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667 matches found for How People Learn Brain,Mind,Experience,and School Expanded Edition. in 3 Types of Learning and the Developing Brain

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... Types of Learning and the Developing Brain...
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... factors. Chapter 2 discussed the importance of focusing on the cultural factors that influence learning. The committee explained new ways of understanding what culture is and the complex ways it influences development and learning. In this chapter, we examine different types of learning in order to ... the variety of complex processes involved. We then discuss brain development through the life span and changes in the brain that both support learning and occur as a result....
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... In this discussion, we draw on research in education and in social, cultural, and cognitive neuroscience. We build on what was discussed in HPL I1 and other reports that have contributed to a neurobiological account of how brains develop. These sources have explored how both experience and ... environments can fundamentally alter developmental trajectories—both normative and maladaptive—across the life span....
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... TYPES OF LEARNING...
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... types of learning, but researchers have explored this multifaceted construct from a variety of angles. People learn many different kinds of things and use different learning strategies and brain processes in doing so. Consider three scenarios that highlight the wide range of activities and ...
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... 1 As noted in Chapter 1, this report uses the abbreviation “HPL I” for How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition (National Research Council, 2000)....
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... Three Learning Scenarios...
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... geometry class. Her immediate motivation is to do well on a math exam, but she may have other motivations, such as impressing her parents, teachers, and friends, or at least not losing face; maintaining the grade-point average needed for a competitive college application; appreciating that this ... is a prerequisite for learning advanced topics in math and science; seeing the application of the Pythagorean theorem to her interests in computer graphics and game programming; and seeing beauty and ... in the elegant and definitive proofs of the theorem....
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... As she works, Kayla is likely to engage in several types and applications of learning. She will probably learn both key terms and rules: for she will learn that “hypotenuse” is the term for the longest side of a right triangle and how to find the length of any ... using a formula. She will encode the formula in words or a picture so that she can later retrieve the rule for a test. She may learn to create and transform a spatial model that provides an intuitively compelling justification for the theorem. She may learn to link the spatial model to algebraic ... , and she may learn procedures to manipulate this symbolic notation to provide a formal proof of the theorem. She will learn to apply the Pythagorean ...
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... singing, but after some years of experience, she has become interested in learning more sophisticated skills, such as using new chord progressions and picking styles to better reproduce her favorite musicians’ performances and craft her own compositions. She has engaged in motor learning to ... her finger work, perceptual learning to pick out chord progressions from recordings, and observational learning by watching others’ live and recorded performances. Practice and regimentation figure prominently in her training. Her playing has improved considerably with individual lessons ... her accompanying efforts to use both verbal and example-based instruction to improve....
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... The third scenario is Foldit,3 a computer-based game in which players learn to find solutions to the notoriously difficult problem of protein folding. (Figure 3-1 is an illustration of what a Foldit learner-player sees.) ...
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... available (Cooper et al., 2010). Scientists can analyze the best solutions found by players to determine whether they can be applied to understanding or manipulating proteins in the real world. For example, in 2011, Foldit players, who include retirees and citizens of more than 13 countries, as ...
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... that can speed up a biosynthetic reaction used in a variety of drugs, including cholesterol medications, by 2, 000 percent (Hersher, 2012). Khatib and colleagues (2011) studied the strategies that 57, 000 Foldit players used to achieve these successes and found ...
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... create new tools, in this case computer software “recipes.” They also learn collaboratively by forming teams, sharing specific solutions and general software recipes, distributing tasks among the team members, and regularly updating one another on their failures and successes....
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... These scenarios give a sense of the range of functions and processes involved in learning; they illustrate the complexity of learning to solve even fairly straightforward challenges. Contexts matter, as do ... variety of factors that influence learners’ motivations and approaches and the range of strategies and processes learners can recruit. We explore these issues further in this and later chapters....
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... We will return to these three scenarios to illustrate some of the basic universal types of learning researchers have investigated. We emphasize that these are not discrete functions that operate independently but are aspects of complex, ... learning processes....
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... Basic Types of Learning...
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... There are many types of learning, and as the scenarios illustrated, they often operate in concert. In this section, we describe several important types, chosen to acquaint the reader with ... range, diversity, and dynamic nature of learning, rather than to provide a comprehensive taxonomy of learning types. We begin with forms of learning that may be considered ... “knowledge lean” such as the learning of habits and patterns and move toward more complex, “knowledge-rich” forms of learning such as inferential learning. The knowledge-rich types may be implicit, ... outside the learners’ conscious awareness and requiring limited verbal mediation. More explicit learning would include learning with models and learning executed with the learner’s intention....
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... Research on types of learning is often conducted in laboratory settings where an effort is made to simplify the learning task and “strip away” nuances that reflect specific contexts. Often, participants in these studies are from cultures that are Western, educated, ... , rich, and democratic, which may limit the generalizability of findings to people who live in different cultural contexts (see Chapter 1 and Appendix C on the WEIRD problem). In the real world, learning situations almost always involve multiple learning processes and always are influenced ... context and by the learner’s own characteristics and preferences....
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... Habit Formation and Conditioning...
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... Habits are behaviors and thought patterns that become engrained and feel fluent in particular contexts (Wood et al., 2002). Habits can be positive (e.g.,...
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... making healthy snack choices or double-checking one’s math homework), or they can be harmful (e.g., skipping meals and instead grabbing a candy bar from the vending machine, or giving up when one’s math homework seems difficult). Both learning and unlearning of habits occur gradually ... usually unconsciously, though one can become aware of one’s habits and work to reinforce or change them mindfully. Habits tend to be self-reinforcing; because they achieve some short-term goal and are enacted relatively ...
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... The gradual learning and unlearning of habits follows principles of conditioning, a nonconscious form of learning in which one automatically adjusts one’s decisions and ... when particular and familiar contextual cues or triggers are present. These decisions and behaviors can be strengthened when they are closely followed by rewards; for example, when the candy bar tastes good and gives an energy rush (even ...
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... The probability and time horizon of rewards also matters. For example, Martina may not notice any difference in her playing right away after she starts practicing ... , and she may be tempted to give up before she experiences the reward. Or, the diligent student checking her math homework may not perceive the reward for ... not count. It might be thought that habits will become strongest when the behavior is always rewarded—when Martina’s progress is steady and the math student always earns praise—but predictable rewards actually reduce the durability of habits. That is, bad habits are often harder to ... when they are only intermittently rewarded, and the benefits of good habits may seem unclear when one takes the reward for granted. For example, if a child’s tantrums are occasionally ... a parent who “caves in,” then the tantrum habit may resist extinction. The child learns that she might possibly be rewarded for a tantrum and so becomes more persistent. Similarly, though Martina may need to push herself to continue practicing nightly, on the night when she suddenly makes a ...
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... People often think that they are in rational control of their behaviors and that they act the way they do because they have made a conscious decision. However, the prevalence of habit-driven acts shows that much of our ... is not consciously chosen. Both negative habits such as obsessively checking one’s cell phone for messages and positive habits such as morning exercises are frequently initiated without a conscious decision to engage in the activity: one begins before fully ...
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... that establishing a new, good habit might initially take effort and significant application of will power. As Martina works on her guitar playing, she develops good habits for holding the guitar with the neck pointed ... rather than down, sitting with a straight back, and holding the pick loosely enough for it to have some play, habits that are critical for her growth in skill. Over time these behaviors need to become ... , rather than deliberate, if she is to have sufficient mental resources left over to learn new pieces and techniques....
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... successful learning habits, such as listening attentively, creating outlines before writing, or periodically summarizing material that is read, and jump to the conclusion that they are not trying hard to learn. But these habits of learning take effort initially and only gain momentum over time. ... acquired, they can become second nature to the learner, freeing up attentional resources for other, more cognitively demanding aspects of a task....
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... Although conditioning is an adaptive learning process, sometimes it can lead to undesirable consequences, as in some acquired taste aversions, or in the case of abused children who learn ...
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... Conditioned learning is so basic to survival and adaptation that it extends beyond just mental processing to also include adaptive patterns of processing in the body. For example, there is evidence ...
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... 4 One of the characteristics of habit learning is that it is gradual. However, classical conditioning is not always gradual. Even a single exposure to a taste that later results in a stomach ...
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... property of humans and of all animals. It is not only our minds that are shaped by experience; even our bodies are....
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... Observational Learning...
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... People also learn by observing and modeling others’ behavior, attitudes, or emotional expressions, with or without actually imitating the behavior or skill. Humans’ talent, ... among animals, for observational learning has been called “no-trial learning” (Bandura, 1965) because it is even faster than the one-trial learning observed in animals that have a strong built-in tendency to form certain associations ... (e.g., between the taste of a food and a subsequent stomach ache). Learning by observation allows the learner to add new behaviors to his repertoire while minimizing the costs of trial-and- ... learning, and it often can proceed without any explicit feedback....
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... Learning by observation is a sophisticated skill requiring advanced cognitive capacities for imitation, interpretation, and inference (Blackmore, 2000). It requires the learner to observe something that may not be immediately visible (such as an attitude or recipe), and ... out how to reproduce what she has observed. Martina likely learns about how to improve aspects of her guitar playing through watching and listening carefully as her teacher plays, even if neither she nor the teacher could describe in words every aspect of what she is learning....
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... for learning by observation underscores the importance of the social milieu of the learner, a connection that has long been established. Studies by Bandura and colleagues beginning in the 1960s established the role of observational learning and social modeling in learning and motivation (Bandura, 1989; ... Bandura et al., 1961, 1963). The researchers found that for modeling to be a successful learning method, learners must not only pay attention to the ... components of the modeled behavior but also ignore irrelevant features of the behavior or skill; they must also be able to remember and replicate what they have observed. The Foldit players in our third learning scenario benefit from observational learning as they follow both general ... and particular solutions they see their peers do. They organize teams, online forums, and recipe repositories specifically to promote their own observational learning....
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... Various factors may influence observational learning. For example, an individual’s perception of his own potential role and goal with respect to the behavior being observed influences how well he reproduces the learning behavior (Lozano et al., 2006; Zacks et al., 2001). ... such as teachers or parents but also from peers (Schultz et al., 2007). Peer observation is a key source of information about descriptive norms: standards for conduct among socially related people, which are ac-...
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... quired by seeing how peers actually do behave. By contrast, injunctive norms describe how people should behave and are traditionally provided by higher authorities. Both descriptive and injunctive norms contribute to learning in social settings....
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... effect of increasing littering because it suggests a descriptive norm that littering is commonly tolerated (Cialdini et al., 1990). Teachers and parents frequently lament that students seem to pay more attention to what their peers do than to advice given by more authoritative voices. However, ... tendency to favor descriptive norms has been harnessed by the “peer learning” approach, which encourages learners to interact with and teach each other (Crouch and Mazur, 2001; Slavin, 2016). Understanding of descriptive norms highlights the need to establish classroom cultures that ... high-quality peer learning, especially through descriptive norms (Hurley and Chater, 2005)....
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... noted that the children’s observational learning differed, depending on their cultural community as well as their degree of exposure to Western schooling (in the case of the Guatemalans). In this study, the Mayan children were more likely to watch intently as the other child was given instruction, ...
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... Implicit Pattern Learning...
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... extended exposure to a pattern sufficient for unconscious recognition of regularities in an otherwise irregular context, without conscious attention and reflection (Willingham et al., 1989). Statistical learning is observed in...
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... many species and across age groups in humans, and it is relatively unrelated to IQ; even infants can do it (Cleeremans, 1996). In a 1996 study, researchers exposed 8-month-old infants to a 2-minute, ... , monotone stream of speech that was random except for a repeated pattern of several nonsense words made up of three syllables (e.g., “bi-da-ku”) (Saffran et al., 1996). Even ...
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... Language learning is a good example of statistical learning because people spontaneously and without conscious effort use the regularities that language contains to produce their own utterances (Bybee and McClelland, 2005). Imagine hearing a ... snid his cousin,” basing your verb form on other similar irregular verbs such as “hide→hid,” “slide→slid” and “bite→bit.” You might even say, “he snode his cousin,” but you probably would not say “snood,” “snade,...
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... Learning patterns without feedback generally requires extended experience with an environment and is gradual. The regularities learned in this fashion may not be easily verbalized because they are not the result of explicit hypothesis formation ... a learner can extract patterns from an environment without a teacher or parent providing feedback. In this environment, 80 circles varying in size and color are distributed in distinctive clusters. Even if none of the circles is categorized or given a label, it is possible to see that they fall into ... , the category bird encompasses several properties that are correlated with each other, such as nesting in trees, laying eggs, flying, singing, and eating insects. Other categories such as snakes and fish have different constellations of correlated properties (Rosch and Mervis, 1975). Learners ... through observation over time; even very young children recognize, for example, that it would be a strange, improbable animal that borrows hissing and scales from snakes but feathers and chirping from birds....
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... Perceptual and Motor Learning...
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... We have seen that some types of learning are unconscious and some require deliberate intention. Perceptual and motor learning are ways that an individual learns skills primarily through sensory experiences. This type of learning may take place without the ...
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...FIGURE 3-2 Pattern recognition.NOTE: Imagine a world that contained these 80 circles that vary in their size and color. Individuals are able to assign clusters to the circles without receiving any feedback. For example, they may cluster the circles by their ...
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...between major and minor chords, practicing a golf or tennis swing, improving one’s skill at smoothly maneuvering a car, or learning (as a dermatologist) to ... between benign and malignant skin growths are all examples of this type of learning. Skills learned this way gradually increase over a protracted course of years, or ...
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... play a guitar chord without a buzzing sound, is often highly specific. That is, if a person who has learned to play guitar is asked to switch which hand strums and which hand fingers the chords, she will suddenly regress to a nearly novice level (Gilbert et al., 2001). This high degree of specificity ... been associated with changes to brain areas that are activated rapidly after an object is shown and are specialized for perception. It is easy to forget how dramatically people’s ...
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...perceptions and actions can be changed by experience because once they have changed, the individual no longer has access to the earlier perception. ...
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...People learn from the world through their senses, but these same senses are changed by that learning. Both perceptual and motor learning can lead to surprisingly robust changes in the perceptual system. A striking demonstration of this is a phenomenon known as the ...
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...As an example, look at the pattern in Figure 3-3 and confirm that the vertical and horizontal striped quadrants appear black and white. Then, alternate between looking at the red and green stripe patterns in Figure 3-4 for 3 minutes, looking at each pattern for 2 to 3 seconds ... a time. Now look back at the pattern of four quadrants in Figure 3-3. The quadrants with the vertical lines should appear red-tinged, and the quadrants with the horizontal lines should appear green-tinged. Celeste McCollough’s explanation, which continues to receive empirical ... , is that there is adaptation in early stages of visual processing in the brain to combinations of orientation and ...
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...-specific reference points to which subsequent colored bars are compared, is surprisingly robust. As little as 15 minutes of exposure to the red and green stripes can make people see color differences in the quadrants lasting for 3.5 months (Jones and Holding, 1975). If you followed the viewing ... above, your experience of the world in just 3 minutes has had a durable and hard-to-suppress influence on how you see it. ...
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...Figures 3-5 and 3-6 show another example of how a very brief experience can rapidly alter future perceptions. Look at Figure 3-5 first, before you view Figure 3-6. ... be able to return to your naïve state of incomprehension. The striking difference between how the images in Figure 3-5 appeared to you before and after the clarifying experience of seeing Figure 3-6 provides a compelling, rapid analog for the greater, often gradually accumulated, power of ...
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...Perceptual-motor learning can also play a large role in the development of academic knowledge. Not only does it support abilities to see and discriminate letters for reading, it also supports what Goodwin (1994) called “professional vision.” Goodwin described the ways in which ... in archeology involves changes to how one perceptually organizes objects of inquiry, such as the texture and color of dirt found at an excavation site. ...
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...FIGURE 3-5 Unaided pattern interpretation.NOTE: Can you identify the object hidden in the upper-left image and the animals in the three black and white images? Try for a few moments, and if you cannot, look at Figure 3-6 for hints. Once you see the Figure 3-6 images, then see the objects in the ...
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...It is possible to organize instructional experiences that maximize people’s abilities to leverage perceptual learning. Kellman and colleagues (2010) developed brief online modules to support perceptual learning in mathematics. Students using the modules make quick decisions for ...
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...FIGURE 3-6 Hints for pattern interpretation in previous figure.NOTE: Once you see the clear cigar, frog, zebra, and penguin in these images, you will easily see them in Figure 3-5. In fact, it may be impossible for you not to see them.SOURCE: Images are from https:/ ... /www.flickr.com/creativecommons and are available under a public domain creative commons license. The photographers are Gabriel González (frog), Laura Wolf (zebra), and nchans (...
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...bers but differing in operators (e.g., 3X + 5 versus –3x + 5), goes with a given graph and which of three graphs goes with a given equation. After choosing an answer, students simply see the correct answer without explanation. The goal is ... have the students see the structure, not explain it. The juxtapositions of the similar equations and similar graphs create contrasting cases as in wine tasting, exploring near contrasts helps people learn to perceive the distinctive features. Twelfth- ... students who completed the module nearly tripled their abilities to translate between graphs and equations, even though they had previously completed algebra. ...
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...The importance of perceptual learning for academic topics can easily be ...
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... underestimated. One reason is that experts may not realize how much of their understanding stems from perceptual learning. As mentioned previously, once one has learned how to see something, it is hard to remember what it looked like ...
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... Learning of Facts...
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... Humans have many reasons to learn facts and information, such as the elements of the periodic table or the factors that ushered in the industrial revolution, and they may do so intentionally or ... realizing it. A single exposure to a striking fact, such as that human and koala fingerprints are highly similar, could be sufficient for a listener to remember and subsequently recall it, though he may forget when and where ...
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... Although fact learning may seem mundane and highly restrictive in what it can mobilize a learner to do, it is a kind of learning at which humans excel, compared to other animals. It allows ... to impart information efficiently to learners by harnessing the power of language. The power and convenience of being able to simply say something to somebody and have it change their behavior is undeniable. A naturalist who tells a hiker about ...
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... Although a fact might be learned in a single exposure or from being told, it is important to note that this apparent efficiency and directness can be misleading. Facts are rarely learned in a single instance, and accurate generalizations are rarely learned from a single example. ... background knowledge already that one example or one instance of exposure can suffice (e.g., the hiker would need to already know a lot about poison and mushrooms to appreciate the information about Amanita phalloides). Moreover, a considerable body of research on memory shows that repeated ... to retrieve facts strengthen memory, particularly if they are spread over time, location, and learning contexts (Benjamin and Tullis, 2010; see Chapter 6)....
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... need not be rote: It is promoted when learners elaborate by connecting the information to be learned with other knowledge they already have (Craik and Tulving, 1975). One could simply try to memorize that Christopher Columbus was born in 1451, or one could connect this fact to others, such as that ... be remembered into related groups makes them easier to retain (Bower et al., 1969), as does forming strong mental images of the information (Sadoski and Paivio, 2001). Taxi...
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... drivers have better memory for street names when they are part of a continuous route than if the street names are presented in random order (Kalakoski and Saariluoma, 2001). All of these results are unified by the notion that facts that are placed into a rich structure are easier ...
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... Learning by Making Inferences...
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... of their world, people often have to make inferences that while not certain to be correct, are necessary to move forward. The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce used the term “abductive reasoning” to describe this type of inference. He described it as forming a possible explanation for a ... of observations. As an example of this type of reasoning, John Couch Adams and Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier inferred that a previously undetected planet of a particular mass must be located beyond Uranus, based on observations ...
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... Chemistry students inferring that substances are “acid” or “base” and hypothesizing possible electrostatic interactions between them is another example of abduction (Cooper et al., 2016). However, abduction is not only ... by scientists. The dog owner who sees dog footprints on the dining room tablecloth, a spilled glass of wine, and an empty hotdog bun is using abduction when she assumes the worst. Even modern machine-learning systems have shown that abductive inference is ... for making efficient learning possible. Such systems can inspect their world and infer in human-like ways which processes created the objects they see. When they use abductive reasoning, they can learn more from less data and ...
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... Model building is an important special case of abductive inference that people use when seeking to understand complex phenomena. Educators and others often use models to teach and explain. A three-dimensional pictorial, diagrammatic, or animated model of the Earth, Moon, and Sun can help ... grasp how night-day, tidal, and seasonal cycles are generated. Adults may often rely on established models such as the circle of fifths in music theory, but people also develop ... own models in many circumstances, for example to try to understand the most economical way to manage their home heating system. Models are powerful tools for making inferences in novel situations, but almost all ...
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... system.NOTE: When a new character (the well-drawn black character in the upper left) is shown to a machine-learning system, the system infers which handwriting strokes were involved in producing the character—the red, green, and blue strokes on the left. By inferring these strokes, the system is ... to both produce new instances of a character (shown on the upper right) when shown only a single example and correctly categorize new instances of the character (imperfect instances shown in lower right).SOURCE: Lake et al. (2015, Fig. 1). ...
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... that go well beyond the originally experienced situations. For example, if a learner has a model of water as being composed of molecules whose random movements increase with the water’s temperature, then he might be able to predict that a drop of food coloring will diffuse faster in hot ...
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... (flat) Earth because they live on the top portion of the pancake! A typical strategy for addressing this sort of misconception is to first understand what the students’ model is (Osbourne ...
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...FIGURE 3-8 Children’s mental models of the Earth.NOTE: Elementary school-age children were asked a series of questions about the shape of the Earth. Their responses to these questions were inconsistent: Many children said ...
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... and Freyberg, 1985), then to present challenges to that model by raising analogies and special cases, and eventually to offer improved models (Brown and Clement, 1989; Chi, 2009)....
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... Because the models that people use to help them reason and act are often implicit, children and adults rarely critique their own models. People may only discover that alternative models for a situation are even possible when they encounter one. ... example, two common but incompatible models for home heat control are the “valve model” and the “feedback model” (Kempton, 1986). According to the valve model, the temperature at which the thermostat is set determines how hard ... heat. That is, higher temperature settings make the furnace run harder, much as further depressing a gas pedal on a car makes the engine rev up more and more. According to the feedback model, the thermostat sets the threshold below which the furnace turns on, but the furnace runs at a constant rate....
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... These different models drive very different home heating behaviors. If two people come home to a 55 °F home and would like it to be 65 °F, the valve theorist might set the thermostat to 75 °F because she wants the house to warm up quickly, whereas the ... higher than 65 °F will not make the house warm up to 65 °F any faster. Applying the common but inaccurate valve model wastes both energy and money....
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... people are wrong but because of culture differences. What is considered rude behavior in a business meeting, which direction to push or pull a saw, and conceptions of time reflect varying models that are neither correct nor incorrect. A study that illustrates this point examined views of the future ... U.S. residents and members of the Aymara people of the Andes region (Núñez and Cooperrider, 2013). The researchers found that whereas the U.S. residents tended to conceive of the future as spatially in front of them, the Aymara ... conceived of it as spatially behind them (perhaps because it is invisible). Such differences can cause misunderstanding and miscommunications when a member of one culture comes to a new culture; these problems occur not because of weak cognitive capabilities but because of ... cultural mismatch of models. Learners and instructors may not recognize the extent to which their models are not shared (Pronin et al., 2002)....
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... Despite the potential for misunderstanding, it is difficult to imagine an area of advanced human creative or scholarly pursuit that does not involve models: the artist’s model of ... and analogous colors, the medical model of blood sugar–insulin regulation, the historian’s use of Marxist accounts of class struggles, the ... helix model of DNA, and the physicist’s model of atomic and subatomic particles are just a few examples. The power of model-based learning in education has been showcased in the Next Genera-...
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... tion Science Standards and Common Core Mathematics standards5 because models make it easier for learners to describe, organize, explain, predict, and communicate to others what they are learning....
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... organize a wealth of observations, sometimes early learners are not as convinced of the value of models because they may seem speculative, indirect, and invisible. This student resistance can be reduced by facilitating better learning of and with models through use of spatial representations, diagrams, ... animations, and interactive computer simulations (see Chapter 6)....
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... using models suggested by others, can be a beneficial activity for learners (VanLehn et al., 2016). The value of constructing models for understanding and organizing material has been associated with specific learning approaches, including discovery learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-based ... , learning by invention, learning by doing, and constructivism. In each of these approaches learners are encouraged to either discover for themselves or explore with guidance the applicable rules, ... , sometimes learning how to program just so that they can create tools to help them play the game better (Khatib et al., 2011). Likewise, Schwartz and colleagues (2005) showed that if children are prompted by a teacher to use mathematics, they could use their mathematical knowledge to model the ... causal relationship between distance and weight to determine balance on a scale....
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... example, someone making yogurt for the first time might want to determine experimentally how the fat content of milk affects the firmness, acidity, and smoothness of the yogurt. In a pure case of discovery learning, this cook would develop the question, experimental methods, measures, and analyses. ... , without some guidance, beginning learners may not know enough to ask good questions or identify critical variables, and they may become frustrated because of lack of progress (Mayer, 2004; Spencer, 1999). Research has shown that allowing learners to experiment on their ...
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... Guided, or assisted, discovery learning is an approach in which the educator provides a level of guidance tailored so that the task is at a level of difficulty that fits the learner. (...
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... 5 See http://www.nextgenscience.org/faqs [December 2016] and http://www.corestandards.org [May 2017]....
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... the 1930s). Ways to do this include providing just-in-time access to critical knowledge, worked-out examples, assistance with hypothesis generation, and advice as needed. This approach allows learners to take ownership of the construction of their own knowledge. Evidence suggests that learners who ... types of learning resources, rather than learning by rote, are more likely to retain the knowledge beyond the original context of instruction (Lee and Anderson, 2013)....
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... Integrating Types of Learning...
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... Most learning experiences involve multiple types of learning, not just one. For example, collaborative learning and problem solving in teams would engender learning by observation, feedback, facts, rules, and models, as well as possibly other types of learning. At ... same time, research supports the principle that different situations and pedagogical strategies promote different types of learning. Before a teacher or learner can design an ideal learning situation, she has to decide ... , rather than massing all practice at a single time; practicing retrieval of memorized information, rather than just studying the information again; and exposing learners to materials in different settings. By contrast, techniques focused on promoting transfer to new situations include comparing and ... multiple instances of concepts; having students reflect on why a phenomenon is or is not found; and spending time developing powerful models, rather than asking learners to simply repeat back what they are told. Chapter 5 discusses in more detail ...
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... LEARNING AND THE BRAIN...
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... One of the most striking advances in learning sciences in the past 15 years has been in understanding the protracted course of brain development, which begins in utero and continues well into adulthood. Several reports have examined the research on ... development and the implications for learning. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000) drew attention to evidence that infants are born able and ready to learn, that early childhood...
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... experiences and relationships are critical to development, and that individual biology and social experiences are equally influential in determining developmental outcomes. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A ... Foundation (Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015) and a review of the literature by Leisman and colleagues (2015) identified key findings from recent research on early brain development as it affects lifelong learning. Among these findings are ...
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... Experience and genetics both contribute to observed variability in human development....
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... The human brain develops from conception through the early 20s and beyond in an orderly progression. Vital and autonomic functions develop first, then cognitive, motor, sensory, and perceptual processes, with complex integrative processes and value-driven and ...
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... Early adversity can have important short- and long-term effects on the brain’s development and other essential functions....
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... Prenatal and Lifelong Brain Development and Maturation...
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... brain has more of these structural elements than it needs. This development continues after birth: the brain increases fourfold in size during the preschool years and reaches approximately 90 percent of adult brain volume by age 6 (Lenroot and Giedd, 2006). Beginning in early childhood, this explosion in ...
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... Although vigorous growth continues, the synapses and neurons are also pruned, a process that continues until after puberty. This pruning occurs in a specific way: the synapses that are continually used ... this period are retained, while those that are not used are eliminated (see Low and Cheng, 2006, for more on synaptic pruning). The removal of unnecessary or unused synapses and neurons improves the “networking” capacity ... the brain and the efficiency of the cortex (Chechik et al., 1999). Because this pruning is influenced by environmental factors, the developing child’s ... determine which synapses will be strengthened and which will not, laying a critical foundation for future development and learning (see Box 3-1). Just as strategic placement and pruning of plants yields a healthy garden, a balance between strengthening of some ... and pruning of others fosters healthy brain development: having more neurons left alive is not a better outcome....
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...BOX 3-1 Critical and Sensitive Periods in Development ...
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...Landmark vision studies by Wiesel and Hubel (1965) helped to define and differentiate the concepts of critical and sensitive periods for early cognitive development. These studies defined critical periods of development as times in which the brain requires certain ... periods are similar to critical periods but less fixed. For example, it is thought that both a loving relationship with a caretaker early in infancy and throughout toddlerhood and early exposure to language are essential for healthy brain development. Yet the boundaries are fuzzier for the ... time periods in which exposure to strong relationships and good language are essential; the effects of deprivation and possibilities for catching up later are imprecise. There is also mounting evidence that adolescence is a second sensitive period for exposure to high- ... social relationships (Crone and Dahl, 2012). ...
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...Both critical and sensitive periods influence later development: an interruption (e.g., insufficient or inappropriate stimulation) during these times leads to ...
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... (usually rats) has consistently shown that exposure to alcohol in adolescence greatly increases the risk for alcohol overconsumption in adulthood and that this effect is exacerbated under conditions of social isolation. In rats with genetic predispositions to mental disorders similar to ... in humans, both alcohol consumption and social isolation increase the risk of developing the disorder. Though these effects cannot be explored through causal experiments on humans for ... to the same adolescent sensitivity in humans: those who begin drinking alcohol in adolescence are more likely to abuse substances later in life, and among people with predispositions to mental illness, social isolation and substance abuse in adolescence can be triggers (see Silveri, 2012). ...
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...Environmental stimulation and training can affect brain development throughout the life span (Andersen, 2003; Diamond et al., 1964; Leisman, 2011). The organization of cortical and subcortical signaling circuits, which are integrated into networks ... , as the learner acquires new knowledge, regions of the cortex develop specialization of function. This is known as experience-dependent learning (see Andersen, 2003; Greenough et al., 1987; Leisman et al., 2014). These structures and associated circuits underlie the neural systems for complex cognitive ... socioemotional functions such as learning and memory, self-regulatory control, and social relatedness, as discussed in a 2009 National Academies report (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009). ...
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...Beginning in the fourth decade of life, changes occur in both cortical thickness and connectivity that seem to be the start of the cognitive decline often observed in aging adults. These changes occur after a period during which the ...
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...FIGURE 3-9 Mean cortical thickness across the adult life span.NOTE: The figure shows the mean cortical thickness in the right and left hemispheres for three age groups (individual participant data pooled into respective age groups).SOURCE: Fjell et al. (2009, Fig. 2). ...
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... figure shows, the brains of healthy middle-aged adults (40–60 years) have less cortical thickness compared to the brains of healthy individuals under 40 years of age, though it is not clear whether this is the result of decreases in brain tissue or, for example, lower ...
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... Brain Adaptation in Response to Learning...
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..., exchanging information through extraordinarily complex networks (Sporns, 2011). There is no learned skill that uses only one part of the brain, and there is no one part of the brain with a singular function. Instead, the brain systems that support learning and academic skills are the same brain ... that are integral to personhood—that is, to social, cognitive, emotional, and cultural functioning and even to health and physiological survival (Farah, 2010; Immordino-Yang and Gotlieb, 2017)....
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... Moreover, learners dynamically and actively construct their own brain’s networks as they navigate through social, cognitive, and physical contexts. It has been assumed that brain development always leads the way in cognitive development and learning, but in fact the brain both ... and is shaped by experience, including opportunities the individual has for cognitive development and social interaction. The reciprocal interactions in learning between the dynamically changing brain and culturally situated experience form a ... of which are not yet fully understood. A person’s brain will develop differently depending on her experiences, interpretations, needs, culture, and thought patterns (Hackman and Farah, 2009; Immordino-Yang and Fischer, 2010; Kitayama and Park, 2010). In addition, features internal to the brain&# ... ;s development and structure will constrain the way a person engages with the world....
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... finding is that adaptation can take place in a time frame far shorter than has been traditionally associated with evolution. Written language and written, symbolic mathematics are two classes of skill with which the human species has not collectively had long experience. Numerous archeological ... for both written language and mathematics date back to the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, but it is likely that neither has existed for more than 6, 000 years. Despite this relatively ... history, specific neural regions are implicated in reading and...
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... mathematical reasoning (Amalric and Dehaene, 2016; Dehaene and Cohen, 2011). How might this occur?...
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... Sharing and Recycling of Neural Tissue...
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... First, people solve new cognitive tasks by reusing brain regions and circuits that likely originally evolved for other purposes (Anderson, 2015a; Bates, 1979). Research has shown that just as multiple types of learning blend in practice, circuits in the brain also combine in ... mechanisms, but seemingly very different types of learning behavior share brain circuitry. For example, the hippocampus is heavily involved in fact and rule learning as well as spatial navigation, but it is also centrally important for statistical learning (see section above on “Implicit ... Learning”; also see Schapiro and Turk-Browne, 2015). This finding may seem surprising, but it is consistent with the fact that the hippocampus is involved whenever learning requires ... different events or features be bound together into a single representation (see Chapter 4). This possibility for combining and recombining circuits is key to adaptation....
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... subjects were able to recruit a particular subregion of the visual cortex—a portion associated with constructing spatial representations and relations for hearing and touch—when they were performing spatial tasks like reporting where in space they heard a sound (Renier et al., 2010). ... has shown that activity in the spatial reasoning part of the visual cortex increased with blind study subjects’ accuracy in solving auditory and tactile spatial tasks. Likewise, when sighted adults are taught to read braille, the brain regions that normally process visual, not tactile, ... is therefore more about the character or logic of thought than it is about the modality, such as visual or tactile (Bates, 1979; Immordino-Yang and Damasio, 2007)....
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... Second, the brain is sufficiently adaptive that its parts become “tuned,” over an individual’s life span, in response to needs and experiences. Neuroscientists use the term “tuning” to describe their observation that neural...
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... are strongest when the stimulation is at an ideal level, as the tones produced by the strings of a musical instrument correspond to their tautness and the position and angle at which they are struck. Neurons become tuned over time to respond in particular ways, based on the kinds of stimuli that ... arrived and on how the learner has engaged with these stimuli to build experiences and skills....
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... are organized differently. For example, the brains of people who can read show greater specialization for words than those of illiterate individuals, and learning to read as an adult engages a broader set of brain regions than does learning when young (Dehaene et al., 2010). In another striking example, ... Elbert and colleagues (1995) measured brain activity in the sensory cortex of violinists as their fingers were lightly touched and found greater activity in the sensory cortex for the left hand than the right hand. This is logical because a violinist needs to control each of the ... on his left hand individually, whereas the job of the right hand, bowing, does not require manipulation of the individual fingers....
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... intertwines three temporal scales of adaptation: (1) the slow evolution of bodies, including brains, in response to challenges to survive and reproduce; (2) the creation over human evolution of cultural innovations like stone tools, pencils, calculators, and online tutoring systems; and (3) ... adaptation of an individual’s brain over a lifetime to meet the demands of one’s culture and one’s particular role within that culture....
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... past may provide hints as to what can be learned with efficiency. Humans seem to be born with certain biases,6 such as for learning human faces and voices (Cohen-Kadosh and Johnson, 2007) or attending to objects that have long evolutionary histories of being dangerous, such as snakes and spiders. ... (Newer objects such as guns and electrical outlets, whose risks are culturally specific, do not elicit comparable reactions) (LoBue, 2014; Öhman and Mineka, 2001; Thrasher and LoBue, 2016). Because of these evolutionary biases, situating material to be learned in relation to the kinds of objects ... contexts to which our brains have evolved to attend, such as food, reproduction, and social interactions, may improve learning outcomes....
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... 6 Bias in the context of learning refers to a learner’s capacity to take into account knowledge she has already acquired in processing new information; see Chapter 5....
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... memories for objects encountered during first-person navigation, such as finding one’s way to one’s office (Barab et al., 2005; Dunleavy and Dede, 2013). Likewise, some computer-based dialogue tutoring systems are designed to recreate the kinds of interaction that a human student and ...
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...-old children in America are rarely trusted with sharp knives (Rogoff, 2003). Learning trajectories are often massively influenced by the expectations and training practices within a community. Individuals are not infinitely adaptive, but the extent to which they can rise to cultural expectations when ... with opportunities and support is impressive....
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... Evidence of Learning-Related Changes in the Brain Throughout the Life Span...
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... be able to use some developmental neuroscience findings to improve instructional practice. For example, research suggests that middle and secondary school students may benefit from instruction that takes advantage of abilities (such as multitasking and planning, self-awareness, and social cognitive ...
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... The sequence of cortical maturation in childhood seems to parallel developmental milestones and is reflected in behavior, with motor and sensory systems maturing earliest (Keunen et al., 2017; Lyall et al., 2016; Stiles and Jernigan, 2010). After a pre-pubertal period of cortical ... (i.e., an increase in the number of neurons and thus the density of gray matter), there is a post-pubertal period of cortical thinning. In general, these processes are the physiological ways in ... children’s and adults’ relationships and opportunities—including learning opportunities—and habits of mind directly shape the anatomy and connectivity of the brain. Current developmental neuroscience is largely focused on understanding how ...
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...tion and regulation are formed and maintained and how they subtly change with age and experience. In humans, for example, cultural experiences with particular kinds of social values and interactions shape the networks of key regions of ... brain involved in social emotional and cognitive processing (see, e.g., Kitayama et al., 2017). Social engagement and cognitive activity help even elderly adults maintain a healthy brain and mind (see Chapter 8). ...
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... development persist beyond the first 3 years of age and well into the second decade of life and beyond—that is, throughout the period of formal schooling for most Americans. At the same time, extensive research has revealed that the brain continues to undergo structural changes as a function of ...
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...Since HPL I was released, scientists have learned much more about how brain development constrains and supports behavior and learning and about how opportunities to learn in turn influence brain development. For example, research with rats has shown that effects of environmental ... can be observed even in mature rats and that they persist well after the adult rats are returned to less-stimulating environments (Briones et al., 2004). ...
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...Most of the research regarding the effects of opportunities to learn on changes in brain structure has been conducted in rodents because conducting such studies with humans is obviously more challenging. However, limited research with ...
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...BOX 3-2 Evidence of Expertise Development and Changes in the Brain ...
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... knowledge, there are significant changes in their brain activity, brain structure, or both that complement the rapid increase in processing speed and effort needed to use the acquired knowledge (see Chapter 5). Changes that can be detected in gray and white matter provide one form of evidence for ... connection between knowledge acquisition and brain structure. For example, Draganski and colleagues (2006) found increased gray matter in the cortices of medical students who had studied extensively for their exams over a 3-month period, ...
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...participants who had not experienced this intensive study period. Findings like this suggest a bidirectional relationship between learning and brain development: Learning promotes brain development, and brain development promotes learning. ...
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... have found that experts in particular disciplines (such as sports or music) have an increase in the density of both gray matter (containing neurons) and white matter (containing neurons’ connections to other neurons) that connect task-related regions of their brains, in comparison with ... (Chang, 2014). These changes appear to be associated with long-term training (Roberts et al., 2013). For example, Bengtsson and colleagues (2005) found substantial differences between concert pianists and nonmusicians in the white matter architecture of specific cortical areas. ... Scholtz and colleagues (2009) found that similar differences resulted from training in the art of juggling. They compared the brains of people who did not know ... to juggle, one-half of whom subsequently participated in a 6-week juggling course and one-half of whom did not. The differences before and after training in the two groups did not correlate significantly with the progress the trainees made or their performance levels after the training ... the specific training outcome. Increases in gray matter volume in the frontal lobe have also been found in elite judo players (Jacini et al., 2009) and skilled golfers (Jäncke et al., 2009). ...
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...An important point that follows from these findings and is worth reinforcing is that cortical thickness cannot be assumed to be a good measure of expertise, knowledge, and skills. This type of neuroimaging ... (brain images from a single imaging session for each subject) is collected at a specific time, and therefore it is difficult to determine whether the observed activation is stable and whether it is attributable to the experimental condition or ... , or even hydration level (Poldrack, 2000). A single measure of cortical thickness thus provides only limited information about this complex process and may not correlate with skill level achieved. ...
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... experience (i.e., a lack of opportunity to learn) influences brain development (and therefore learning), researchers have studied the effects of early deprivation experienced by children exposed to institutional rearing. Neuroimaging ... learning opportunities of specific kinds (psychosocial, linguistic, sensory, etc.) leads to a dramatic reduction in overall brain volume (both gray and white matter) and to a reduction in electrical activity (Nelson et al., 2009). However, these researchers found that when children who were reared in ...
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... Consistent with the important role of culture and context underscored in Chapter 2, research has demonstrated both culturally unique and culturally universal neurological structures and functions (Ambady and Bharucha, 2009; Kitayama and Uskul, 2011). It is now known that repeated ... in cultural practices reinforces neural pathways involved in completing such tasks, ultimately leading to changes in neural structure and function (Kitayama and Tompson, 2010)....
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..., illustrates this point. Even before HPL I, research in psychology had suggested that abacus experts use a mental image of an abacus to remember and manipulate large numbers while solving problems (Hatta and Ikeda, 1988). Hanakawa and colleagues (2003) examined the neural correlates underlying ... calculations in abacus experts and found that these experts do in fact recruit different brain areas for mental operations tasks than do non-experts. Another example is long-term ... in culturally embedded behavioral practices such as meditation, which leads to long-lasting changes in neural structure and function and may in some cases offset age-related cortical thinning (Braboszcz et al., 2013; Creswell and Lindsay, 2014; Davidson and Lutz, 2008; Lazar et al., ...
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... still being actively investigated, these models all emphasize that even in older age there can be flexibility in how neural networks work together and that task demands can influence the nature of those network connections. Moreover, this research emphasizes the fact that earlier life experiences ... set the stage for the ability to compensate effectively (Cabeza, 2002; Kensinger, 2016; Park and Reuter-Lorenz, 2009; Reuter-Lorenz and Cappell, 2008). For example, becoming bilingual when young seems to be associated with more robust cognitive development (Bialystok, 2017) and ... cognitive resilience into old age (Bialystok et al., 2016). The lifelong, persistent demand involved in handling two language systems pushes the cognitive...
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... TABLE 3-1 Models of Age-Related Change in Brain Structures That Affect Learning...
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... Older adults often recruit regions bilaterally (from both left and right cerebral hemispheres), especially within the prefrontal cortex, under conditions where younger adults only recruit regions unilaterally (from ...
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... Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (Reuter-Lorenz and Cappell, 2008)...
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... Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (Park and Reuter-Lorenz, 2009)...
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... Builds on the hemispheric asymmetry reduction model of Cabeza (2002) and the compensation-related utilization of neural circuits hypothesis of Reuter-Lorenz and Cappell (2008)....
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... Emphasizes way that earlier life experiences (genetic predisposition, education, life stressors, etc.) can increase or decrease availability of compensatory resources in older age....
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... boundaries to accommodate this social and linguistic need (Kroll et al., 2012). The committee discusses age-related changes in learning further in Chapter 7....
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... not been directly linked to learning throughout the life span, we note several points from this research. First, although the brain is able to change and adapt throughout the life span, environmental influences in the early years lay the neural scaffolding for later learning and development (Amedi et ... ., 2007; Keuroghlian and Knudsen, 2007). Second, many (though not all) of the age-related changes in brain structure are gradual effects that occur throughout middle age and ... adulthood. That is, not all age-related changes in brain structure are linear effects of age (e.g., Raz et al., 2005, 2010), and changes in structure can begin well before older age (e.g., Bendlin et al., 2010; de Frias et al., 2007). We also note...
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... that the age-related changes in brain structure do not affect all brain regions equally: some regions and networks of the brain are affected more substantially by age than others....
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... Finally, although cortical thickness, mass, and connectivity do appear to decrease with age, older adults are able to compensate for declines in some abilities by recruiting different or additional ... mechanisms. Neural plasticity, which is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself physically and functionally across the life span in response to the environment, individual behavior, thinking, and emotions—in effect, what is colloquially ... “wisdom” (Sternberg, 2004)—may partly explain how older adults are able to compensate (see, e.g., Reuter-Lorenz and Cappell, 2008). Even the earliest studies comparing young and older adults’ neural activation during task performance (e.g., Grady et al., 1994)...
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... In this chapter, we examined some of the diverse types of learning that humans must orchestrate in response to the complex social and cultural environments in which they develop. We emphasized that these types of learning are not discrete functions that operate independently but ... of a complex, interactive process. The learner shapes that process through decisions and capacities to orchestrate his learning, but many aspects of learning occur below the level of consciousness. Different situations, contexts, and ... , for example, or deliberately developing a habit or modeling an observed behavior. We saw that learning is predicated on learners’ understanding and adopting the learning goal....
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... In addition, we have explored structural changes that occur in the brain in response to learning and experience throughout life, as well as the processes characteristic of different life stages. We have noted that environmental influences in the ... developmental years lay the foundation for later learning and development, that synaptic pruning and other neurological developments through adolescence shape and are shaped by the learner’s experiences, and that the brain adapts to age-related ...
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... We have shown that the relation between brain development and learning is reciprocal: learning occurs through interdependent neural networks at the same time that learning and development involve the continuous ...
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... and reshaping of neural connections in response to stimuli and demands. Development of the brain influences behavior and learning, and in turn, learning influences brain development and brain health. We highlight three broad conclusions from this work....
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... CONCLUSION 3-1: The individual learner constantly integrates many types of learning, both deliberately and unconsciously, in response to the challenges and circumstances he encounters. The way a learner integrates learning functions is shaped by his social ...
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... throughout life, following a trajectory that is broadly consistent for humans but is also individualized by every learner’s environment and experiences. It gradually matures to become capable of a vast array of complex cognitive functions and is also malleable in adapting to challenges at ...
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... CONCLUSION 3-3: The relationship between brain development and learning is reciprocal: learning occurs through interdependent neural networks, and at the same time learning and development involves the continuous shaping and reshaping of neural connections in response to stimuli and demands. ... of the brain influences behavior and learning, and in turn, learning influences brain development and brain health....

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