (4) the values control group wrote about something they valued very little. After doing the associated task, participants received feedback on a speech they had done at the very beginning of the experiment. Everyone received the same generic negative feedback, and they were then asked to rate different aspects of that feedback, like how useful it was and how competent the person who gave it to them was. If participants were self-affirmed before receiving their feedback, they should be more accepting of the negative feedback they received. This was exactly what the researchers found, regardless of whether the affirmation came in the form of the traditional writing intervention or by looking at their own Facebook profile. In fact, both forms of affirmation were equally effective. This study still leaves the mechanistic question unanswered; that is, why does viewing our own profile encourage us to reflect on our values? Is it only important that we focus our thoughts on ourselves, or is there something about a Facebook profile that reminds us of what we believe in and value?

In a second experiment, these same researchers asked whether people actually seek out Facebook’s self-affirming abilities after a negative experience. Again, they performed a speech and received generic feedback. This time, half of the participants received negative feedback, while the other half received neutral feedback. They were then invited to take place in a second experiment online and could choose which experiment they wanted to take place in: one that involved Facebook, YouTube, music, news, or games online. Those who received the negative feedback chose to go to Facebook significantly more often than those who received the neutral feedback, suggesting that Facebook is one outlet that people seek out to affirm themselves after an injury to their ego.

While students can certainly use Facebook to engage in many activities that are not affirming (some of which may in fact be the disaffirming), current research suggests that we may not want to dismiss the platform as solely a hindrance to education. Instead, we may want to entertain the counterintuitive possibility that it may be affirming for students, especially when looking at their own profiles.

Incorporating Affirmation in Education

Fortunately, values affirmation activities take little time and no money to implement. They help those who are most likely to be battling stereotypes without hurting others. So far, they seem to be a win-win. But there are still lots of aspects of affirming interventions that need to be better understood. Is an intervention as effective if students are aware of its intentions as if they are unaware? Is more affirmation always better? What other ways can it be implemented – perhaps by looking at photos, listening to music with positive messages, or engaging in an activity that one is good at?

Until more of these questions are addressed, teachers who want to reduce the role of harmful stereotypes in their classrooms can consider one of the forms of affirmation that we know to be beneficial. Whether students are affirmed through Facebook, writing about values, or other unknown sources, keeping the power of self-affirmation in mind may help us bring education closer to the great equalizer it was intended to be.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Miyake, A., Kost-Smith, L.E., Finkelstein, N.D., Pollock, S.J, Cohen, G.L, & Ito, T.A. (2010). Reducing the gender achievement gap in college science: A classroom study of values affirmation, Science, doi: 10.1126/science.1195996. [Paper]
2. Cohen, G.L., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, doi: 10.1126/science.1170769. [Paper]
3. Legault, L., Al-Khindi, T., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). Preserving integrity in the face of performance threat: Self-affirmation enhances neurophysiological responsiveness to errors. Psychological Science, doi: 1177/0956797612448483. [Paper]
4. Logel, C. & Cohen. G.L. (2011). The role of the self in physical health: Testing the effect of a values-affirmation intervention on weight loss. Psychological Science, doi: 10.1177/0956797611421936. [Paper]
5. Falk, E.B., Brook O’Donnell, M., Cascio, C.N., Tinney, F., Kang, Y., Lieberman, M.D., Taylor, S.E., An, L., Resnicow, K., & Strecher, V.J. (2014). Self-affirmation alters the brain’s response to health messages and subsequent behavior change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi:10.1073/pnas.1500247112. [Paper]
6. Toma, C.L. & Hancock, J.T. (2013). Self-affirmation underlies Facebook use. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, doi: 10.1177/0146167212474694. [Paper]
7. Gonzales, A.L. & Hancock, J.T. (2010). Mirror, mirror on my Facebook wall: Effects of exposure to Facebook on self-esteem. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, doi: 10.1089/cyber.2009.0411. [Paper]
8. The Value of “Values Affirmation”: Stanford Graduate School of Business [Article]
9. Pedersen, T. (2013). Facebook profile often used for self-affirmation. Psych Central. [Article]
10. Spencer, S.J., Steele, C.M., Quinn, D.M. (1999). Stereotype threat and women’s math performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35, 4-28. [Paper]
11. Stone, J., Lynch, C.I., Sjomelin, M., Darley, J.M. (1999). Stereotype threat effects on black and white athletic performance. Journal of Personality and Psychology, 77(6), 1213-1227. [Paper]
12. Rosenthal, R. & Jacobson, L. (1966). Teachers’ expectancies: Determinants of pupils’ IQ gains. Psychological Reports, 19, 115-118. [Paper]