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posted by martyb on Monday October 06 2014, @11:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the curiosity-satisfaction-and-no-cats dept.

An UC Davis study (paywalled) on how learning interacts with curiosity indicates that curiosity can lead to demonstrably better recall. The regions that transmit the molecule dopamine — which regulate the sensation of pleasure and reward — had an increased activity the more curious a subject was. From the Scientific American article:

Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath and his fellow researchers asked 19 participants to review more than 100 questions, rating each in terms of how curious they were about the answer. Next, each subject revisited 112 of the questions — half of which strongly intrigued them whereas the rest they found uninteresting — while the researchers scanned their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During the scanning session participants would view a question then wait 14 seconds and view a photograph of a face totally unrelated to the trivia before seeing the answer. Afterward the researchers tested participants to see how well they could recall and retain both the trivia answers and the faces they had seen. Ranganath and his colleagues discovered that greater interest in a question would predict not only better memory for the answer but also for the unrelated face that had preceded it. A follow-up test one day later found the same results — people could better remember a face if it had been preceded by an intriguing question. Somehow curiosity could prepare the brain for learning and long-term memory more broadly."

Any ideas as to what makes someone curious in the first place?

Perhaps pedagogy has to move beyond viewing students as blank slates and motivation by carrots and sticks and leave rote learning on the historical scrapheap. The short essay "On Thinking for Oneself" by Arthur Schopenhauer points out the difference between knowing something and understanding. Curiosity may also be coupled with one of the five big personality traits. Most schools seem, however, to make sure to kill curiosity early on and to dull any subject that it puts on the curriculum. But bright students often find something intriguing about the most dull of subjects.. Perhaps the math to make your RC stay in the air. There's even a link between depression and lack of curiosity.

If you are in touch with kids, encourage curiosity by asking questions that all the other adults never bother to ask, and never bother to answer either. "Curiosity is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 06 2014, @11:55AM

    by Horse With Stripes (577) on Monday October 06 2014, @11:55AM (#102373)

    I don't understand what this is about. Maybe I'll go read about it. Oh, look, a dog with a puffy tail! /s

    Let's face it, both are important. Curiosity and learning feed an individual's drive to continue, but if they aren't smart enough to grasp the subject matter than they aren't going to learn it.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 06 2014, @12:26PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 06 2014, @12:26PM (#102378) Journal

    curiosity can lead to demonstrably better recall

    [...]

    Most schools seem, however, to make sure to kill curiosity early on and to dull any subject that it puts on the curriculum

    "Rote learning" is not learning. But neither is recall only, no matter how good it is (you wouldn't call the harddisk the most "educated" piece of your computer, would you?).

    I'm just curious: what could be the relevant relation between the quoted TFA and the rest of rest of submission stuffing (including "the difference between knowing something and understanding")? But I guess it's a matter I'll have to think for myself, 'cause I'm not going to kill a cat over it.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday October 06 2014, @12:55PM

      by q.kontinuum (532) on Monday October 06 2014, @12:55PM (#102384) Journal

      (you wouldn't call the harddisk the most "educated" piece of your computer, would you?).

      Depends. If "most educated" means, there is no other piece more educated (mathematical definition of a maximum), I wouldn't hesitate. If "most educated" means "more educated than any other part", I wouldn't do it.

      --
      Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @01:19PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @01:19PM (#102397)

      you wouldn't call the harddisk the most "educated" piece of your computer, would you?

      Well, I can't think of a part of my computer that is better educated. Can you? ;-)

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 06 2014, @01:47PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 06 2014, @01:47PM (#102411)

      "you wouldn't call the harddisk the most "educated" piece of your computer, would you?"

      There's a uniquely american meme to describe vocational training as education, and under the influence of that meme I could totally see someone calling a hard drive "educated" although its actually "vocationally trained".

      Think about it... how much sysadmins and programmers love "herding cats" metaphors. Sometimes I feel writing puppet recipes to make a server "house broken" and civilized is pretty much a training type of activity. Programming itself is fundamentally not a educated activity but more of a vocational craft, anyway.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @02:19PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:19PM (#102428) Journal

      The rest of the submission is a condensed summary of some other forum under slight time pressure. Sorry for some context that got lost.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @12:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @12:46PM (#102382)

    I was trying to find 'trolling' on the list. Is trolling the opposite of being 'agreeable'? Can you have an agreeable troll?

    Thanks for reading this post.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @05:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @05:21PM (#102512)

      Is trolling the opposite of being 'agreeable'?

      No. True trolls don't really have an opinion and are simply doing what they can to provoke a response - the more heated, the funnier for the troll. Its not anywhere on the "agreeable/disagreeable" spectrum. They're always trying to provoke people or lure people into flipping their shit, so they'd probably be something related to provocation/acquiescence.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @01:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @01:07PM (#102389)

    This is a big problem with video courses, including Sal's videos at Khan Academy. Sure, you might have a prior interest or motivation in studying the material. An experienced student knows that a good textbook is supposed to be read slowly; the points made by the author have to be organized in the student's mind, and carefully fit in with what the student already knows, or perhaps challenged for accuracy.

    When you watch a video there isn't time to do that. Yes, you can pause the playback but that gets annoying - audio/video is a sequential medium and you can end up wasting a fair amount of time. So, usually you end up sailing along with the instructor, figuring at the end that you understood 85 percent of it. Well, you may have gotten 85 percent now but if you check back in a month, you'll find that you remember almost none of it, because you weren't fully engaged in the material.

    • (Score: 2) by E_NOENT on Monday October 06 2014, @01:12PM

      by E_NOENT (630) on Monday October 06 2014, @01:12PM (#102392) Journal

      So, usually you end up sailing along with the instructor, figuring at the end that you understood 85 percent of it. Well, you may have gotten 85 percent now but if you check back in a month, you'll find that you remember almost none of it, because you weren't fully engaged in the material.

      That sounds like a dissertation waiting to be written.

      I wonder how one's typical attitude toward video delivery affects the efficacy of online learning. For me, the TV is background noise or something to fall asleep to. It's just really hard for me to get engaged with that medium. When I turn on a video course, am I more likely to space off than someone who's just enthralled with everything on the screen?

      --
      I'm not in the business... I *am* the business.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @01:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @01:27PM (#102400)

      The video is not meant as a textbook replacement, but as a lecture replacement. Also in a lecture your abilities to change the pace of the lecture are quite limited. Indeed, unlike the video, the lecturer may get angry if you stop him a hundred times to have him repeat that one little part you didn't quite get yet.

      On the other hand, the lecturer will (hopefully) be able to respond to your questions, while the video clearly isn't.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by darkfeline on Monday October 06 2014, @01:41PM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Monday October 06 2014, @01:41PM (#102406) Homepage

    Another piece of common sense confirmed by science! Not that I'm mocking science, these are important advances. But clearly, someone who wants to learn and to know will learn and know better than someone who is forced to lean and to know. Not exactly rocket science, figuratively speaking.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @02:16PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Monday October 06 2014, @02:16PM (#102426) Journal

      Well some pointy-haired-administrators need self evident connections in a formal way to get it ..

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @02:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @02:22PM (#102429)

    teachers have bigger teachers above them. they tell them also what to do/teach.
    it is sometimes sad to meet a long-time teacher that was in the "mill" too long.
    first week physics class: a friend and I asked our teacher what would happen if the sun would
    suddenly disappear ... ("would earth keep rotating for another ~ 8 minutes?")
    -and-
    what would happen if there where a tunnel straight thru the earth and we would jump in.
    considering that this guy was teaching solutions via integrals and differentials (instead of easy vectors)
    it took him awfully long to reply... we suspected because something like this would
    never be encountered in normal physics "rot" class.
    mind you this was before there was a internet ...

  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday October 06 2014, @03:11PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday October 06 2014, @03:11PM (#102455)

    The issue is not whether curiosity helps, but whether teaching methods and schools are built around that idea rather than Sit Down And Shut Up.

    There are some teaching methods and private schools already out there doing this: For example, the Montessori method really focuses on real-world applications of whatever the child is supposed to be learning.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.