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The Attention Paradox: When Eye Contact Makes Thinking Harder
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
December 14, 2025

The Attention Paradox: When Eye Contact Makes Thinking Harder

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Let’s start with a seemingly straightforward logical chain:

  • To learn in school, students need to pay attention.
  • But: how do teachers know IF they’re paying attention?
  • Well: most of the time, most people are paying attention to the person or object they’re looking at.
  • So, teachers should explicitly direct students’ gaze.
  • If students are looking at the teacher–or the book, or another student who’s answering a question–they’re probably paying attention. If they’re paying attention, they’re likelier to learn.

This simple summary requires a few caveats.

First: different cultures have different norms around eye contact.

Second: some people find eye contact intensely more difficult than others do. Students on the spectrum–for example–can find eyeball-to-eyeball focus overwhelming.

In both these cases, we can and should make reasonable exceptions to any “you have to look at me right now” policy.

At the same time, many (many!) pedagogical approaches require students to look at a person, passage, slide, or screen. For what it’s worth, I myself think that’s an entirely reasonable expectation (with the caveats noted above).

But, WAIT JUST A MINUTE. What if eye contact interferes with thinking?

Intriguing Data

A study done in Japan back in 2016 raises this alarming possibility.

Researchers gave adults a kind of verbal completion task. Each participant heard a long list of nouns: for instance, “milk.” After each one, they had to respond with an appropriate verb: say, “drink.”

In some cases, the noun/verb pair is so simple as to require little thought. The “milk/drink” duo is a low-challenge task. In other cases, the mental load went up. Some nouns imply many possible verbs. The noun “soup” invites either “make” or “eat” or “drink.”

Even more challenging, participants sometimes chose obscure verbs. When hearing the noun “list,” most people responded with the verb “make.” Others offered the verb “be on”: a choice that’s plausible but rare–and implies greater cognitive work.

Crucially, the researchers measured how long the participants took to generate those verbs. They assumed–reasonably–that slower verb generation implied heavier cognitive lifting.

Where does the eye contact come in? An excellent question.

While the participants did this noun/verb work, they watched videos of faces. In fact, they were specifically instructed to look at the faces in those videos.

  • Half of the time, those faces were looking directly at the camera; in other words, making direct eye contact with the viewer.
  • And half of the time, those faces were looking off to the side.

So here’s the question: did the eye-contact video have an effect on the cognitive work required to generate verbs?

Results and Implications

Sometimes, yes.

That is: the participants needed extra time to generate verbs if

a) they came up with the most challenging verbs,

AND

b) they made eye contact with the camera-facing faces.

In brief: if thinking is already challenging, adding eye contact makes thinking even MORE difficult.

I have found this study fascinating, and it’s made me reconsider my own expectations for classroom eye contact. I do typically expect my students to look at me (or the board or the book or the classmate), and I do occasionally cue them to do so.

This study makes me open to a few potential exceptions.

  • If I have asked students a difficult question, the additional demand for eye contact might complicate their thought processes.
  • If a student is developing a particularly sophisticated answer or question, s/he might need some cognitive headroom…and therefore the freedom to look away.

Eye contact helps students focus outward; looking away seems to help them focus inward. Both have their place in learning.

As Always, Caveats

I should be clear about the limitations of my argument.

First: this eye-contact study doesn’t make any claims at all about classroom teaching. I’m extrapolating, combining this study with my own experience.

Second: each classroom and school will have its own dynamics. The culture and pedagogy of your school, and the age and neuro-profile of your students will shape your application of this broad principle.

Third: because norms around eye-contact vary among cultures, I should emphasize that the original research was done in Japan. (As far as I can tell, this study hasn’t been replicated.) In fact, about 1/5th of the participants in the study dropped out because they couldn’t maintain base-level eye contact. Application of this research finding to other cultural contexts requires close awareness to this cultural framework.

With those cautions noted, I myself arrive at this pair of conclusions:

  • In most cases, teachers can and should focus students’ attention by deliberately focusing their gaze.
  • When students need to THINK HARD, they may need to break eye contact to gather their thoughts more effectively.

A bit poetically, I might put it this way: when they’re thinking deeply, I can let my students stop focusing outward so that they can focus intensely inward. Deeper thought, it seems, benefits from such inward gaze.

Kajimura, S., & Nomura, M. (2016). When we cannot speak: Eye contact disrupts resources available to cognitive control processes during verb generation. Cognition, 157, 352-357.

Two Signs You’ve Overloaded Working Memory (While It’s Still Happening)
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
December 08, 2025

Two Signs You’ve Overloaded Working Memory (While It’s Still Happening)

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We know that working memory overload brings learning to a halt. For that reason, teachers do almost everything we can to teach students within their working memory limits.

We might ask ourselves pointed questions to anticipate WM overload before it happens: e.g., “does my lesson plan include too many instructions?”

An equally vital task: we want to recognize WM overload while it happens. If I can see that my lesson plan has exceeded WM max, then I can make helpful changes on the fly. In today’s blog post, I’ve got two quick ways to do just that.

The Big Tell

Picture this scene. My English class begins with a scripted definition:

“Everyone, please write down the definition of the word gerund. The definition has three parts:

A gerund started life as a verb, is now being used as a noun, and ends in -ing.”

Immediately Rory’s hand goes up: “I’m so sorry Mr. Watson, I spaced out for a moment. Can you please repeat that?”

I do.

Charlotte waves at me: “Wait, started life as a verb, or a noun?”

Me: “Started life as a verb, is now being used as a noun.”

Caleb jumps in: “What are the exceptions to the ‘-ing’ part?”

No exceptions. Not a single one.

Helen has something to say: “I’m still confused. It’s a verb that ends in -ing? Don’t all verbs end in -ing?”

By this time, I should be getting the working-memory message. In essence, these students are all asking the same question: “I didn’t understand what you just said. Could you repeat it?”

Here’s my observation: when my students ask me the same question several times in a row, I have almost certainly overloaded their working memory. Now that I recognize WM overload while it’s happening, I can make a mid-course correction.

The Big Tell, Take II

Let’s replay that scene, but this time take note of my own thoughts and feelings as I go.

When I first present my definition, I’m feeling confident. This simple definition–it has only three parts!–captures the gerund’s key elements in a lively way. This section of class is off to an excellent start.

When Rory asks me to repeat the definition, I’m surprised…but not surprised. High school sophomores aren’t famous for their attention span, especially during a grammar class. In any case, repeating the definition will probably help others in the class.

Charlotte’s question knocks me off my stride. I just answered her question. In fact, I answered it twice in a row. What’s going on here?

Exceptions, Caleb? Who said anything about exceptions? If there were exceptions, I would have made that point in the definition. By now I’m straight-up frustrated. I offered such a simple definition, and class has already devolved into a muddle.

By the time Helen opines that “all verbs end in -ing,” I can’t remember: why did I go into teaching?

Notice the working memory dynamics in this short exchange.

  • First: I designed this section of the lesson plan badly and created cognitive overload.
  • Second: my students reacted–reasonably enough–by trying to fix my mistake. They knew that they needed to understand this definition, and so they kept asking questions to clarify the concept.
  • Third: their repeated questions vexed me. Although those questions were a predictable response to working memory overload, I got frustrated with them for peppering me with foolishness.

In other words: my own emotional response is a second clue that working memory overload is happening right in front of me, right now. If I miss the first tell–their repeated questions–I might register the second tell–my own growing irritation. Whichever clue I spot, I can use that feedback to guide a mid-lesson course correction.

Problem Recognized; Problem Solved

Once I learn to recognize these two signs–students’ repeated questions, my own growing frustration–I can switch to solution mode.

In this case, I should (at a minimum) write the definition on the board. (Why didn’t I think to do that in the first place?) If my students can read the definition, they don’t have to hold all the words while they’re writing each one down.

Even better—as Adam Boxer has explained in his excellent book—I might reverse my order of operations. In this lesson plan, I started with an abstract definition, and then planned to give concrete examples. Result: I overloaded working memory with abstract concepts even before I got to the specifics.

As Boxer explains, I should instead start with the specific examples and then graduate to the abstract definition. This direction of travel reduces WM load.

Of course, other teaching missteps require alternative solutions. For instance, I might rely on dual coding to redistribute WM load.

Whatever the solution, my ability to spot a working memory problem in the moment means I’m likelier to solve that problem…and my students will learn more.

The Biology of Cooking; the Neuroscience of Education
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
November 30, 2025

The Biology of Cooking; the Neuroscience of Education

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Today’s post starts as a fun biology lesson; it turns out that a scientific understanding of digestion gives us unexpected guidance about cooking. And–here’s the kicker–that same lesson applies to neuroscience and teaching. Let me explain.

The Science of Cooking

I recently read an article that outlines the three core concepts in digestion: a) pushing, b) acid, and c) base. Yes, it’s that simple. At its core, “digestion” is the process of pushing food from a highly acidic environment to a highly basic environment.

More specifically, digestion starts when peristalsis (that’s a fancy word for “pushing”) moves food down into the stomach. There, hydrochloric acid breaks down proteins and kills off harmful bacteria. We’re talking a pH of 1.5-3.5 here. Next, peristalsis continues pushing food into the highly basic environment of the small intestine. The addition of bicarbonate from the pancreas shifts the pH to somewhere in the 7-8.5 range. This simple, 3-part process–“pushing from acid to base”–frees the key nutrients from our food and ultimately allows us to thrive.

Now, the magic begins. Chefs who understand the biology of digestion can mirror these essential steps in their cooking.

Expert chefs recognize that cooking–like digestion–should be a pushing/kneading process. To mirror the hydrochloric acid of the stomach, that process should begin in a highly acidic environment . After the food has been kneaded in acidic lemon juice or vinegar, it should then be switched to a highly basic preparation medium: perhaps baking soda or lye.

This food preparation process–which recreates core biological processes of digestion–offers flexible and scientifically-informed guidance for all chefs: from novice to Michelin-starred.

There’s your cooking lesson for today. To prepare food like an expert, “push food from acid to base.”

One More Thing

Here’s an essential additional point. The description of digestion above is accurate enough for this blog post; the cooking advice below it is entirely nonsense. Seriously: just imagine a chicken breast drenched in vinegar and then soaked in lye. Bon appetit?

Chefs don’t prepare good food by recreating the internal process of digestion. They do so by choosing the right ingredients and preparing them in appropriate ways. We get no benefit whatsoever from recreating the internal biological/digestive process externally. Honestly, the result would be gross (at best) and fatal (at worst).

I promised above that “the same lesson applies to neuroscience and teaching.”

Consider this argument:

“When students learn math, they process information in the visual cortex, then the angular gyrus, and finally in the caudate nucleus. Our math instruction should mirror this neural chain. Start by teaching a new concept visually; then switch to factual processing; and conclude with automatic processing. Doing so reenacts the very neural processes that result in conceptual understanding!”

Even if it were true that “the brain” processes information entirely sequentially–and it’s almost certainly not true–the logic of this argument doesn’t hold. Reenacting internal brain processes outside the brain offers no benefits for the same reason that kneading mashed potatoes in pancreatic enzymes isn’t good cooking advice.

Applying Biology to Life

Applying the biology of digestion to create cooking advice requires complex, subtle, and nuanced translation. For instance: it’s good to put butter on carrots because those fats help us digest vitamin A. This guidance doesn’t recreate the internal biological process in the cooking process; it informs the cooking process with an understanding of digestion.

Applying the neurobiology of cognition to create teaching advice requires complex, subtle, and nuanced translation. For instance: it’s (probably) true that dopamine helps regulate students’ motivation levels. But telling teachers to “raise students’ dopamine levels!” overlooks the boggling complexity of motivation, of dopamine, and of students.

To take two simple examples:

  • too much dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway–which connects the ventral tegmental area to the nucleus accumbens–is associated with the hallucinations of schizophrenia.
  • one easy way to increase dopamine levels: cocaine.

In brief: if someone offers you authoritative teaching advice because “the brain does this when students do that,” respond by asking hard questions. For starters, ask “do we have any psychology research showing that this teaching advice has any benefits in a classroom?”

Research can and should inform our teaching practice. And: our own professional experience gives us standing to evaluate the advice we get. If digestion-based cooking advice sounds gross, wise chefs ignore it. If neuroscience-based teaching advice sounds improbable, wise teachers ask thoughtful questions.

The goal isn’t to ignore neuroscience—it’s to demand that “brain-based” advice meet the same research standards we’d apply to any other teaching recommendation. In brief: know the biology, question the advice.

Telling Students to Sleep More Doesn’t Work. This Might.
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
November 23, 2025

Telling Students to Sleep More Doesn’t Work. This Might.

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Imagine that I offer you a medication with these proven benefits. It

  • enhances memory, concentration, and creativity
  • reduces blood pressure and strengthens the immune system
  • boosts athletic performance and muscle recovery
  • reduces stress, anxiety, and depression
  • fosters emotional self-regulation
  • might even lower hormone-based cancer risk

This medication is free. When used as directed, it has no harmful side effects. The only catch? You need an 8 or 9 hour dose to get the full benefit.

Given all its obvious benefits, sleep feels like free money, or a puppy you don’t have to train or walk–it’s altogether too perfect. And yet, students walk past the cash and the romping fluffball on their way to all-nighters and the zombie haze of morning.

What can we do to persuade folks to hit the sheets?

Beyond the Nike Approach

If this blog were a sneaker ad, I could say “just DO it. Stop all the excuses and get sleeping.”

In my experience as a high-school teacher, the more common approach is to explain all sleep’s benefits. “You will learn more!” we teachers cry. “You’ll be better at sports! You’ll have less acne!” (Believe it or not, there’s an indirect connection between sleep and acne, via cortisol levels.)

Since high schools first began, teachers have hoped that telling our students about sleep’s benefits will inspire them to hit the hay. That list at the beginning of this blog post should be a winner. Alas, since high schools first began, these exhortations almost never work. Adolescents being adolescent, mere information about sleep’s chocolatey goodness doesn’t actually change their behavior.

What’s a caring adult to do?

One strategy to help people accomplish difficult goals has gotten attention from researchers in recent years.

Students go through some variation of this process:

  • Step 1: Anticipate the problems that might make it hard for me to achieve my goal.
  • Step 2: Brainstorm the best solution for each problem.
  • Step 3: Make a commitment: “I pledge that, when I encounter problem X, then I will enact solution Z.”

Because of this structure, we might call such commitments “when-then pledges.” Essentially, all this pre-planning reduces mental friction. When I run into a predictable problem, I don’t even need to think about what to do next. I’ve already pledged to undertake a particular solution–and I do so. (If you’re curious to read more about research into “when-then pledges,” you can check out this blog post.)

A research team recently asked this question: could we use when-then pledges to help college students get more sleep?

Yes (but Not Exactly)

Researchers Barley and Scullin ran the sort of study we like here on this blog: enough participants to be meaningful, an active control group, sensible data collection, modest claims, and so forth.

Young man sleeping on sofa infront of book while studying for examination at home

The simple version: one group of premed college students reviewed an online sleep-education program. A second group did that same program, combined with a modified “when-then pledge” process. (“When it gets to be 11:00 pm, then I will turn my phone off and go to bed.”)

The results give us initial reason to hope. Students in the when-then pledge group went to sleep a little earlier (about 20 minutes), and got a little more sleep (about 15 minutes). And–here’s the part that gets my attention–these changes lasted. Even eight months later, students reported that they got to bed earlier.

At our most optimistic, we can say that Barley and Scullin have found a way to change students’ sleep behavior patterns–and that these changes endure.

At the same time, we do have to acknowledge the limits of these findings.

Limit #1: the researchers kept track of only sleep and grades — not all those other variables that might interest us. We don’t know if the students in the when-then-pledge group experienced less anxiety or had fewer colds than students in the control group.

Limit #2: I said just now that the researchers kept track of the students’ grades. Turns out: the GPA of the night-owls in the pledge group went DOWN slightly during the first term: averaging a 3.4 rather than a 3.6. That dip isn’t much, but if I’m in a premed program, every decimal place counts. (BTW: GPA remained unchanged for the morning types in the pledge group.)

It’s important to note that the GPA went back UP again in the second term–so the slight detriment didn’t last. But I for one was hoping for–even expecting–a benefit. The absence of harm is good news, but not home-run news.

Plausible Hypotheses

Here’s the optimist’s case to be enthusiastic about this study. Barley and Scullin have found initial evidence that we can influence students’ sleep behavior with when-then pledges. Once we work out all the kinks in the process, and start it much earlier in students’ academic careers, we should see all the benefits that other sleep researchers have found: grades and physical health and mental health. (And, heck: less acne.)

This research doesn’t guarantee that those benefits will come. But it does make that hypothesis plausible…and this hope will help me sleep better.

Two quick postscripts:

  1. I’ve written about Dr. Michael Scullin’s research several times on the blog. You can check out other posts here, here, and here.
  2. I’ve used the phrase “when-then pledge” in this blog post. I should admit that I made that phrase up. The technical psychology term is “implementation intentions.” I confess: I think that–in a discipline famous for its vague and awkward terminology–“implementation intentions” is even more vague and awkward than usual. “When-then pledge” has the benefit of saying bluntly what it means. Perhaps it will catch on.

Barley, B. K., & Scullin, M. K. (2025). Reinforcing sleep education with behavioral change strategies: intervention effects on sleep timing, sleep duration, and academic performance. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, jcsm-11780.

10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World by Jean Twenge
Erik Jahner, PhD
Erik Jahner, PhD
November 19, 2025

10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World by Jean Twenge

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It’s in my face everywhere people look biologically tethered to their devices; what is this? Jean Twenge’s 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World reflects a new reality. I thought I already knew the script: too many faces and minds sucked into devices and external attention switched off—initiating every conversation is effortful. But Twenge adds some nuance and trend analysis to our understanding. She notices what childhood has become, and she invites you to notice and nudge the culture with her.

One of the early stories—about an eleven-year-old who finally gets her first smartphone and then slowly drifts away from the things she once loved— quietly resonated. Not dramatic, not catastrophic, just… gradual. A dimming. And as I read it, It reminded me of the way the world has changed. Twenge bolsters her stories with graph after graph—visual after visual—demonstrating how abruptly the world of adolescence actually shifted around 2012, right when smartphones stopped being accessories and became appendages. The curves she presents—teen depression, anxiety, loneliness—don’t drift upward; they bend, sharply. And seeing those visuals laid out so plainly made the pattern far more tangible than any intuition ever could.

Coming off those stark visuals, the shift into her practical advice felt almost like an exhale—a gentle recalibration rather than a reprimand for parents and society. And her advice is simple yet powerful.  No devices in bedrooms because sleep is the body’s emotional scaffolding. Delay social media because younger teens don’t yet have the neural wiring to metabolize the comparison loops and social pressure. Give a basic phone first because independence should grow before exposure accelerates. She weaves these ideas together with small scripts—what to say when your child claims everyone else is on Instagram, how to hold your ground when a group chat becomes a lifeline. These tiny, practical details reminded me that she’s observing real families, not theorizing as an armchair academic.

And then there’s that underlying mantra “half the rules half the time” helps. I kept returning to that. It’s such a simple release valve for the guilt so many parents carry. It’s not success or failure its nudging.

I also found myself reflecting on her call to restore real-world freedom. Kids used to roam, wander, play, risk, return. The basics of building connections and a sense of bravery. Now their freedom is often digital, not lived. Twenge threads together evidence that as in-person time has declined, anxiety has crept upward—not because kids are more fragile, but because they’re less practiced at handling the world without a screen smoothing the edges. That idea stuck with me. It’s not about a battle against our children it’s a quiet warm invitation to let them grow.

The school stories may be the hardest to read, mostly because they feel so familiar (even in college classrooms and office hours). Teachers spending entire periods policing phones; students scrolling in their laps; kids filming classmates without consent; lunchrooms falling silent as everyone looks down. Twenge pairs these scenes with international data showing that countries with the highest in-school device use have seen steep drops in PISA scores. It’s startling. But again, the solution she offers isn’t nostalgic—it’s grounded. Phone-free school days don’t restrict kids; they return them to the room.

What I felt most throughout the book is Twenge’s tone. Steady. Humane. She never positions herself above parents. She doesn’t shame or scold. She knows exactly how hard this feels—how bizarrely countercultural it is to tell your child they need to wait when everyone else seems to be sprinting ahead. She writes like someone who has sat with hundreds of these conversations, someone who understands how vulnerable it can feel to be a parent in this moment.

By the end, it became clear the book isn’t truly about screens. It’s about reclaiming the small, essential moments that make a childhood healthy and whole—sleep, face-to-face friendship, imagination, boredom, presence—the lost basics. Twenge doesn’t ask for perfection. She asks for intention—even if it only shows up about half the time.

And reading it, I felt a kind of sturdy hope. Not that technology will suddenly soften its grip, but that we’re not powerless in the face of it. You can change one habit. One routine. One boundary. And the path forward, surprisingly, is not radical. It’s simple, human, steady. In fact, perhaps this disruption from technology can help remind us about what is valuable and taken for granted.

Maybe that’s the quiet power of this book: it doesn’t lecture. It lights the way. And then it trusts you to take the next step.

Making the Dull Stuff Relevant to Students
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
November 16, 2025

Making the Dull Stuff Relevant to Students

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I’ll be honest: my sophomore English curriculum doesn’t always inspire my students. I myself find Gerard Manley Hopkins fascinating…but only a rare 15 year-old thinks “Spring and Fall” is the most awesome poem ever. Perhaps I’m not the only teacher who faces this problem.

One obvious solution: make the curriculum relevant–more immediately connected to my students’ lives and interests.

  • For my poetry curriculum, I could teach the lyrics to current popular music.
  • For my grammar curriculum, I could write practice sentences about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. (Find the direct object and indirect objects in this sentence: “Taylor gave Travis four leftover grammys.”)

If I can make my curriculum emotionally interesting, then perhaps academic interest will follow.

This call for relevance often appears in educational debates. When we research this question, what do we find?

Lightning Strikes

One of the best known studies on this topic considers the potential benefits of enhancing relevance.

Let’s take the topic of lightning formation.

I could ramp up my students’ emotional interest in this topic by adding ideas that pique their curiosity:

  • Lightning strikes don’t harm airplanes–so counter-intuitive!
  • Lightning can melt sand into cool little sculptures, called “fulgurites”

I could instead focus on their cognitive interest by highlighting key steps in process:

  • Violent up- and down-drafts in cumulonimbus clouds move charged water droplets.
  • Positively charged ions move to the top of a cloud, while negatively charged ions move to the bottom.
  • This charge imbalance, in turn, changes the electrical field on the ground below the cloud…

Researchers Harp and Mayer wanted to know if students benefit when we add emotional interest (“relevance” ) to cognitive interest–the traditional focus of classroom education.

In their study, they had four groups of students read passages about lightning formation.

  1. Group one read the “cognitive interest only” description, which clearly delineated the steps that lead to lightning strikes. Each step was illustrated by a simple diagram.
  2. A second group read that description supplemented with “emotionally interesting” sentences: a lightning strike one created a hole in a football player’s helmet and knocked off his shoes!
  3. A third group read the “cognitive only” description with extra “emotionally interesting” photographs: e.g., lighting passing through an airplane.
  4. The final group got all three: the base cognitive description PLUS emotional sentences PLUS emotional photos.

To see which blend helped students the most, Harp and Mayer asked them to recall information and to explain it.

  • The “recall” question couldn’t have been simpler: “please write down everything you can remember from the passage.”
  • The “explain” questions sounded like this:
    • “Suppose you see clouds in the sky, but no lightning. Why not?”
    • “What does air temperature have to do with lightening?”

By crunching lots of numbers, these researchers could find out how much the added emotional interest sentences and photos increased memory and understanding.

Beyond Helmets and Airplanes

Harp and Mayer hoped that the additions–shocking stories and vibrant photos–would ramp up the students’ emotional interest. Sure enough, the participants in their second study rated those versions twice as “emotionally interesting” as “cognitively interesting.” For the base version, which simply outlines the process of lightning formation, those numbers were reversed.

A fulgurite created by lightning striking sand .

Having successfully raised emotional interest, how much more learning did Harp and Mayer produce?

Well: they reduced learning. For the “recall” and “explanation” tests, the emotionally interesting additions lowered students’ scores. In fact, adding both piquant sentences and vivid photos reduced understanding more than adding one or the other. (Check out the graphs on p. 98.)

In brief: students learned less from the passages they found more interesting.

The Bigger Pictures

When I write these blog posts, I typically look for the most recent quality study I can find. Today, I decided to focus on a classic: this study was published back in 1997.

I do want to emphasize that subsequent reseach has supported these initial conclusions. As I wrote earlier on the blog, a recent meta-analysis supports these basic findings. Yes, it does seems obvious that we should make our classes relevant and intriguing. Alas, we find that this common-sense strategy interferes with learning. Our students get wrapped up in all those vivid details–imagine lightning drilling a hole in a football helmet!–and lose track of the content we want them to learn.

Our goal should not therefore be to make our lessons boring. Instead, we should make them clear.

I also want to make a second cautious point. Common sense suggests that we should ask our students what helps them learn. Who knows more about students’ learning than students?

Sadly–over and over again–we find that students’ intution just doesn’t lead them in the right direction. Given the choice, students

  • prefer review to retrieval practice
  • prefer studying a topic all at once to spreading practice out
  • prefer highlighting to almost anything else.

I’m told they prefer cookie dough to asparagus.

In order to fulfill our teacherly responsibilities most wisely, we have to look past these preferences to the teaching strategies that truly help students learn. I myself often stop to explain why I am choosing the less-popular approach. (My students have been known to be vexed with me for showing them research studies.) But I do stick to those research-supported strategies even if my students don’t love them.

Despite the common-sense appeal of “making lessons relevant,” despite our students preference for “emotionally interesting” lessons, we should keep our focus on the core goal. To help our students learn, we should prioritize clarity over entertainment, focusing on the core concepts rather than flashy digressions.

So what about Gerard Manley Hopkins? I’m not going to make my poetry unit ‘relevant’ by replacing Hopkins with Olivia Rodrigo lyrics. Instead, I’ll focus on making Hopkins’ difficult language clearer—breaking down the syntax, explaining archaic terms, and helping students see the poem’s structure. This research suggests that clarity, not entertainment, leads to genuine understanding.

Harp, S. F., & Mayer, R. E. (1997). The role of interest in learning from scientific text and illustrations: On the distinction between emotional interest and cognitive interest. Journal of educational psychology, 89(1), 92.

Do Number Talks Help? What Does “Research-Based” Mean?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
November 09, 2025

Do Number Talks Help? What Does “Research-Based” Mean?

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Let’s say I go out to lunch with two friends. The total bill–including tip–is $87 dollars. To keep things simple, we decide to divide the bill evenly.

I say, “well, I guess this is about my share” and put $50 on the table.

If one of my two friends is a math teacher, she’s likely to say that I don’t have good number sense. That is: I don’t have a quick, intuitive sense of magnitude; a gut-level sense of mathematical operations. After all, $87/3 is less than $30, not $50. I should be able to get that math sorted without breaking out a calculator.

For over a decade now, some math scholars have promoted number talks as a research-based strategy to help students develop number sense. In a number talk, students solve math problems in their heads. They then discuss the various strategies that they used to arrive at an answer. A skilled teacher should ask probing questions and explore different avenues–being sure that students who arrived at the wrong answer know where they went astray.

Longtime readers know that I hold two strong–often competing–opinions.

  • Teachers should be open to the idea that research can strengthen our practice and benefit our students.
  • Scholars shouldn’t boss teachers around until they have lots of good research to support their claims.

In this case:

  • If research shows that number talks improve number sense (or provide other benefits), then math teachers should use them!
  • If we don’t have several well-designed studies reaching that conclusion, then we shouldn’t speak the magic words: “research based.”

So: what happens when we look for research in on this topic?

A Potential Winner

When I started searching for research into this topic, one study came up most often: “Number Talks Benefit Fifth Graders’ Numeracy.” (Link)

In this study, published in 2020, a 5th grade teacher followed a number-talks protocol with 11 students twice a week for six weeks. A second class of 11 students served as the control group; their math class continued as usual without math talks.

The teacher, Pamela May, measured three variables: the students’ speed, their flexibility, and their accuracy with mental math. When she compared their results before and after the six-week period, sure enough, she found a statistically significant improvement in their speed. (Students did not get measurably more accurate; they got more flexible on one measurement, but not on another.)

Before I explore my concerns with this study and its conclusion, I do want to emphasize a key point: we all benefit when teachers undertake research in their classrooms. Although I’m about to argue that this study doesn’t support the use of number talks, I don’t want that argument to imply that May did something wrong, or shouldn’t be doing research. Quite the contrary: May did a lot of hard work, published her results, and let us learn from those results. These contributions merit our respect and honor.

At the same time, I do have concerns with this study and its conclusions. I’ll start with the small stuff, and then step up to my more substantial concerns.

The Small Stuff

First: this study includes twenty-two students. Typically, a study of this size encourages researchers to do another, much larger study. It does not allow us to draw any meaningful conclusions. After all: only eleven students undertook those number talks. No one should change their teaching based on eleven students.

Second: May compared students who did something special with students who did the normal thing. We call this a “business as usual” control group, and they rarely fill researchers with enthusiasm. Instead, a business-as-usual control group usually encourages researchers to develop a study where both groups do something special. That study–if replicated several times–might start to sound persuasive.

Third: Whenever possible, we want the people enacting the experiment to know as little as possible about the experiment’s hypothesis. If they know the goal of the study, that knowledge might subtly influence them to teach one group slightly more effectively than the other. In this case, of course, May did all the work–and so she knows her own hypothesis!

As I wrote above, May did lots of hard work to publish this study, and none of these concerns means that she “did something wrong.” In the absence of larger replications–with more rigorous procedures–they do mean that we shouldn’t change our teaching because of this one study.

Beyond Procedure

These merely procedural concerns introduce more substantive hesitations.

In this study, eleven students practiced doing mental math. Result: they got faster at doing mental math, compared to other students who didn’t practice. This conclusion is entirely unsurprising—practice effects alone would predict faster performance. Honestly, I’d be more surprised if they didn’t get faster.

Note, too, that the students got faster, but they didn’t get more accurate.

The results about flexibility require more parsing. In theory, number talks encourage students to understand and use more math strategies. In this study, students knew more strategies, but they didn’t use more strategies unprompted. As May herself writes:

“Students in fifth grade had solidified their preferences in mental calculation strategies. They did not appear to spend time evaluating various possible strategies before trying to solve the problem.”

This statement undermines one key argument in favor of number talks.

To introduce the final substantive concern, let’s consider this hypothetical claim:

My business got more profitable. You know that’s true because I hired more employees!

In response to this claim, you might reasonably say:

Hiring more employees might suggest greater profits–but I’ll need many more data points. What were their salaries? What were your revenues and expenses? How’s your tax situation shaping up?

In other words: “number of employees” might tell us something about “profit,” but not the whole story.

This study is used to support the idea that number talks increase number sense, but the study itself doesn’t directly measure number sense. It reports an increased speed in solving mental math problems (like the “number of employees” in my analogy), but doesn’t give data about all the other elements of number sense (“salaries, net revenue, expenses” in my analogy). This study doesn’t support a hypothesis about number sense, because it doesn’t include the right information to make such a claim.

In brief: my concerns about this study aren’t merely procedural. Given this limited set of findings, I just don’t think this study should change a math teacher’s practice.

Zooming Back the Camera

If this one study doesn’t support the claim that number talks benefit students, what about other research?

We just don’t have much, at least not that I could find. A 2020 review famously describes number talks as a black hole of research. Another study that gets some enthusiastic attention doesn’t include a traditional control group–so we can’t know how much effect number talks have compared to something else.

In sum:

  • If “research-based” means “the theory behind this idea has some research associated with it,” then we can loosely describe number talks as research-based.
  • If “research-based” means “someone tested this specific idea with students, and it helped!” I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that claim being true.

Number talks might work wonderfully. But right now, we need research more before we believe that claim to have merit.

May, P. L. (2020). Number Talks Benefit Fifth Graders’ Numeracy. International Journal of Instruction, 13(4), 361-374.

Can Stress BENEFIT Teens? A Surprising New Approach
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
November 02, 2025

Can Stress BENEFIT Teens? A Surprising New Approach

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“Stress” has a branding problem: EVERYONE hates it. Other than snake venom and nuclear waste, few experiences are labeled “toxic” more often than stress.

And yet, we have good reason to pause and reconsider this perspective. Let me propose a few hypotheticals:

  • What if stressors are a perfectly normal part of life and development?
  • What if it’s not stressors, but our response to potentially stressful events, that causes harm?
  • What if–properly considered–stressful events and circumstances could benefit us?

The evolutionary logic goes like this.

A zebra sees a lion. That’s a stressful moment, for sure. The zebra needs all its physiological resources to escape. It needs–say–lots of oxygen, dilated pupils, extra glucose in the brain, and so forth. So zebras have evolved to have all those bodily reactions.

Now, the experience of those physical changes might not be pleasant. If you’ve ever felt your heart pounding or your palms sweating, you know that you’d rather not feel that way very long.

But–here’s the key point–all these stress responses are signs that our bodies have rapidly adjusted to help us meet important challenges.

Let’s switch from predation to the everyday life of a teen. Although they rarely face lions, adolescents certainly face many age-appropriate challenges.

  • They have to negotiate new, individuated identities outside of their family structure. (We don’t want 30 year-olds living in parents’ basements.)
  • And they have to learn the challenging material that schools teach.

In brief, we want teens to face the age-appropriate challenges of individuation and school effectively. And, all those unpleasant physiological symptoms can help them do so. For instance, a teen will probably do better on an exam if their heart is pumping extra glucose to their brain.

So let’s ask two big questions:

First: is this logical chain true?

Second: if yes, how can we help teens think differently about stress?

Let’s explore.

A Powerful Partnership

Because we’re asking BIG questions about an ESSENTIAL topic, we’d like to know that the research-informed answers we get have some heft behind them. Well: good news. The study I’m about to summarize includes six experiments with more than 4000 participants. (Not a typo.) I occasionally see meta-analyses including that many people, but almost no actual studies.

Equally compelling, this study is published in the journal Nature. When it comes to scientific research, they’re as rigorous and respected as it gets.

In this study, a research team (including Dr. David Yeager and Dr. Jeremy Jamieson) explored several hypotheses. The core question:

If we change the way students think about stress, does their new thought process have a beneficial effect?

To explore this question, the researchers invited students to complete a 30 minute online exercise. These students read passages, and did some thinking and writing about how those ideas applied to their own lives and experiences. Crucially, these passages combined two psychological approaches:

  1. They provided information–like that outlined above–explaining the physiological benefits of our stress responses. And
  2. They helped students think about the fact that their abilities can change. If we work hard at something–for instance, during a stressful experience–that hard mental work will make us better.

If point #2 sounds a lot like “growth mindset”…well…it is EXACTLY growth mindset. Yeager studied with Dr. Carol Dweck; they have worked together for years.

So, here’s the big question: when students complete this online exercise–combining a new perspective on stress with a growth mindset–what effect does it have?

What Changed? Everything.

If you run 6 experiments with 4000 people, you’re going to get A LOT of data. I’ll spare you a laundry list of the findings; if you want the full rundown, check out the study here. But the headlines all tell the same story: the combo strategy worked.

That is, students who completed the online exercise:

  • Said that they found stressful events less threatening
  • Showed healthier measures of physiological data (e.g.: cardiovascular measurements, cortisol levels)
  • Reported lower stress levels during the day
  • Had higher levels of academic success (more precisely: lower levels of academic failure)
  • Coped better with COVID stress

I think you’ll agree, that’s an impressive–even comprehensive–list of results! By the way, these researchers found that the combination mattered. They didn’t get the results that they wanted by doing one or the other; students benefitted from both new perspectives.

What should teachers do with this information?

First, I’ve found a link where you can request access to the intervention itself. I’m not 100% sure it’s still publicly available–I’ve sent an email to ask. But if you’d like to learn more, that website is a great place to start.

Second, I think these findings encourage high-school teachers to build both these lessons into our own teaching practices.

  • The more that students believe that the right kind of hard work can change their abilities;
  • The more that they understand that the unpleasant physiology of stress response in fact helps them succeed in difficult circumstances;
  • The likelier they are to get that lengthy list of benefits above.

I’ve written before that I think it’s easy to get mindset wrong in the classroom. Most of us have been encouraged to teach students about mindset, and then to put up posters. I suspect that approach has no effect whatsoever. Instead, we need to change our policies and procedures to align with a growth mindset. The best way to teach a growth mindset isn’t posters; instead, it’s embodying the principle in the way we teach and work with students.

Third, we shoud be aware of two caveats.

  • The authors emphasize that they’ve researched this approach with high-school and college students only. We don’t know whether or not it will benefit other groups of learners.
  • While reappraisal can help for everyday stressors–an argument with a friend, a challenging assignment–more serious problems such as trauma should not be framed in this way. (For a further discussion of such complexities, read more here.)

In Sum

A groundbreaking study in Nature shows that:

  • A single 30-minute online intervention—teaching BOTH that abilities can grow AND that stress responses help us perform—helped teens in all the ways that researchers measured.
  • The combination of both mindsets matters: neither works as well alone.

High-school teachers can–and probably should–incorporate these ideas in our schools and classrooms.

Yeager, D. S., Bryan, C. J., Gross, J. J., Murray, J. S., Krettek Cobb, D., HF Santos, P., … & Jamieson, J. P. (2022). A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress. Nature, 607(7919), 512-520.

The Next Frontier: The Right Questions to Ask?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October 26, 2025

The Next Frontier: The Right Questions to Ask?

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I recently sat on a panel exploring the question “what’s next in our field?” Where should we be going as we try to apply cognitive science (broadly) to the field of education (broadly)? Perhaps it’s helpful to share some ideas we discussed…

But First…

Before we think about next steps, I wonder if we have a clear enough idea of the current state of “our field.” I myself am not always clear which topics are within our purview and which are not.

For example: I recently came across an article exploring the ASTONISHING cognitive benefits of improving air quality in schools. In this research pool, cleaner air led to higher test scores (as well, of course, as important health benefits).

  • On the one hand, this question connects research with academic and cognitive performance: it seems like an obvious part of “the field.”
  • On the other, the research here focuses on lung function, and requires lots of technical knowledge about HEPA filters and “parts per million.” None of my training in education, psychology, and neuroscience research prepares me to evaluate the relationship between mold spores and math performance.
  • On the other other hand: neuroscience is itself a highly specialized kind of biology. Why shouldn’t our field include other kinds of highly specialized biology — like, say, research into lung function and air quality?

So, my first concern is: I don’t know what’s next in our field because I’m not sure what our field currently IS.

A related problem follows on this first one: how do all these topics connect to each other? The topic of mindfulness clearly fits within the field. So does reading instruction for dyslexic students. But: how should I think about connecting those two topics? Where does generative drawing fit? Or cultural differences in the relationship between students and teachers? The best way to ask questions? Or, technology and AI? Given the enormous number of topics, how can we think about the almost infinite number of intersections and interactions?

My wise colleague Glenn Whitman recently gathered together several representations of different parts of “the field.” We could start with a comprehensive LIST put together by Evidence Based Education.

We could counsider Oliver Caviglioli’s revision of Dan Willingham’s “simple model of cognition”:

Here’s my own attempt to add affective processes (emotion and motivation) to a more cognitive model (attention and memory).

Or we could reframe these concepts with Stephen Chew’s model, that looks at difficulties at each stage in this process:

Or Efrat Furst’s representation of memory and schema formation:

But none of these models envisions human development. Or the role of the physical body in learning. Or differences among disciplines. Or technology…

Broadly speaking, before we start considering where we go, I’d like to have a better idea of where we are. And: how “we” all relate to each other.

But Wait: Another Thought…

The question “what’s next” implies that we’re nearly done with the tasks on our to-do list. It has a vibe: “We’ve got this project almost wrapped up–what should we move on to now?”

I myself think we are nowhere near being done with the work we’ve already got. As far as I can tell:

  • Relatively few teachers know much about working memory, or think about it as they plan;
  • Many (MANY) teachers still believe in various neuromyths/psychomyths;
  • We don’t often talk about the goal of education; so we have no common basis from which to think about the practice of teaching;
  • The precise way to use retrieval practice with 6th graders learning science in a Montessori program in Madrid is probably not the right way to use retrieval practice to help 12th graders with ADHD learn calculus at a military academy in Reykjavik.

If teachers at my school chose even one of those topics, we would need several months of work to make lasting progress and change — because we have LOTS of other stuff to do! I’m so busy helping my students understand the poetic debate between Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen (and grading all their analytical paragraphs) that I have very little bandwidth left to invest in new approaches.

I hope that we shift from thinking about this work as something that we do, cross off the list, and move on to the next thing. Instead, we need to steep in any one of these topics for…well…months at a minimum.

Here’s an example. I’ve done some work over the years with a school out in Western Massachusetts. Each year, they pick a PD topic and add it to a list of three. They then keep that topic under explicit discussion and practice for THREE YEARS. When they’ve had that much time to think it over, they cycle that one out and add a new one.

I don’t know if that precise schedule will work for everyone, I do think that time horizon will be much likelier to have an effect than a more typical approach: “we talked about AI last month, so THIS month we’ll be thinking about trauma…”

Okay, NOW we can talk about next frontiers.

Sorry, Hold Up for a Second…

Before we move on to the next topic, I think we should get better at persuading people to join our team.

Because you attend Learning and the Brain conferences, and you’re reading this blog, you probably already believe that a cognitive science + research approach to education makes lots of sense. But let’s be honest: many, MANY people do NOT share our belief.

Astronaut stands on cliff, gazing at desert horizon, dawn sky.

And: the teaching practices supported by cognitive science provoke genuine alarm–even revulsion–in other educational spheres. Direct instruction and retrieval practice and cold calling may make sense within a psychology-focused approach to instruction, but they often prompt real dismay among colleagues who do not share our starting point. (Heck: not every speaker at a Learning and the Brain conference would champion even these approaches.)

I honestly don’t know where or how to change people’s minds; that’s not my specialty at all.

I do worry, however, that the best known public venues for changing minds–say, social media platforms–mostly promote angry shouting and name calling. I myself don’t think that we can insult people enough to cause them to join our team. We need to welcome and befriend them; doing so probably requires lots of listening and curiosity. The more often I call someone a grifter, the less likely I am to persuade them to think the way I think.

If we can’t get people to join us where we are, I don’t know that thinking about the “next frontier” will provide us with much additional benefit.

Back to Where We Started

Although I sat on a panel about “next frontiers” in this field, I don’t really know much about those next frontiers. Instead, I think we should focus on:

  1. Defining and mapping the field as it currently stands,
  2. Shifting our timescale: meaningful change takes months and years, and
  3. Persuading others to join our work with welcoming curiosity.

I don’t doubt that others will have excellent new ideas. Me: I’m still pondering and processing the ideas we’ve already had…

Executive Functions: Setting the Record Straight
Guest Post
Guest Post
October 19, 2025

Executive Functions: Setting the Record Straight

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If you’ve been in education long enough, you’ve probably heard the term executive functions. Maybe you’ve seen it in IEPs, professional development sessions, or even on social media, where it’s often tossed around as shorthand for “kids’ lack of organization or self-control.”

The problem? Executive functions are far more complex than simply being organized or staying in control. They are also one of the most misunderstood and misused concepts in education.

Let’s establish some clarity on what executive functions really are.

What Executive Functions Really Are

Executive functions are not a buzzword, a diagnosis, or just another catch-all for learning and behavior problems. They are a set of cognitive processes that act as the mind’s control center, making goal-oriented behavior possible, such as finishing a task, following directions, managing materials, listening and paying attention, or adapting when plans change.

Executive functions can be divided into two sets: core and higher order.

The three core executive functions are:

  • Working Memory – the mental “scratchpad” where we hold and manipulate information in the moment.
    • Examples: remembering the steps of a math problem or keeping track of multi-step directions.
  • Inhibition – the ability to pause, resist impulses, and filter out distractions.
    • Examples: not blurting out an answer or staying focused despite a tempting distraction.
  • Cognitive Flexibility – the capacity to shift perspectives, adapt to change, or try new approaches.
    • Examples: adjusting when classroom routines suddenly change or trying a new strategy after a mistake.

These core processes make it possible for students to develop higher-order executive functions, which include:

  • Reasoning – making sense of information, identifying patterns, and drawing logical conclusions.
  • Planning – setting goals, mapping out the steps needed to achieve them, and monitoring progress along the way.
  • Problem-Solving – figuring out what to do when things don’t go as expected or when obstacles arise.

Together, these core and higher-order functions shape how students think, behave, and succeed in school.  If knowledge is the orchestra, executive functions are the conductor.

Executive functions develop gradually over time. The core functions emerge and strengthen from roughly ages 3 to 12, while the higher-order functions mature from about 13 to 18. These abilities continue refining and level off in early adulthood (around ages 19 to 25) as the brain’s prefrontal cortex fully matures. There is also evidence that executive function performance may decline in later adulthood.

Why Teachers Should Care

Executive functions are at the heart of what it means to “do school.” Paying attention, following directions, transitioning between activities, managing time, keeping track of materials, and interacting with peers and adults appropriately all draw on the successful coordination of executive functions.

These skills are sometimes called the hidden curriculum, the unspoken rules and routines of school life. Students who have compromised or underdeveloped executive functions may appear “lazy,” “defiant,” or as if they’re struggling to understand the material. In reality, their developing executive functions may be to blame.

When teachers understand this alternative explanation, they can not only recognize these patterns as potential signals but also use that knowledge to protect students’ developing executive functions by being intentional about how they create learning experiences.

A Quick Classroom Vignette

Picture this: you’ve just given directions for a simple math activity. Most students get started, but one child is staring at the board, clearly lost. Another is wandering the room looking for a pencil. A third is loudly asking, “Wait, what are we doing again?” Meanwhile, a ‘fast finisher’ has blown through the assignment but made every mistake possible.

It might be tempting to chalk their behavior up to inattention or lack of motivation. But what you’re possibly seeing are students at different points in their executive function development. One child’s working memory couldn’t hold the directions long enough. Another’s inhibition couldn’t resist the pull of distraction. A third lacked the cognitive flexibility to restart when things didn’t go smoothly.

The takeaway: these kids don’t necessarily lack interest or effort. They are students whose minds are still developing the control processes needed for goal-oriented behavior, and who benefit from structures, routines, and supports that make thinking easier to manage.

The Keys to Supporting Executive Functions

When it comes to supporting executive functions in the classroom, two guiding principles matter most:

1. Decrease Ambiguity.
Students can’t regulate themselves or direct their attention if they’re unsure what’s expected. Clear routines, explicit instructions, and modeled examples take the guesswork out of school. These practices free up valuable working memory that might otherwise be spent decoding unclear directions or figuring out the rules.

2. Increase Automaticity.
The more students can do certain routines and tasks automatically–such as unpacking, collaborating with peers, or setting up materials–the less mental energy those tasks require. Automaticity preserves cognitive bandwidth so students can devote their best thinking to the actual learning.

These two keys don’t require special programs or extra curriculum. They are about designing classrooms that lighten the mental load so executive functions can do their job: supporting learning.

What Teachers Can Do

The good news is that executive functions can be strengthened in every classroom regardless of grade, content area, tier, or related service. Research and practice point to three powerful teacher levers.

Most teachers are already implementing these strategies in some form, but having accurate information about executive functions provides the professional knowledge to be intentional about how we approach the following three areas:

Establish Targeted Routines – Consistent, predictable routines reduce ambiguity and free up mental space for learning, lessening the demand on cognitive flexibility.

Implement Strategic Instruction – Chunk directions, use visuals, and pace instruction volume thoughtfully to protect students’ working memory.

Design Supportive Environments – Minimize unnecessary visual and auditory distractions and provide accessible resources, tools, and supports that allow students to offload cognitive demands.

These approaches are not about lowering expectations. They are about aligning them with how the mind actually works.

The Bottom Line

Executive functions are not just a special education concern or a miscellaneous label for problematic or underdeveloped learning behaviors. They are the mental capacities every learner draws on every day. When teachers understand and intentionally support them, classrooms become more equitable, accessible, and effective for all students.

Want to know more?  Check out the following:

A. Diamond (2013)

Serpell & Esposito (2016)

Siregar & Colleagues (2021) 

Intrigued? We’ve got an ENTIRE CONFERENCE focused on “Teaching Executive Skills” in New York City, April 16-18, 2026. We hope to see you there (or online).

Dr. Sarah Oberle authored this post to share insights from her work on executive functions in education. Along with co-author Mitch Weathers, she has written a forthcoming book, Executive Functions for Every K–3 Classroom, which will be published in April 2026. Stay tuned for this practical guide, packed with evidence-based strategies to help K–3 educators support students’ developing executive functions in the classroom.

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