Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive 143: The Extended Mind with Annie Murphy Paul
Sep 5, 2021
57:02
We don’t just think with our brains.
What?!
How can that possibly be true?
I struggled to understand it if myself for quite a while, until I read the fabulous English philosopher Andy Clark’s description of what happens when someone writes, which essentially involves ideas flowing down the arm and hand, through the pen and ink, across the paper, up to your eyes, and back to your brain.
The ideas don’t literally flow, of course, but the process of writing alters the process of thinking - which is why research has shown that processing traumatic memories through journaling about them is more useful just thinking about them - the act of writing about them changes our interpretation of them in a way that just thinking about them doesn’t.
The challenge with school-based learning, of course, is that it’s primarily concerned with the brain. Our task is to remember facts and ideas so we can recount them when asked about them at a later time. Children who fidget are told to sit still, when the research that Annie Murphy Paul cites in her new book The Extended Mind indicates that this instruction is entirely misplaced - fidgeting can be a way of managing excess energy, and movement can actually help us to remember things more effectively than we otherwise would.
In this episode we learn many of the different ways that we our brains interact with the outside world to learn in ways that we might never have considered up to now.
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Links
References: Andrade, J. (2010). What does doodling do? Applied Cognitive Psychology 24, 100-106.
Bobek, E., & Tversky, B. (2016). Creating visual explanations improves learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 1, 27.
Church, R.B. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1986). The mismatch between gesture and speech as an index of transitional knowledge. Cognition 23, 43-71.
Fishburn, F.A., Murty, V., Hlutkowsky, C.O., MacGillivray, C.E., Bemis, L.M., Murphy, M.E., Huppert, T.J., & Perlman, S.B. (2018). Putting our heads together: Interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 13(8), 841-849.
Glenberg, A.M. (2011). How reading comprehension is embodied and why that matters. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 4(1), 5-18.
Kandasamy, N., Garfinkel, S.N., Page, L., Hardy, B., Critchley, H.D., Gurnell, M., & Coates, J.M. (2016). Interoceptive ability predicts survival on a London trading floor. Scientific Reports 6, 32986.
Kelly, S.D., Singer, M., Hicks, J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2002). A helping hand in assessing children’s knowledge: Instructing adults to attend to gesture. Cognition and Instruction 20(1), 1-26.
Knight, C., & Haslam, S.A. (2010). The relative merits of lean, enriched, and empowered offices: An experimental examination of the impact of workspace management strategies on well-being and productivity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 16(2), 158-172.
Kontra, C., Lyons, D.J., Fischer, S.M., & Beilock, S.L. (2015). Physical experience enhances science learning. Psychological Science 26(6), 737-749.
Langhanns, C., & Muller, H. (2018). Effects of trying ‘not to move’ instruction on cortical load and concurrent cognitive performance. Psychological Research 82, 167-176.
Link, T., Moeller, K., Huber, S., Fischer, U., & Nuerk, H-K. (2015). Corrigendum to ‘Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts.’ Trends in Neuroscience and Education 4(4), 112.
Link, T., Moeller, K., Huber, S., Fischer, U., & Nuerk, H-K. (2013). Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts. Trends in Neuroscience and Education 2(2), 74-84.
Lozada, M., & Carro, N. (2016). Embodied action improves cognition in children: Evidence from a study based on Piagetian conservation tasks. Frontiers in Psychology 7, 393.
Meagher, B.R. (2020). Ecologizing social psychology: The physical environment as a necessary constitutent of social processes. Personality and Social Psychology Review 24(1), 3-23.
Mehta, R.K., Shortz, A.E., & Benden, M.E. (2015). Standing up for learning: A pilot investigation on the neurocognitive benefits of stand-biased school desks. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13, 0059.
Shteynberg, G. (2014). A social host in the machine? The case of group attention. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 3(4), 307-311.
Zhang, T. (2017). Back to the beginning: Rediscovering inexperience helps experts give advice. Academy of Management Proceedings 2015-1, 15215.
Annie Murphy Paul's Book:
The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (Affiliate link).
Jump to highlights 01:00 Looking at the idea that our mind isn't actually only located inside of our brains 01:46 An open invitation to join the free You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher Workshop 05:30 Learning does not just happen within the brain, but with things and people that are outside of it 06:44 The metaphor of how our brains are like magpies nest: we draw raw material available to us as resources for our thinking process just like how magpies incorporate materials available in their environment when building their nests 09:22 The movements and gestures of our bodies, the internal sensations of our bodies are part of the thinking process 10:34 Interoceptive sensitivity 13:07 The gut feeling is your body tugging at your sleeve saying that you’ve encountered this situation before and this is how you should respond 14:53 Moving the body is a way to stimulate mental processes in specific ways and you can use different kinds of movements to produce different kinds of thoughts 16:53 Recess - the great invention that allows students to move and break the monotony of sitting down all day in school 17:49 Fidgeting is a very subtle way to calibrate our arousal level so that we're in this optimal state of alertness 19:00 We're creatures who are good at moving our bodies and navigating through space and interacting with other people 20:23 We rely on our surroundings to shape our sense of ourselves 26:48 We can interact with our environment in a way that supports our learning 28:33 What are some ways that we can support children in using the space around them in their learning 31:49 Journaling and sketching as a tool to process learning deeper 36:47 Thinking with relationships; encouraging children to learn from and with other people 45:25 Allowing your children to genuinely work together so that parents don’t need to support their learning individually 46:29 We tend to think of learning as when a person sits down at a desk but in fact there are all these cognitive processes that get activated in social interactions 48:08 Argument is very valuable and can be a really effective way of solving problems 52:43 It is a different cognitive process when we do learning with other people 55:45 Human thinking works best when we are able to create “loops” and the best way for parents to support their children’s learning is to look for those loops Other episodes mentioned:Links
- You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher Masterclass
- The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, by Annie Murphy Paul
- Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul
References: Andrade, J. (2010). What does doodling do? Applied Cognitive Psychology 24, 100-106.
Bobek, E., & Tversky, B. (2016). Creating visual explanations improves learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 1, 27.
Church, R.B. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1986). The mismatch between gesture and speech as an index of transitional knowledge. Cognition 23, 43-71.
Fishburn, F.A., Murty, V., Hlutkowsky, C.O., MacGillivray, C.E., Bemis, L.M., Murphy, M.E., Huppert, T.J., & Perlman, S.B. (2018). Putting our heads together: Interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 13(8), 841-849.
Glenberg, A.M. (2011). How reading comprehension is embodied and why that matters. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 4(1), 5-18.
Kandasamy, N., Garfinkel, S.N., Page, L., Hardy, B., Critchley, H.D., Gurnell, M., & Coates, J.M. (2016). Interoceptive ability predicts survival on a London trading floor. Scientific Reports 6, 32986.
Kelly, S.D., Singer, M., Hicks, J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2002). A helping hand in assessing children’s knowledge: Instructing adults to attend to gesture. Cognition and Instruction 20(1), 1-26.
Knight, C., & Haslam, S.A. (2010). The relative merits of lean, enriched, and empowered offices: An experimental examination of the impact of workspace management strategies on well-being and productivity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 16(2), 158-172.
Kontra, C., Lyons, D.J., Fischer, S.M., & Beilock, S.L. (2015). Physical experience enhances science learning. Psychological Science 26(6), 737-749.
Langhanns, C., & Muller, H. (2018). Effects of trying ‘not to move’ instruction on cortical load and concurrent cognitive performance. Psychological Research 82, 167-176.
Link, T., Moeller, K., Huber, S., Fischer, U., & Nuerk, H-K. (2015). Corrigendum to ‘Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts.’ Trends in Neuroscience and Education 4(4), 112.
Link, T., Moeller, K., Huber, S., Fischer, U., & Nuerk, H-K. (2013). Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts. Trends in Neuroscience and Education 2(2), 74-84.
Lozada, M., & Carro, N. (2016). Embodied action improves cognition in children: Evidence from a study based on Piagetian conservation tasks. Frontiers in Psychology 7, 393.
Meagher, B.R. (2020). Ecologizing social psychology: The physical environment as a necessary constitutent of social processes. Personality and Social Psychology Review 24(1), 3-23.
Mehta, R.K., Shortz, A.E., & Benden, M.E. (2015). Standing up for learning: A pilot investigation on the neurocognitive benefits of stand-biased school desks. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13, 0059.
Shteynberg, G. (2014). A social host in the machine? The case of group attention. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 3(4), 307-311.
Zhang, T. (2017). Back to the beginning: Rediscovering inexperience helps experts give advice. Academy of Management Proceedings 2015-1, 15215.