Enhancing Learning: Neuroscience Insights for the Classroom

1. Neuroscience in the Classroom Presentation created by Amelia Warshaw

2. Big Ideas • Automaticity (nonconscious vs. conscious processing) • Multiple Platforms of Input (mixed-media, thematic, and interdisciplinary learning) • Self-Deception (and better test results)

3. A Little Basic Neuroscience

4. Neural Connections and Memory

5. Basic Science • Neurons fired during recall = neurons fired during learning • Repetition  myelination (wrapping in fat cells) which strengthens pathway • Allows for faster and more automatic recall

6. Big Idea #1- Automaticity • Automaticity: point at which something has been so ingrained in brain that recall is automatic and nonconscious. • Automated behaviors are faster, require less work for brain • Michael S. Gazzaniga: “conscious processes are expensive: they require not only a lot of time, but also a lot of memory. Nonconscious processes, on the other hand, are fast and rule-driven.”

7. CreatingAutomaticity • Requires repetition and “drilling” • Creating nonconscious shortcuts through certain centers of the brain means that we can respond quickly to certain stimuli • “Acquiring automaticity”helps us learn new skills and not require new deliberate integration and output every time

8. Examples- Automaticity • Automaticity in everyday life: playing piano, sports • Commercials and marketing create automaticity • Everhadtheexperience of tryingto pick outcold medicine in thepharmacy? Havingtoomanyoptions can make a decisionimpossible. Commercialsaidin thisprocessbecausetheymakethatchoiceautomatic. Obviouslyyou’regoingtochooseNyquilbecauseit’sthe “BestSleepYou’veEverHadWith a Cold… Medicine”

9. Automaticity in theClassroom • Drilling easier test experience • Automatically go through the processes of the problem • Eliminates the “freezing up” that can happen during a test when stress and anxiety block certain pathways

10. Automaticity in theClassroom • Choosing fewer points when teaching students learn more • Giving students too many minute facts and accessory information decreases automaticity and retention

11. Automaticity and the DM • Allowing students to experience and exercise DM pathway strengthens it and makes its engagement more automatic and efficient • Nonconcious and automatic toggling between DM and extrinsic mode

12. Big Idea #2- MultiplePlatforms of Input • Multiple platforms of input create multiple pathways for information recall • Memories are stored in the form of synaptic connections between neurons • The more pathways or triggers linking learned concepts easier to access information.

13. Media • Example of multiple platforms: different kinds of media • Ipads • Anti-war example • Movies • Songs • Newspaper articles • Textbook

14. Thematic and Interdisciplinary Study • Another example of multiple platforms: thematic and interdisciplinary study • “Isolationism vs. Interventionism” example • Coordination History and English departments • The Great Gatsby • While learning about the 1920s and prohibition

15. Big Idea #3- Self-Deception • Robert Trivers’ The Folly of Fools: a look at the evolution of human behavior • The two main factors that determine our behavior are deception and self-deception

16. Study: Self-Deception and “SavingFace” Human tendency to back up our choices and “save face” and justify first decisions Trivers presents a study about chimpanzees asked to choose between a yellow and blue m&m • He found that if the monkeys first chose a blue m&m, if then asked to choose between a red and the rejected yellow m&m, then the chimps would choose the red

17. WhyNotChoose a Yellow M&M? • Subjects felt compelled to justify their rejection of an arbitrary choice • Adaptive value/relevance: Human beings feel compelled to back up their choices (and deny correction) to “save face” and protect their egos

18. SelfDeception in theClassroom • Self-deception barrier to learning • When looking at test results students often blame a “mean teacher” or an “unfair test” and don’t admit to difficulty with material

19. Self-Deception in the Classroom • Suggestion: • Meta cognition: experience of self-awareness (DM engagement) • Build in time for reflection after going over a test • Go over tests as a class • Have students mark mistakes as “silly” or a problem with comprehension • Acknowledging mistakes helps student to avoid self-deception through dismissing whole experience as “unfair”

20. Bibliography • http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/theneuron.html • http://www.psypress.com/groome/figures/ • http://www.brainwaves.com/brain_diagram.html • Trivers, Robert. The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-deception in Human Life. New York, NY: Basic, 2011. Print. • Gazzaniga, Michael S. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2011. Print.