When Certain Matters Must be Learnt?

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Are There Critical Periods to Learning? (1)

When Certain Matters Must be Taught and Learnt?

The influence of the intense synaptogenesis early in life on the adult brain is not yet known, but it is known that adults are less capable of learning certain things. Anyone who starts to learn a foreign language later in life, for example, will in all likelihood always have a “foreign accent”; the virtuosity of a late learner of an instrument will in all probability never equal that of a child practised with the same musical instruction from the age of 5.

Does this mean that there are periods of life when certain tasks can no longer be learned? Or are tasks merely learned more slowly or differently at different times?

For a long time it was believed that the brain loses neurons with age, but the measures opened by new technologies have challenged this certainty. Terry and his colleagues showed that the total number of neurons in each area of the cerebral cortex is not age-dependent but only the number of “large” neurons. Nerve cells shrink, resulting in a growing number of small neurons but the aggregate number of all neurons remains the same.

Certain parts of the brain, like the hippocampus, have recently been found actually to generate new neurons throughout the lifespan. The hippocampus is, among other things, involved in spatial memory and navigation processes (Burgess and O’Keefe, 1996).

Research comparing London taxi drivers with random other citizens suggests a strong relationship between the relative size and activation of the hippocampus, on the one hand, and a good capacity for navigation, on the other; there is a positive correlation between the enlargement of the auditory cortex and the development of musical talent, as there is growth of motor areas of the brain following intense training of finger movements. In the latter case, changes in the neuron network configuration linked to the learning could be measured using brain imaging from the fifth day of training, i.e. after an extremely brief period of learning.

The processes that remodel the brain – neuron synaptogenesis, pruning, development, and modification – are grouped together under the same term: “Brain Plasticity”. Numerous studies have shown that the brain remained plastic throughout the lifespan, in terms of numbers of both neurons and synapses.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 112

Everything Important Is Decided By The Age of Three?

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There Is No Time to Lose!
1st Neuromyths: "Everything Important About The Brain Is Decided By The Age of Three"

If you enter the keywords “birth to three” into a search engine on your computer, you get an impressive number of websites explaining that your child’s first three years are crucial for his/her future development and that practically everything is decided at this age. You will also find numerous commercial products prepared to stimulate your young child’s intelligence, before reaching this all-important threshold age.



Some physiological phenomena that take place during brain development can, indeed, lead to beliefs that the critical learning stages occur between birth and age three. But it can be easily exaggerated and distorted. It takes on mythical status when it is overused by certain policy makers, educators, toy manufacturers, and parents, who overwhelm their children with gymnastics for newborns and stimulating music in tape recorders and CD players attached above the baby’s bed. What are the physiological phenomena that research has uncovered which are relevant to this belief?




The basic component of information processing in the brain is the nerve cell or neuron. A human brain contains about 100 billion neurons.



Each one can be connected with thousands of others, which allows nerve information to circulate intensively and in several directions at a time. Through the connections between neurons (synapses), nerve impulses travel from one cell to another and support skill development and learning capacity. Learning is the creation of new synapses, or the strengthening or weakening of existing synapses.

Compared to an adult, the number of synapses in newborns is low. After two months of growth, the synaptic density of the brain increases exponentially and exceeds that of an adult (with a peak at ten months). There is then a steady decline until age 10, when the “adult number” of synapses is reached. A relative stabilisation then occurs. The process by which synapses are produced en masse is called synaptogenesis. The process by which synapses decline is referred to as pruning. It is a natural mechanism, necessary for growth and development.



For a long time, science believed that the maximum number of neurons was fixed at birth; unlike most other cells, neurons were not thought to regenerate and each individual would then lose neurons regularly. In the same way, following a lesion of the brain, destroyed nerve cells would not be replaced. For the past twenty years, findings have changed this view by revealing hitherto unsuspected phenomena: new neurons appear at any point in a person’s life (neurogenesis) and, in some cases at least, the number of neurons does not fluctuate throughout the lifetime.



That said, synaptogenesis is intense in the very early years of life of a human being. If learning were to be determined by the creation of new synapses – an idea with some intuitive appeal – it is a short step to deduce that it is in the early years of a child when (s)he is most capable of learning. Another version, more current in Europe, is the view that very young children must be constantly stimulated in their first two to three years in order to strengthen their learning capacities for subsequent life. In fact, these claims go well beyond the actual scientific evidence.




An experiment conducted twenty years ago may, however, have fuelled such a myth. Laboratory studies with rodents showed that synaptic density could increase when the subjects were placed in a complex environment, defined in this case as a cage with other rodents and various objects to explore. When these rats were subsequently tested on a maze learning test, they performed better and faster than other rats belonging to a control group and living in “poor” or “isolated” environments (Diamond, 2001). The conclusion was that rats living in “enriched” environments had increased synaptic density and were thus better able to perform the learning task.



The elements were in place to create a myth: a great experiment, rather easy to understand even if difficult to perform, and findings that project the expected outcome.



The experiment, however, took place in the laboratory in highly artificial conditions.It was conducted on rodents. Non-specialists twisted experimental data on rats, obtained with unquestionable scientific precision, and combined it with current ideas concerning human development to conclude that educational intervention, to be more effective, should be co-ordinated with synaptogenesis.

Alternatively, they suggested that, “enriched environments” save synapses from pruning during infancy, or even create new synapses, and thereby contribute to greater intelligence and higher learning capacity. This is a case of using facts established in a valid study to extrapolate conclusions that go well beyond the original evidence.


The limits and lessons in this case are rather clear. There is little human neuroscientific data on the predictive relationship between synaptic density early in life and improved learning capacity. Similarly, little is available regarding the predictive relationship between the synaptic densities of children and adults. There is no direct neuroscientific evidence, for either animals or humans, linking adult synaptic density to greater learning capacity. All of this does not mean that the plasticity of the brain, and synaptogenesis in particular, might not bear some relation to learning but, on the strength of available evidence, the assumptions made in identifying such a determining role for birth-to-three development cannot be sustained.




For further reading, the reader should consult John Bruer’s "The Myth of the First Three Years" (2000). He was the first systematically to contest this myth, which he presented as “rooted in our cultural beliefs about children and childhood, our fascination with the mind-brain, and our perennial need to find reassuring answers to troubling questions”.

Bruer goes back to the 18th century to find its origin: it was already believed that a mother’s education was the most powerful force to map out the life and fate of a child; successful children were those who had interacted “well” with their family. He eliminates one by one the myths based on faulty interpretations of early synaptogenesis.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 111 - 112

What is a “neuromyth”?

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What is a “Neuromyth”?

Science advances through trial and error. Theories are constructed on the basis of observation which other phenomena come to confirm, modify, or refute: another theory, complementary or contradictory to the previous one, is then created, and so the process continues.

This bumpy advance of science is unavoidable but it has its drawbacks. One is that hypotheses which have been invalidated nevertheless leave traces and if these have captured a wider imagination, “myths” take root. These beliefs may have been demolished by science but they prove to be stubbornly persistent and passed on through various media into the public mind.



Neuroscience is inevitably caught up in this phenomenon. Some expressions in the English language confirm this: “number sense”, for example, derives from the research of a German anatomist and physiologist, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). By examining the heads of convicted living criminals and dissecting the brains of deceased ones, Gall established phrenology theory: a particular talent would produce an outgrowth on the brain which pushes on the bone and distorts the skull. By feeling the head, Gall boasted that he could identify the criminal from the honest man, a “maths” person from a “literary” one.

Phrenology has long been superseded, indeed discredited. To be sure, certain areas of the brain are specialised more than others with certain functions. But, contrary to the regions that Gall thought he had identified, it is instead a question of functional specialties (such as image formation, word production, tactile sensibility, etc.) and not of moral characteristics like kindness, combativeness, etc.(1)



Science itself is not solely responsible for the emergence of such myths. It is often difficult to understand all the subtleties of a study’s findings, still more its protocols and methodological details. Nevertheless, human nature is often content with – even takes delight in – quick, simple, and unequivocal explanations. This inevitably leads to faulty interpretations, questionable extrapolations, and, more generally, the genesis of false ideas.

In the next posts, we examines one by one the main myths belonging to brain science, with particular attention given to those most relevant to learning methods. For each myth, a historical look will explain how the idea took hold and then the current state of scientific research on the subject will be reviewed. Ironically perhaps, some myths have actually been beneficial to education in that they provided “justification” for it to diversify. But, mostly they bring unfortunate consequences and must therefore be dispelled.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 110

See Dispelling “Neuromyths” in this blog.

“Reading in a Bilingual Environment”

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The possible Effects of Bilingual Environment on Learning to Read
“Reading in a Bilingual Environment”

A much more difficult issue involves the effects of having to learn English at the same moment you enter the school door.

Learning two or more languages is an extraordinary, complicated cognitive investment for children, that represents a growing reality for huge number of students. Some up-front costs, such as transfer errors and substitutions from one language to the next, are less important than the advantages, if (a very important “if”) the child learn each language well.



The plasticity of the young brain enables young children to attain - with less effort than at any other time - proficiency in more than one language. After puberty, students bring certain advantages to learning language, but the younger child’s brain is superior in several important ways when it comes to learning to speak accent-free languages.

Examining the many issues swirling around bilingualism and learning is dizzying, but three principles dominate:



First, English-language learners who know a concept or word in their first language learn to use it more easily in English, their second, “school” language. In other words, language enrichment at home provides an essential cognitive and linguistic foundation for all learning, and it does not need to be in the school language to be of help to the child. Children who have an impoverished environment in this home language, on the other hand, have no cognitive or linguistic foundation for either the first or the second, school language.



The second principle is similar to the first. Little is more important to learning to read English than the quality of language development in English. Thousand of children enter school with varying degrees of knowledge of English. Systematic efforts to instill both the “new” phonemes of the English language and the new vocabulary of school (and books) need to happen in each classroom for each learner. Connie Juel points out an essential linguistic issue easily missed by teachers in the US: Children who come to school either new to the English language or new to the standard American English dialect spoken in school do not know the very phonemes they are expected to sound out (or induce) in reading. For five years, they “learned to ignore them and listen largely to their own”.





The third principle concerns the age when children become bilingual: the earlier the better for oral and written language development. The neuroscientist Laura-Ann Petitto of Darmouth and her colleagues found that early bilingual exposure (before age three) had a positive effect, with language and reading comparable to those of monolinguals. Further, in imaging studies of adults who had been early bilingual, Petitto’s group found that subjects’ brains processed both languages in overlapping regions, like the brain of monolinguals. By contrast, bilingual adults who had been exposed later to a second language showed a different, more bilateral pattern of brain activation.




Reading never just happens. Not a word, a concept, or a social routine is wasted in the 2000 days that prepared the very young brain to use all the developing parts that go into reading acquisition. It is all there from the start - or not – with consequences for the rest of children’s reading development, and for the rest of their lives.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, pages 105 - 106

The Intelligence Is Changing

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The Intelligence Is Changing

Personal Comment

Are There Only Two or Three or Eight Types of Intelligences?

I do not think so...

Because like “Fyodor Dostoevsky” said: Do not let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex than our subsequent explanations of them.

For me affirm that we have only eight types of intelligence sound like said: “the left hemisphere of our brain only works with unconscious, and the right hemisphere only works with conscious”.




In my opinion: There are so many intelligences how persons exist in our planet. Furthermore the performance of our intelligence change during the day (morning, afternoon, evening), even more though months and years, according our personal situation and life experience.




We must remember the evidence that our performance and behavior in educational task can be severe affected by the way we feel when are seen and judged by others (*).

However these theories are really useful to improve our academic performance or to improve our speeding of learning. Why?
Because...

If the parents and teachers give their children one environment with tolerance and real interest, the students will give them their best performance. So read, increase your knowledge of these theories of intelligence, think about them; and the most important practice with sincerely and love is better for everyone.






(*) UNEQUAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES


In 2004, World Bank economists Karla Hoff and Priyanka Pandey reported the result of a remarkable experiment. They took 321 high-caste and 321 low-caste 11 to 12 year-old boys from scattered rural villages in India, and set them the task of solving mazes.

First, the boys did the puzzles without being aware of each other’s caste. Under this condition the low-caste boys did just as well with the mazes as the high-caste boys, indeed slightly better.


Then, the experiment was repeated, but this time each boy was asked to confirm an announcement of his name village, father’s and grandfather’s names, and caste. After this public announcement of caste, the boys did more mazes, and this time - The performance of the low-caste boys dropped significantly.

This is striking evidence that performance and behavior in an educational task can be profoundly affected by the way we feel and we are seen and judged by others. When we expect to be viewed as inferior, our abilities seen to be diminished.

“The Spirit Level”, Why Equality is Better for Everyone, By Richard Wilkinson and Kate Picket, 2009, page 113

Is There The "Emotional Intelligence"?

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Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? (3)
Is There The "Emotional Intelligence"?

A third theory that challenges the "IQ" conception of intelligence is that of "Emotional Intelligence" or "EQ", first popularised by psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman's 1995 bestseller "Emotional Intelligence: Why It can Matter More than IQ". Goleman argues that a person's emotions play a significant role in thought, making decisions and future success. He defines this form of intelligence as a set of skills that include impulse control, self-motivations, empathy and the ability to relate well to others.



Self-awareness, Goleman argues is the key to being truly emotionally intelligent, because it allow the person to exercise self-control. With sufficient self-awareness, it is possible to develop various coping mechanisms that allow a person to move from a negative emotional state to a more positive one: counting to ten as means of letting the sensation of sudden anger subside, for example.




As with Garner's theory of multiple intelligences, Goleman's EQ concept has been adopted by various schools in the United States, which use it to develop "emotional literacy" programmes, aimed at helping students learn to manage their anger, frustrations and loneliness. Children who are angry or depressed are capable of learning well, and those with long-running emotional difficulties are liable to drop out altogether. Improving the students' self-esteem and self-motivations helps them to perform better in exams.



Like IQ, each of these alternative conceptions of intelligence has been criticised. Critics of the "multiple intelligences" theory, for example, point to lack of empirical evidence supporting it.



Critics of EQ concept argue that it measures conformity rather that ability: who after all is to say when a person's anger or sadness (or other emotion) is or is not appropriate to a particular situations? EQ's sceptics also point out that scientific studies have failed to find a convincing link between high self-esteem an better academic performance.



While mindful of such criticisms, I believe there is considerable value in considering human intelligence in ways that allow us to appreciate the enormous diversity in how people think and behave.

"EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY", A Tour Across The Horizons of The Human Mind, Daniel Tammet, 2009, pages 51 - 52

Are There "Multiple Intelligences"?

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Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? (2)
Are There "Multiple Intelligences"?

Like Sternberg, Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University, believes that there is more than one kind of intelligence - eight, to precise - with every person having a unique blend of each. His theory of "Multiple Intelligences" was made famous by his book "Frames of Mind" first published in 1983. Using a range of criteria, including development history, evolutionary plausibility and support from experimental psychology tasks, Gardner identified these eight different intelligences:



Linguistic Intelligence: Involving both spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages and the capacity to use language to achieve certain goals. Examples: writers, poets, lawyers and speakers.




Logical-Mathematical Intelligence: The capacity to analyse problems, perform mathematical operations and investigate issues scientifically. Examples: scientists, engineers and mathematicians.



Musical Intelligence: Skill in the performance, composition and appreciation of musical patterns. Musicians of all kinds are obvious examples of this intelligence.



Body–Kinaesthetic Intelligence: Using parts of the whole of one’s body to solve problems. Examples: athletes, actors and dancers.



Spatial Intelligence: Includes having a very good sense of direction, as well as the ability to visualize and mentally manipulate objects. Examples: artists, architects and engineers.



Interpersonal Intelligence: The capacity to understand the feelings, intentions and motivations of the other people. Examples: sales-people, politicians and therapists.



Intrapersonal Intelligence: The ability to understand oneself, one's feelings, goals and motivation: Examples: philosophers, psychologists, and theologians.



Naturalistic Intelligence: The ability to draw upon certain features of the environment, to grow and nurture new things and to have a facility for interacting with animals: examples: farmer, gardeners and conservationists.

Many educators in the United States who have adopted Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to use in their schools report improved exams results, parental participations and classroom discipline.

A Harvard-led study of forty-one schools supported using the theory, and reported that in these schools there was "a culture of hard work, respect and caring; a faculty that collaborated and learned from each other; classrooms that engaged students through constrained but meaningful choices, and a sharp focus on enabling students to produce high-quality work".

"EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY", A Tour Across The Horizons of The Human Mind, Daniel Tammet, 2009, page 50

The Intelligence Consists Of Three Main Aspects?

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Are There Different Kinds of Intelligence? (1)
The Intelligence Consists Of Three Main Aspects?

Clearly, something more than a single test score is needed to guide our evaluation of person's intelligence. I believe it makes more sense to consider intelligence as a complex phenomenon that is best described as a synthesis of various skills and abilities.

In this way a person can be considered intelligent in some respects and less so in others. For example how would you evaluate the intelligence of the following individuals?

• A Nobel Prize winner who regularly forgets where he puts his car keys.
• A thrice-divorced chess champion.
• A company chief executive with history of stress-related heart problems.
• A doctor who smokes and drink heavily.
• A brilliant musical composer plagued by creditors.

In view of such contradictions, various theorists have sought to broaden the traditional understanding of intelligence.

"The Three Main Aspects of Intelligence"

In the 1980s Yale psychologist Robert Sternberg proposed the "triarchic" (three-part) theory of intelligence, which states that intelligence consists of three main aspects:

• “Analytic Intelligence”: The ability to analyse, evaluate and compare.
• “Creative Intelligence ”: Skill in using past experience to achieve insight and deal with situations.
• “Practical Intelligence ”: The ability to adapt to, select and shape the real-world environment,

Successfully intelligent people, according to Sternberg, are those who are aware of their particular strengths and weaknesses and develop further their abilities in order to achieve success in the future.

"EMBRACING THE WIDE SKY", A Tour across the Horizons of The Human Mind, Daniel Tammet, 2009, page 49