Author Archives: Theresa Cheng

“I am a lean, mean, mathing machine.” 

In college, I’d repeat this phrase to myself, muttering under my breath before every calculus exam. This mantra reminded me that I was tough, prepared, and capable of setting aside my nerves.

People engage in self-talk all day long, and it’s a powerful tool for shaping emotional well-being. The pep talks we give ourselves can make daily stressors more manageable, helping us to push past bumps in the road. And changing the way we talk to ourselves may be a powerful tool for regulating our emotions. For example, in one study, adults at risk for depression who were coached to talk to themselves in ways that fought back at their “inner critic” saw a reduction in depressive symptoms.¹

Being deliberately strategic about the way that we talk to ourselves in frustrating, stressful, or tempting situations may help us persist on challenging tasks, pursue actions aligned with our goals, and perform our best. So what does science suggest about the kinds of self-talk that might be more effective at steering yourself (and your students) toward better regulation?

Below are three lessons from current research on self-talk:

1. Avoid “I”

Using your own name instead of first person pronouns (I, my, etc.) during self-talk may help you approach challenges more effectively.

In one experiment, scientists told participants that they were studying first impressions.² They instructed participants to try to make a good impression when meeting a member of the opposite sex—a situation that usually provokes some anxiety. The researchers gave people 2 minutes to prepare. In one group, participants were instructed to use first-person pronouns while preparing. In the other group, they were instructed to use their own names.

People who used their own names reported greater decreases in anxiety after the interaction. Independent judges that watched videos of the interaction rated these participants as having made a better impression overall.

Because people use names and third-person pronouns to refer to other people, the authors of the study suggest that using this voice helps people move away from self-centered perspectives toward more objective thinking.

This fits into research on “psychological distancing,” which suggests that putting distance between yourself and the situation can support self regulation. In another study, using the third person and pretending to be a fictitious character (such as Batman or Dora) were both related to better executive functioning* in 5-year olds, but not in 3-year-olds.³ This suggests that pretend play may also be able to generate psychological distance. The authors suggest that the 3-year-olds in the study didn’t benefit from psychological distancing because they weren’t yet able to effectively take on different perspectives.

Why does psychological distancing help? In one study, 226 African-American adolescents were asked to reflect on a recent experience that made them angry. After reflecting, they were asked some questions about how they remembered the episode. The more teens reported feeling distant from the experience (e.g., like they were watching it from far away, or that it seemed like a movie), the less upset they felt.⁴ When researchers read the teens’ written reflections on the angry scenarios, describing the situation with more distance was linked to re-interpreting the situation with some potentially productive insight, rather than a straightforward summary of the experience.

2. Embrace labels

Putting a label on your feelings may help regulate negative emotions. Some studies suggest that labeling emotions reduce people’s physical responses (specifically heart rate and sweat) after a stressful experience. In one study, the more anxiety-related words people identified (from a set) as describing their emotional state during exposure therapy, the more their body responses dropped after a stressful experience.⁵

The authors of this study suggest that practice with labeling emotions may help your brain learn to support better regulation. What do they mean?

Labeling the emotions is found to increase blood flow (suggesting neural activity) to an area in the far right part of the prefrontal cortex known as the right ventrolateral PFC.⁶ In one study, greater blood flow to this part of the brain was linked to less neural activity (inferred from from blood flow) in the amygdala, a brain region important in processing fear. This link between the prefrontal cortex-amygdala suggests a possible mechanism for emotional regulation supported by labeling the emotions. It is important to note that these brain regions are also involved in many other behaviors and emotions, so more work is needed to confirm this connection. However, it converges with other research suggesting that labels have value.

Unlike switching to using third-person language, emotion labeling seems to only change people’s body responses, not how anxious people report feeling.⁵ Some suggest that this means that labeling feelings isn’t helpful. But others suggest that people who have labeled their emotions still experience anxious feelings, but simply aren’t as upset by them, which is reflected in their body responses.

3. Be specific

Some people tend to use more specific words to describe their experiences, while others use more general ones. For example, some people might describe a car accident they experienced as scary, terrifying, or harrowing, while others might describe the same situation as simply “bad.”

In general, more clarity and specificity regarding personal experiences is what some psychologists call “emotional granularity.” In adults, having higher emotional granularity is associated with better responses to different stressors, including less aggression and drinking when experiencing stress.⁷

Why is this the case? While no one knows for sure, some researchers speculate that by using more detailed language in their self-talk, people are giving themselves more information about the situation. This explanation suggests that people are perhaps then able to act on this information more clearly when deciding what to do next.⁷

Putting this in practice: the RULER program

The RULER Feeling Words K-8 curriculum puts these suggestions into practice using feeling-based units to teach students how to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate their emotions.⁸

Fifth and 6^th grade students in classrooms with the RULER Feeling Words curriculum demonstrated improved language arts grades and work habits grades as compared to students in classrooms that did not implement this curriculum. Students in this program also showed higher teacher ratings related to positive relationships, leadership, and studying, as well as lower teacher ratings of problem behaviors. This research suggests that social and emotional curriculum can go hand in hand with educational goals.

Looking beyond Western culture

When moving research from psychological theory into practice, it also may be important to consider students’ cultural backgrounds. Much of the research featured here has emerged from Western frameworks about emotion and research with Western participants. However, some cross-cultural work suggests that, on average, East Asians may rely on less body-driven processes for understanding their emotions,⁹ with different implications for what regulation strategies may then be effective. In an era where classrooms are looking increasingly diverse, it may be important to seek a better understanding of how people from many cultures experience and regulate emotions.

Pass it on 

How can children get better at regulating their emotions and behaving in ways that support their goals, particularly when faced with frustration, stress, or temptation? This complex question about human development is far from resolved. However, educators have opportunities to share strategies that may help students get themselves through difficult moments—and these self-talk strategies may be among them!

* Previously, I’ve written about EF as an umbrella term for cognitive processes that regulate thoughts and actions. In this case, researchers studied children’s ability to switch between tasks, hold information in memory, and inhibit their responses.

References

1. Kelly, A. C., Zuroff, D. C., & Shapira, L. B. (2009). Soothing oneself and resisting self-attacks: The treatment of two intrapersonal deficits in depression vulnerability. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 33(3), 301–313. [Paper]
2. Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., Bremner, R., Moser, J., Ayduk, O. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: how you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304–24. [Paper]
3. White, R. E., & Carlson, S. M. (2015). What would Batman do? Self-distancing improves executive function in young children. Developmental Science, 3, 419–426. [Paper]
4. White, R. E., Kross, E., & Duckworth, A. L. (2015). Spontaneous Self-Distancing and Adaptive Self-Reflection Across Adolescence. Child Development, 86(4), 1272–1281. [Paper]
5. Niles, A. N., Craske, M. G., Lieberman, M. D., & Hur, C. (2015). Affect labeling enhances exposure effectiveness for public speaking anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 68, 27–36. [Paper]
6. Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. [Paper]
7. Kashdan, T. B., Barrett, L. F., & McKnight, P. E. (2015). Unpacking Emotion Differentiation: Transforming Unpleasant Experience by Perceiving Distinctions in Negativity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(1), 10–16. [Paper]
8. Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., Reyes, M. R., & Salovey, P. (2012). Enhancing academic performance and social and emotional competence with the RULER feeling words curriculum. Learning and Individual Differences, 22(2), 218–224. [Paper]
9. Immordino-Yang, M. H., Yang, X.-F., & Damasio, H. (2014). Correlations between social-emotional feelings and anterior insula activity are independent from visceral states but influenced by culture. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8(September), 728. [Paper]

To commemorate World Teacher’s Day last year, Reuters’ photographers shared images of students around the world in different classrooms—including those without electricity, books, chairs, or walls. These photos serve as a reminder of extreme global inequality in the distribution of educational resources. But they also suggest that few physical materials are strictly necessary for building a rich world of learning.

While learning can potentially take place anywhere, aspects of the immediate physical environment, from the arrangement of desks to the air quality of the neighborhood, may impact student learning. But how much does the physical environment relate to students’ academic growth?

Designed to address this question, the Holistic Evidence and Design (HEAD) Project published its results in 2015 and was named one of Edutopia’s Education Research Highlight studies of the year. This study deliberately incorporated geographic and socioeconomic diversity in their sample by collecting information about 3,766 students from 1st through 6th grade at 27 schools in three districts!¹

The results? Taking into account reading, writing and math scores, the HEAD study estimates that moving an “average” elementary school student in the UK from the least effective learning environment to the most effective one has the impact of more than half a school year of growth.

Rather than examining the impact of a single factor like air quality, this study examined a wide array of school and classroom features. Taking this holistic stance and measuring student growth over the course of a school year allowed the researchers to answer two other key questions:

1. Which aspects of the physical environment seem to relate most strongly to student learning?
2. What does this suggest about how to improve schools?

First and foremost, they found that the immediate classroom environment, rather than the overall school environment, was much more strongly related to student outcomes.^1,2 The authors of the study point out that this may be because they conducted research in the elementary grades, where students spend the majority of the school day in a single classroom. Further research with secondary students, who spend more time in hallways and moving between many different classrooms, may support different findings.

To gather their data and break down their results, the researchers considered elements of naturalness, individualization, and complexity in the classroom environment.

Naturalness: Let there be Light

Across all aspects of classroom design in the study, lighting had the strongest link to student learning.^1,2 The availability of natural daylight and/or good quality electrical lighting were important. The researchers recommend keeping classroom windows free of obstruction from furniture or displays, allowing in natural light while actively monitoring glare during the day as needed with blinds.¹

Good lighting is of course critical to sight, but different levels of light also provide signals to the body related to alertness and attention via the circadian system. This system is related to sleep/wake cycles, as well as micro-shifts in hormones over the course of a day.³ In addition to supporting attention during the day, we speculate that good lighting may support learning and memory by promoting quality sleep at night.

Air quality (recently covered by my colleague Gabriella Hirsch in this post) and temperature were also strongly linked with student learning. Two aspects of classroom design with weak links to student learning include sound factors (such as noise pollution from busy nearby streets) and the availability of nature (such as natural views from classroom windows).¹

Individualization: Find the Flair

Having a distinctive look and feel to the classroom was related to improvements in student outcomes.^1,2 This “distinctiveness” may be accomplished by a unique, built-in aspect of the classroom, such as shape or layout. It can also be accomplished by displaying student work and/or by having special areas of the classroom with students’ names and spaces, such as drawers or lockers.

Why might classroom uniqueness and personalization matter? The authors of the HEAD study suggest these issues may increase students’ sense of classroom ownership.¹ This hasn’t been shown conclusively, as many explanations are possible. One study of kindergarteners and 1st graders suggests that environmental personalization may be related to higher self-esteem.⁴ A separate study of adults suggests that personalization may buffer emotional exhaustion in workplace environments that have little privacy.⁵ While current evidence is limited, these studies support the hypothesis that personalization in working environments may support psychological well-being across the life span.

Another important aspect of classroom individualization in the HEAD study was flexibility; the authors of the study recommend that teachers create clearly defined classroom zones to support different types of activities and/or small group instruction, particularly in the younger elementary grades.¹

Complexity: Hit the Sweet Spot

How visually complex should classrooms be? On average, classrooms in the HEAD study that were Spartan—filled with blank, white walls—didn’t do so well. Yet, on average, ones with every inch of the walls spattered with color didn’t do well, either. It seems that there may be a “sweet spot” between minimalism and high-intensity chaos that is associated with better student outcomes. The researchers recommend keeping 20-50% of the wall space clear and including some elements of color in the classroom environment (which also sounds aesthetically pleasing!).¹

One study has found that in highly decorated classrooms, as compared to very sparse ones, kindergarteners score worse on teacher-administered tests and spend more time off task. The authors of this study suggest that visual complexity can be distracting to young children.⁶ However, other scientists suggest that these results were driven by the newness of the décor rather than visual complexity itself.⁷ No study has yet comprehensively examined the effects of various levels of classroom décor complexity on student attention across grade levels, and further research may be needed to understand and support the “sweet spot” hypothesis.

One caveat
The HEAD study aims to describe what was happening in classrooms and correlates student outcomes with different classroom types. Like other studies of this kind, it can’t establish causality between different classroom environments and student learning. They can’t rule out the possibility that something else might be driving their results. For example, it may be that teachers who attend to classroom design also tend to create effective visual displays in worksheets and/or more organized activities that better support student learning.

What’s next? Probably Pinterest
As you consider your own teaching and learning environments for the final stretch of spring quarter or the next school year, keep the design elements of naturalness (especially light), individualization/personalization, and the level of complexity in mind. And know that the time and care you put into creating a great space to work and learn may make a difference.

References & Further Reading

1. Barrett, P., Davies, F., Zhang, Y., & Barrett, L. (2015). The impact of classroom design on pupils’ learning: Final results of a holistic, multi-level analysis. Building and Environment, 89, 118–133. [Paper]
2. Barrett, P., Zhang, Y., Davies, D. F., & Barrett, D. L. (2015). Clever Classrooms. [Report]
3. Boyce, P., Hunter, C., & Howlett, O. (2003). The Benefits of Daylight through Windows. Lighting Research Center, 1(1), 1–88. [Report]
4. Maxwell, L. E., & Chmielewski, E. J. (2008). Environmental personalization and elementary school children’s self-esteem. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28(2), 143–153. [Paper]
5. Laurence, G. A., Fried, Y., & Slowik, L. H. (2013). “My space”: A moderated mediation model of the effect of architectural and experienced privacy and workspace personalization on emotional exhaustion at work. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, 144–152. [Paper]
6. Fisher, A. V, Godwin, K. E., & Seltman, H. (2014). Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1362–1370. [Paper]
7. Imuta, K., & Scarf, D. (2014). When too much of a novel thing may be what’s “ bad ”: commentary on Fisher, Godwin, and Seltman (2014), 5 (December), 1–2. [Commentary]

• Evans, G. (2006). Child development and the physical environment. Annu Rev Psychol, 57, 423–451. [Paper]

Last year, a paper in Science led to a public spotlight on the scientific process. It pointed to a problem that’s being called the replication crisis (or reproducibility crisis) that has led many to wonder: Is science broken?

Here’s what happened: The Open Science Collaboration asked labs across the nation to repeat others’ experiments as closely as possible and share their results. The original experiments were taken from papers published in three widely respected, peer-reviewed journals in psychology and cognitive science. Of the 100 experiments that were chosen for replication, 97 had statistically significant results when initially published.

But only 36 of the replications of those studies reported significant results.¹

Most research studies use tests to gauge how likely the results researchers found are due to chance. “Significant results” means that the results passed those tests according to a generally agreed upon rule of thumb, which is often what’s called a “p-value” of at least .05. Getting a p-value of .05 roughly translates to “there is a 5% chance you would get these results even though they are not accurate.” Using p-values to determine “significant results” is the standard (though there is a lot of longstanding controversy about this practice²) so this was one of the primary measures in the big replication study.

So, statistically speaking, only replicating “significance” in 36 of the original results doesn’t mean that all of the original studies were wrong. If all of the studies were replicated a third time, we would probably see a different array of studies with significant results. This is one reason why replication over time is such an important theoretical part of the scientific process, though replication studies, especially costly ones, are rarely a priority because of the pressures on modern researchers.

This mega-experiment does suggest that many (perhaps even a majority!) of psychology’s published results might be due to error or chance. And this problem isn’t limited to psychology—the biomedical research community is dealing with serious replication challenges, too.*³ 

Of course, even replication studies can be prone to messiness and error, as many researchers, such as Dr. Dan Gilbert of Harvard University, have contested these results in recent weeks. You can follow the ongoing debate here.

The replication crisis brings to light the reality that the answers to many important questions are buried in messy evidence. Educators will influence how the next generation of scientists and citizens make decisions on challenging issues (sometimes called “wicked problems”) at the intersection of science and society, including climate change and global health crises. In classrooms everywhere, students from Pre-K to college are learning how to understand, integrate, and evaluate evidence.

Here are three ideas on how we can do this better, in all kinds of classrooms.

1. Tackle conflicting evidence

In one classroom, students listened to the popular podcast Serial, which reports on the true story of Adnan Syed, convicted of murdering his girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999.⁴ The students dissected its transcripts, mapping out a maze of inconsistent claims and evidence to examine their beliefs about Syed’s guilt or innocence.

Can students learn from this approach? Many teachers worry that introducing conflicting information only confuses students. However, research in higher education suggests that tasks with “cognitive conflict” (involving different viewpoints and no single answer) can lead to better mastery of the basic concepts⁵, though it’s unclear whether this is true for younger children.

Tackling conflicting information might support deeper learning of the content material, while giving students a chance to develop critical thinking skills in ways that closely mirror the challenges of ambiguity in the professional workplace.

2. Consider student’s developing ideas about causation, probability, and statistics

What were Juliet’s motives? What started the War of 1812? And how do kidneys work, anyway? Causes and effects are discussed across the sciences and humanities, but little attention is paid to the structures of causal reasoning.

One distinction worth being aware of is the difference between deterministic and probabilistic causation. In deterministic causation, effects follow causes. In probabilistic causation, effects follow causes, but not always. For example, smoking causes lung cancer, but not always. Plants grow from seedlings, but not always.  

Many of the challenges that we face as a society involve complex probabilistic causation, including our changing climate, the collapse of ecosystems, and the global transmission of disease.⁶ And children struggle to learn and apply models of probabilistic causation (among other types of causal models) in science classrooms.⁶ Some research recommends probing students’ developing ideas about causality via explicit discussions, introducing and paying careful attention to causal language.⁶

Others are calling for a greater general emphasis on statistics and probability in mathematics education.⁷ These subjects present a structured approach to evaluating claims and grappling with uncertainty, while opening the door to interdisciplinary learning as students use mathematical approaches to answer empirical questions.

3. Do experiments

A report on a 2011 survey conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress states:

Although doing grade 8 hands-on science activities is nearly universal, carrying out the steps of an investigative process is not. Twenty-four percent of the grade 8 students never discuss their results, thirty-five percent never discuss measurement for their science project and thirty-nine percent of the grade 8 students don’t design an experiment.⁸

This suggests that the majority of hands-on activities occurring in science classrooms do not involve conducting experiments. Limited time, resources, and the pressure to cover content can make it hard to prioritize experimentation.

However, experiments and inquiry are integral to science education⁹ by supporting content knowledge and fostering critical thinking.¹⁰ Other hands-on learning activities (building models, observing demonstrations, etc.) don’t give students experience with the process and tools to answer questions for themselves. The opportunity to conduct experiments pushes students to grapple with challenges of measurement and when to consider new evidence as “proof.”

Conceptual breakthroughs that might push students to understand more complex ideas can come from close examination of issues related to experimental error. When initially confronted with trying to understand why they didn’t see anticipated results, why results look different from one day to the next, or why results look different between groups, students might be tempted to excuse their results or patch their current understandings. But looking more closely at error in discussion and written reports might add to students’ mental models by falsifying certain ideas, or giving room for students to build from counter-evidence.⁶

Finally, embracing failure has received tremendous attention in education for building character. Viewing “error” in experimentation as a learning experience may have similar potential.

Conclusion

Understanding the replication crisis is a complex, authentic challenge for science and society. It’s the kind of issue that students might examine in a classroom striving to deeply engage students in understanding the nature of science. It takes depth and nuance to reconcile the notion that science is a limited, biased, human endeavor with the idea that it’s also a powerful tool for understanding the world.

If you’re interested in learning more about skills that are critical for evaluating evidence, follow the Twenty-first Century Information Literacy Tools initiative via The People’s Science. Run by the Learning and the Brain Blog Editor, Stephanie Fine Sasse, this non-profit organization is developing a framework for tackling these issues. You can read more about their model and other models in the recently released book, “Four-Dimensional Education,” whose authors include one of our own contributors, Maya Bialik.

The ideas presented here—including student opportunities for experimentation, tackling conflicting evidence, considering causality, and a different outlook on error—can be used across grade and subject levels to help students understand the nature of science and its place in society more deeply.

For a few starting points on how to carry these out in the classroom, check out the teacher resources below. If you know of other resources, feel free to share in the comments!

References & Further Reading

1. Collabo, O. S. (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science, 349(6251). [Paper]
2. Cohen, J. (1990). Things I Have Learned (So Far). American Psychologist, 45(12), 1304–1312. [Paper]
3. Prinz, F., Schlange, T., & Asadullah, K. (2011). Believe it or not: how much can we rely on published data on potential drug targets? Nature Reviews. Drug Discovery, 10(9), 712. [Paper]
4. 4. Flanagan, L. (2015, March 11). What Teens are Learning From ‘Serial’ and Other Podcasts. KQED: Mindshift. [Link]
5. Springer, C. W., & Borthick, a. F. (2007). Improving Performance in Accounting: Evidence for Insisting on Cognitive Conflict Tasks. Issues in Accounting Education, 22(1), 1–19. [Paper]
6. Perkins, D. N., & Grotzer, T. A. (2000). Models and Moves: Focusing on Dimensions of Causal Complexity to Achieve Deeper Scientific Understanding. [Paper]
7. Fadel, C. (2014). Mathematics for the 21st Century: What should students learn? Boston, MA. [Paper]
8. Ginsburg, A., & Friedman, A. (2013). Monitoring What Matters About Context and Instruction in Science Education : A NAEP Data Analysis Report. [Paper]
9. National Science Teachers Association. (2007, February). The Integral Role of Laboratory Investigations in Science Instruction. [Link]
10. Committee on the Development of an Addendum to the National Science Education Standards on Scientific Inquiry; Board on Science Education; Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; National Research Council. (2000). Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning. (S. Olson & S. Loucks-Horsley, Eds.). The National Academies Press. [Link]

• Causal Cognition in a Complex World, Teacher Resources. [Link]
• Critical Media Literacy, Teacher Resources [Link]
• Ongoing Reproducibility Debate, Harvard University [Link]

My first year of teaching, I was all about bribery; I had no problem stocking an endless supply of bulk mixed candy bags, so long as I thought it could help my students learn.

Though the Starburst and Twix caught their attention, I had mixed feelings about using rewards in my classroom. Like many teachers and parents, I wanted my students to take the right steps—like completing their homework, answering review questions, and organizing their notebooks—for themselves. But if my 9^th graders were having trouble linking their short term actions to their long term goals, I reasoned, what was the harm in using a couple of fun-sized treats to ease the way? Was I sending the wrong messages about the reasons for doing work? What about healthy eating? And weren’t grades in themselves a kind of reward system, anyway?

Soon enough, bribery fell by the wayside. Instead of relying on tangible rewards to get things done, I could count on my classroom culture and partnerships with families. Still, the occasional promise of getting to pick a prize did make for more riveting review days.

What I didn’t know was that there is rich knowledge on motivation and learning that can tell us when rewards are most useful, and when they’re a distraction or waste of effort. Of course, science isn’t designed to tell us exactly what rewards are appropriate in the classroom, but there’s now enough evidence for teachers, schools, and communities to make an informed decision.

Here’s what we know about how offering concrete, tangible rewards tends to affect behavior:

1. To make rewards more enticing, offer them ASAP.

Rewards can be effective at changing decision-making and behavior, and it’s a no-brainer that rewards are more effective when they have a high value.

However, a surprisingly important part of this value calculation is when a reward is delivered. The phenomenon of assigning less value to future rewards is called “delay discounting.” Some research suggests that rewards offered immediately are processed using a separate neural system than those involving a time delay.¹

So if a powerful reward system is what you’re after, choose something students want and minimize the time between the effort and the gain. The promise of an end-of-year pizza party may be too distant to convince students to work harder now.

2. When it comes to rewards, be careful what you wish for.

Because rewards are generally effective at producing more of what’s being rewarded, it’s important to be thoughtful about deciding what to reward.

Cognitive scientist and popular book author Daniel Willingham uses this example:

When I was in fourth grade, my class was offered a small prize for each book we read. Many of us quickly developed a love for short books with large print, certainly not the teacher’s intent.²

A reward system based on producing a quantity of work may do little to improve the quality of work,³ and some suggest that it may even incentivize students to sacrifice quality.

3. Need to learn something boring? Rewards can help.

In one study, offering money improved people’s memory for the answers to trivia questions—but only for uninteresting questions.⁴ Also, this was only the case after a time delay. On average, people remembered the answers to interesting trivia questions at a similar rate whether or not they were offered money.

This suggests that tangible rewards may be valuable in boosting performance when it comes to learning boring items—but not if the learner is cramming.

Though this hypothesis remains untested, the authors of the study suggest that this may be due to the time it takes to complete a well-known memory stabilizing process. This process requires communication between the midbrain, a part of the brain where reward-related neurotransmitter dopamine is produced, and the hippocampus, an area of the brain often involved in learning and encoding new information). The authors propose that communication between these reward and learning regions might explain their results.⁴ 

4. In some cases, offering rewards for doing something can reduce the likelihood of it recurring.

We’ve known for decades that in some circumstances, receiving rewards can lower intrinsic motivation, or how much you’re driven to do something based on internal factors (like preference or passion). In a 1973 study, some 3-5 year old children were told that they would receive a certificate for drawing, others received a surprise certificate after drawing, and a third group received no certificate at all.⁵

Later, when given free access to drawing materials, the children who were told beforehand about the reward spent less time drawing than the others.

Surprisingly, when an anticipated reward goes away, people don’t just revert back to whatever they were doing before. In some cases, they’ll perform the rewarded behavior even less.

This is called sometimes called the “undermining effect” (or sometimes the “overjustification hypothesis”). And it’s particularly true for behaviors that people were motivated to do in the first place. Basically, it suggests that if there’s something you like doing and want to do anyway, working for a reward might reduce how much you do it. 

Recently, researchers have examined this phenomenon in the brain using fMRI.⁶ In one study, participants played an enjoyable game in the scanner. One group was told they’d be rewarded with money for playing well, while another group was told they’d receive a bonus based on how well someone else played.

Later, both groups played the game in the scanner a second time without bonuses. When scoring in this round, the group whose own performance was previously tied to money had decreased blood flow (suggesting less neural activity) in the striatum and midbrain as compared to the control group. The striatum and midbrain are both thought to be involved in processing reward feedback. Based on these findings, the researchers suggest that initially playing for money decreased the perceived value of scoring in the game.

5. It’s possible to “undermine the undermining effect” ⁷

How does the undermining effect work?

Some scientists think that being rewarded for a behavior partially “overwrites” our original motivation. This would suggest that the 3-5 year old children in the study (described in #4) started out believing “Drawing is something I do for fun”. Working for a reward then partially overwrote that motivation with “Drawing is something I do for certificates.” Changes in underlying motivation are thought to be partially responsible for changing how people behave.

One strategy for protecting against the undermining effect might be to actively “overwrite” the motivation with something durable to encourage students to persist even when rewards have vanished.

In one study, giving 3^rd-5^th grade students a personally-relevant reason to do a tedious handwriting activity (without the promise of a reward) was associated with greater time spent on the activity when they were no longer rewarded.⁷ This personal reason came in the form of complimenting the students with a trait label either before or after the reward. The researchers said to the students,

You know, I thought you’d say you wanted to do this handwriting activity because you look like the kind of [girl/boy] who understands how important it is to write correctly, and who really wants to be good at it.⁷

While the limitations of this approach are still unknown, the researchers noted that this was a bit ironic: instead of undermining motivation with a reward, they were able to undermine the reward with motivation!

How should we use rewards in the classroom?

Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham makes three suggestions for educators when it comes to using rewards in the classroom²:

1) Consider possible alternatives.

2) Use rewards for a specific reason, like conquering the times tables or motivating a student who is no longer willing to try.

3) Have a defined ending that limits how long the incentive system is in play.

Willingham suggests that it makes sense to develop tangible reward structures toward concrete learning goals, like learning the multiplication tables, the elements of the periodic tables, or the events on a historical timeline. When the reward system ends, students might stop engaging in the rewarded behavior—but if it comes at a point when they’re ready to move on anyway, it’s not a problem. When they’ve learned the material and the reward structure ends, the class can move on to more complex, interesting questions that rely on this basic knowledge.²

On the other hand, it might not make sense to use tangible reward structures for teaching lifelong habits. Willingham points out that implementing long-term reward structures cost a lot of time and energy, and the rewarded behaviors tend to stop when the rewards stop. This is not to recommend against responding to positive habits, but to find other ways to do so, like praise.²

In the end, rewards are a complicated and much-debated topic. They can be effective at shaping behavior. But some find their use to be deeply problematic. And, as Education Week teacher and author Justin Minkel points out, rewards are a lousy substitute for cultivating a profound love of learning.

That said, science adds a perspective that can help educators reflecting on how and when they’d like to use rewards—if at all.

 

References & Further Reading

1. McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary Rewards. Science, 306, 503–507. [Paper]
2. Willingham, D. T. (2007). Should Learning Be Its Own Reward? [Link]
3. Jenkins, G. D. J., Gupta, N., Mitra, A., & Shaw, J. D. (1998). Are financial incentives related to performance? A meta-analytic review of empirical research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(5), 777–787. [Paper]
4. Murayama, K., & Kuhbandner, C. (2011). Money enhances memory consolidation–but only for boring material. Cognition, 119(1), 120–4. [Paper]
5. Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129–137. [Paper]
6. Murayama, K., Matsumoto, M., Izuma, K., & Matsumoto, K. (2010). Neural basis of the undermining effect of monetary reward on intrinsic motivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(49), 20911–6. [Paper]
7. Cialdini, R. B., Eisenberg, N., Green, B. L., Rhoads, K., & Bator, R. (1998). Undermining the Undermining Effect of Reward on Sustained Interest. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(3), 249–263. [Paper]

• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M.. (2001). Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again. Review of Educational Research, 71(1), 1–27. [Paper]

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]

Humans are social beings, and we need others: Celebrating the good and coping with the bad is hard without friends and family. A loss of interest in social activities can be a sign of depression and mental illness. And social isolation is associated with abnormal behavior in rats¹ as well as in humans.²

But social ties are important beyond being a way to receive support. Research suggests that pro-social behavior—actions that help others, even at a sacrifice—is linked with better academic, social, and mental health outcomes in developing teens (and adults!). In other words, pro-sociality might be protective.

Eudaimonism and pro-social behavior may protect well-being

In my last post, I wrote about Dr. Eva Telzer’s research on family obligations as a potential buffer of the stressors of adolescence. In another study, Telzer and her colleagues explored this idea further. They presented teens (ages 15-17) with choices about giving money to themselves, or to their family, in an MRI scanner.³

Sometimes, the choices were no-brainers; adolescents were asked to choose between the scenario of gaining money for themselves, or not. At other times, the decision was a bit trickier. They asked participants: would you take a small personal loss if your family could gain even more cash?

The researchers described this self-sacrifice as a type of eudaimonic decision. Articulated by Aristotle, eudaimonia translates roughly to “flourishing,” and refers to a kind of happiness worth seeking and having.⁴ These kinds of behavior are often, but not exclusively, pro-social, meaning that they are voluntary social behaviors intended to help others. In contrast, the easy self-gain decision was hedonic—related to engaging in the immediate and easy pleasures of the moment.

Telzer and her colleagues noticed that changes in blood flow to the ventral striatum (suggesting that brain region’s neural activity) during certain decisions were correlated with long-term, real world outcomes for teens.

Adolescents with higher blood flow to the ventral striatum during self-sacrificing decisions were, on average, more likely to experience declines in depressive symptoms one year later. The ventral striatum is thought to be involved in processing the rewards, particularly the size of rewards. One possible explanation for this result is that the more adolescents experience self-sacrifice as rewarding, the more likely they might be to engage in protective eudaimonic activities. Over the course of a year, these activities might promote their well-being through building self-esteem and social relationships.

On the other hand, experiencing higher responses in the ventral striatum to the “easy reward” scenarios was associated with more extreme depressive symptoms one year later. It is possible that these teens were more likely to indulge in momentary pleasures than to invest in socially healthy exchanges.

The idea that pro-social and eudaimonic behaviors are related to happiness isn’t a new one. This self-protective link has been found in other studies, too:

• In middle school students, pro-social behaviors were associated with reduced feelings of loneliness one year later. This was true even when students had been the target of social bullying, like being left out of groups or being the target of gossip.⁵

• In adults, reporting engagement in eudaimonic activities, such as volunteering time, writing out future goals, and expressing gratitude, is associated with better well being and mood, particularly the next day.⁶

• Typically, low motivation and self worth are linked with emotional exhaustion in the workplace. Across two studies of different professions (professional fundraisers and sanitation workers), workers’ perceptions of their own pro-social impact buffered against these links. In other words, workers with low motivation or low self worth were less burnt-out at work if they felt like their work helped others—which has implications for teachers, too.⁷

Eudaimonism and pro-social behavior in schools

Celebrating acts of giving can be embedded in schools in ways big and small. Through extensive community service programming or classroom structures that reinforce helping behaviors, schools may transmit implicit messages about what it means to give.

At a recent conference for the Society for Research in Child Development, Dr. Ronald Dahl of the University of California, Berkeley suggested that one way to help teens and kids might be to figure out how to make giving a truly joyful experience.⁸

So, how can educators inspire the joy of giving?

While there’s no universal recipe, research suggests that certain elements of community service programming might best help teens:

1. Student choice: Meaningful choice can support middle school students’ developing sense of competence. In the Teen Outreach Program study, volunteer programs were more effective at reducing problem behaviors (like failing classes and school suspension rates) when middle school students chose the kinds of activities they participated in.⁹

2. Connecting with mentors: Social connection with adult mentors may enhance the experience of giving, potentially providing a model of giving for students to emulate. In the Teen Outreach Program, volunteer sites were more effective in reducing problem behaviors when middle school students reported a stronger sense of connection with the adult facilitators.⁹

3. It can’t come too easy: In Telzer’s study, there was another kind of “easy” decision teens could engage in: they could choose between giving money to their families, or not. Engagement of the ventral striatum during this decision was not linked with long-term changes in depression symptoms. At the recent Society for Research in Child Development conference, Telzer suggested that self-sacrifice might be a characteristic of the kinds of pro-social experiences that are self-protective.¹⁰ It is possible that adolescents may need to give up something meaningful, like their own time or personally valuable resources, in order to experience protective effects of pro-social behavior.

It’s important to note that the Teen Outreach Program study found no association between the first two elements and problem behaviors in high school students. These elements may have a greater impact in middle school, when student beliefs, like sense of competence, may be more flexible.

I’ve had the joy of seeing these elements play out in my 8th grade students’ yearlong Community Impact Projects. In these projects, students were mentored to develop a community program that spoke to their interests and passions. Carrying responsibility for a project with self-defined goals challenged students in many ways, including developing their meta-cognitive capacity for responding to challenges without spelled-out instructions about how to take next step. I hope that this psychosocial experience may have also been potent at buffering against some of the stressors of high school and beyond.

Currently, Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving weekend—the perfect merger of eudaimonic appreciation and hedonistic feasting. As we reflect on gratitude, let’s also consider the impact we have on others. This reflection, though particularly powerful for adolescents, may have protective value for all ages.

References & Further Reading

1. Kercmar, J., Büdefeld, T., Grgurevic, N., Tobet, S. A., & Majdic, G. (2011). Adolescent social isolation changes social recognition in adult mice. Behavioural Brain Research, 216(2), 647–651. [Paper]
2. Hall-Lande, J. A, Eisenberg, M. E., Christenson, S. L., & Neumark-Sztainer, D. (2007). Social isolation, psychological health, and protective factors in adolescence. Adolescence, 42, 265–286. [Paper]
3. Telzer, E. H., Fuligni, A. J., Lieberman, M. D., & Galvan, A. (2014). Neural sensitivity to eudaimonic and hedonic rewards differentially predict adolescent depressive symptoms over time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(18), 6600–6605. [Paper]
4. Hursthouse, Rosalind,(2013), Virtue Ethics, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.) [Article]
5. Griese, E. R., & Buhs, E. S. (2013). Prosocial Behavior as a Protective Factor for Children’s Peer Victimization. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 43(7), 1052–1065. [Paper]
6. Steger, M. F., Kashdan, T. B., & Oishi, S. (2008). Being good by doing good: Daily eudaimonic activity and well-being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(1), 22–42. [Paper]
7. Grant, A. M., & Sonnentag, S. (2010). Doing good buffers against feeling bad: Prosocial impact compensates for negative task and self-evaluations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 111(1), 13–22. [Paper]
8. Dahl, R. (September 16, 2015). Personal communication.
9. Allen, J. P., Philliber, S., & Herre, K. (1994). Programmatic Prevention of Adolescent Problem Behaviors: The Role of Autonomy, Relatedness, and Volunteer Service in the Teen Outreach Program. American Journal of Community Psychology. [Paper]
10. Telzer, E. (September 16, 2015). Personal communication.

• Caprara, G. V., Luengo Kanacri, B. P., Zuffianò, A., Gerbino, M., & Pastorelli, C. (2015). Why and How to Promote Adolescents’ Prosocial Behaviors: Direct, Mediated and Moderated Effects of the CEPIDEA School-Based Program. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, (November). [Paper]

The teenage years have long been described as a period of “storm and stress.” It’s a time for parental clashes, moodiness, risky behaviors, and a lot of cringe-worthy confessional songwriting.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Teen angst isn’t universal or inevitable, as these “storm and stress” behaviors are less pronounced in more traditional non-Western cultures¹.

Why is this the case? One hypothesis is that it has to do with Western culture’s focus on individualism. This focus might set the stage for conflict by putting a premium on exploration and risk as teens figure out how to be independent from their families.

What can families and educators do to help kids weather the storm of adolescence? Here, we’ll explore one potential buffer identified by developmental science: having meaningful familial obligations.

The “Terrible Teens”

Before we continue, it’s worth thinking about whether “storm and stress” is necessarily a bad thing. Some aspects of the underlying neurobiology may be related to teens’ interests in new learning experiences, especially those involving their peers. These experiences might teach valuable skills for navigating complex social decisions. Similarly, the “Terrible Twos” are as much about social, cognitive, and motor milestones as they are about moodiness and tantrums.

On the other hand, while risks taken by two year-olds are largely managed by their caregivers, risk in the teenage years may have more profound, adult consequences. Adolescence may also be a vulnerable period for developing mental health disorders, including addiction, depression, and psychosis². It’s important to keep this balance in mind: how do we support the benefits of the teenage experience while minimizing potential long-term damage?

Risk & Reward

Some researchers have theorized that teen behavior is influenced by two brain systems: a sensitive “acceleration” system and a developing “braking” system. The acceleration system is thought to be well-developed and sometimes hypersensitive during adolescence. It is related to teens’ penchant for rewards, like positive social feedback or financial gain³. The braking system is thought to still be developing during adolescence, such that it may be more difficult for them to control their impulses in rewarding situations. These theories suggest that the different rates of development for these systems may inform our understanding of adolescent risk-taking behavior.

Of course, this research is still new and many researchers believe this explanation does not capture the full complexity of adolescent development. Some think that the evidence connecting changes in the brain systems to real world behavior is not strong enough⁴. Others believe that adolescent risk taking might be more calculated or planned than we give them credit for.⁵

Despite ongoing questions in the field, we know that in some situations, teenagers tend to take on more risk in their decisions than other ages. We know that’s not true for all teenagers, or all of the time. So this led researchers to ask the question: why do some teenagers decide to play it safe?

Resisting Temptation

One 2013 study led by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign scientist Eva Telzer asked teens to complete risk-taking and inhibition activities in an MRI scanner.⁶

In the risk-taking activity, teens saw a series of red balloons with a dollar amount written on them. For each balloon, they were faced with two options:

Choice A: They could press a button to “cash out,” and win the dollar amount that they saw.

Choice B. They could press a button to inflate the balloon, in which case the balloon might increase in size/value. However, this could also lead the balloon to explode, in which case they would win nothing.

So, choosing to inflate the balloon was the risky option, but it came with the chance of a greater reward. In this case, researchers were interested in how this risky decision related to the value teens place on family obligations. In a survey, they asked teens how much time they felt they should spend helping out with household responsibilities and participating in family life, like attending meals and weekend activities.

The adolescents in the study that more strongly valued family obligation tended to cash out with lower balloon pumps. In other words, they were willing to give up a chance at a greater reward to avoid the risk of winning nothing. On average, these teens were more “risk-averse”.

Using fMRI, the scientists also found increases in blood flow to one region of the brain called the ventral striatum (suggesting that area was more active) as teens claimed bigger rewards while “cashing out” in the balloon game. The ventral striatum is a part of the brain often found to be sensitive to the size of rewards and highly involved in processing rewards.

Interestingly, teens that placed a higher value on family obligations had, on average, lower ventral striatum activity during the “cashing out” part of the balloon experiment. This suggests that those teens might have taken fewer risks because they weren’t as sensitive to the reward in the first place.

Learning When to Push the Brakes

With the same participants, researchers also studied teens’ regulatory abilities.

In the scanner, teens were presented with single letters in rapid succession. They were told to press a button to all of the letters, except for the letter X, which appeared 25% of the time. Participants got used to mostly pressing the button. But when the X appeared, they needed to quickly resist the impulse to respond.

Performance on this task wasn’t related to how teens thought of their family obligations. Teens that placed lower value their family obligations did just as well as those who thought that family obligations were really important.

However, Telzer and her colleagues saw differences in the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the upper portions of the prefrontal cortex that are more to the sides of the head than in the center. During inhibition, the dlPFC was more active, on average, for teens that more strongly valued family obligations.

What does this brain data mean?

While we can’t say for sure, generally, the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulation and cognitive control. In this study, there was a positive correlation between dlPFC activation during inhibition and how much teens reported they thought through their every day life decisions.

Taken together, this might suggest that for adolescents, valuing family relationships and obligations can be related to better self-regulation.

We know that families can be an important resource for developing kids of all ages. Could it be that these results are just related to some teens having better family support?

Researchers asked this question, and it turns out the answer is “no”. It seems that having a warmer, more supportive family isn’t related to risk taking or inhibition. Instead, how much teens valued their family obligations made the difference in these behaviors and related neural processes.

The researchers suggest that adolescents who value family obligations may have more practice prioritizing others’ needs and regulating their own. They might also be more motivated to stay out of trouble, as one kind of obligation to their family.

This may also help explain why teens tend to express lower levels of “storm and stress” behaviors in more traditional, family-obligation oriented cultures.

Implications for Education

How teens deal with the often-rocky transition to adulthood depends, in large part, on their social worlds. An aspect of this, the value that adolescents place on giving back to their families, may be related to less risky decision-making and better regulation.

Though challenging, one way to put this research into action is for educators to plan creative ways, like projects or community discussions of research, to encourage caregivers and teens to see the value in meaningful household responsibilities and family time. It might also be that these findings go beyond family obligations. Though more research needs to be done in this area, it’s plausible that having meaningful responsibilities in the classroom, school, and community may help teens’ well-being and the development of valuable regulatory skills.

What We Don’t Know

However, before considering sweeping changes, you may have noticed that the study we’ve been discussing doesn’t address causality. Causality is a way to describe the relationship between two things – namely that one thing caused the other. In this case, it’s the question of whether valuing family obligations causes what we see in the lab. Having meaningful family obligations might be protective for developing teens, but it could also be that teens who are risk averse and better at regulation just happen to also like structured, safe activities like family time and household chores.

Another caveat to this study is that its participants were Mexican-American teens, who are part of a culture that tends to value family obligations. These teens were also of low socioeconomic status. It’s not clear how well these particular results generalize to other cultures and groups.

Of course, limitations don’t mean these studies aren’t useful. Thankfully, in science, we can turn to a larger body of work to get more answers (and more questions!). In my next post, I’ll talk about a few studies in different groups looking at changes over time. This kind of long-term research is one way of disentangling the issue of causality by asking “Which came first?” I’ll also introduce the concept of “protective pro-sociality,” or the ways that doing things for others may benefit personal well-being. I’ll explore what this might mean for classroom structures and community service programming.

So far, we’ve examined one example of “protective prosociality”: Beyond being an affordable babysitting option, having teens care about giving back to their families might benefit their abilities to resist temptation and self-regulate.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Arnett, J. J. (1999). Adolescent storm and stress, reconsidered. The American Psychologist, 54(5), 317–326. [Paper]
2. Paus, T., Keshavan, M., & Giedd, J. N. (2008). Why do many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9 (December), 947–957. [Paper]
3. Casey, B. J., Jones, R. M., & Somerville, L. H. (2011). Braking and accelerating of the adolescent brain. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 21(1), 21–33. [Paper]
4. Pfeifer, J. H., & Allen, N. B. (2012). Arrested development? Reconsidering dual-systems models of brain function in adolescence and disorders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(6), 322–329. [Paper]
5. Willoughby, T., Good, M., Adachi, P. J. C., Hamza, C., & Tavernier, R. (2013). Examining the link between adolescent brain development and risk taking from a social–developmental perspective. Brain and Cognition, 83(3), 315–323. [Paper]
6. Telzer, E. H., Fuligni, A. J., Lieberman, M. D., & Galván, A. (2013). Meaningful family relationships: neurocognitive buffers of adolescent risk taking. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(3), 374–87. [Paper]

• Steinberg, L. (2008). A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Risk Taking. Developmental Review, 28(1), 1–27. [Paper]