Cognitive Psychology: a Meeting of the Mind and Education

cognitive psychology a meeting of the mind and educational activity To John Bruer, cognitive psychology is the critical bridge between sensation science and education. A true understanding of how the brain handles learning tasks will only be reached with the help of cognitive psychologists, says John Bruer, PhD, president of the James S. McDonnell Foundation. Over the go a track decade, Bruer has seen the rise of a brain- ground education movement with the media, educational consultants and inquiryers trying to hold in basal brain explore to the education of the nations children.In a much cited 1997 article, grooming and the brain a bridge too far, published in the educational Researcher (Vol. 26, No. 8, p. 416), he criticized a trend to overinterpret the findings of this kind of interrogation and apply it in schools. Holding more immediate promise for industry in schools, he believes, ar visualise technologies that examine the human brains bear upon of math, reading an d other specific learning tasks. But even vision research, he says, must stem from quality cognitive science.Cognitive psychology, says Bruer, evoke respond as the bridge between this type of hard neuroscience and the schools. In a conversation with the Monitor, Bruer, whose background is in philosophy and physics and whose erectation bullion mainly biomedical and behavioral sc iences research, called on psychologists to collaborate more closely with educators as they structure studies of the brain and attempt to apply their findings to education. Q. What use up been some of the most dangerous myths that shake up been spread through brain-based education?A. One is the idea that theres a critical extent for school-type learning, an optimal period during brain development that ends at around 11 or 12 years and after which learning becomes much more difficult. Theres absolutely no basis in neuroscience for that claim. What a lot of brain-based consultants dont appreciate is t hat to turn basic psychological research into effective learning practices you have to develop interventions based on cognitive science in math, reading and other egress areas and test them in classrooms. Q.Who do you think is in a identify to do that kind of do? A. Cognitive psychologists. What a lot of people do not realize is that better understanding of brain mathematical function relies on improved understanding of learning and behavior. Our understanding of how cordial tasks are executed by neural structures in the brain is crucially underage on cognitive and behavioral research by psychologists. Q. Are visualize studies relying on this kind of behavioral research? A. Totally. To have an interpretable imaginativeness study depends on very careful behavioral study of the observational task.Our imaging technologies have limited temporal and spatial resolution, so we indirect request to design studies that optimize our ability to look at the smallest parts of the brain that we possibly can. The way to do that is to analyze mental arithmetic, for example, down to its subcomponentsretrieving a number fact, trying to decide which of two numbers is larger. You can grow to see where those subcomponents expertness be located in the brain, and from there you can begin to see the circuitry involved in doing these tasks. Q.Do you think that findings from brain research on learning disabilityin math and reading, for examplemight apply more generally to educating children? A. The attempt to understand learning and our mental capacities in terms of brain structures is such a new watch that if they make advances over the next 50 years as they have over the last 15, who jazzs? It could be very exciting. But until 10 years ago, most cognitive psychologists did not take any interest in the brain. Brain imaging helped change that.But still, this hybrid discipline, cognitive neuroscience, that attempts to map cognitive mental functions onto brain areas and circu its, is in its infancy. We all have great expectations, precisely its hard to make specific predictions about what the ultimate applications might be. Q. Do you think that, at this point, enough cognitive psychologists are involved in bridging brain research with education? A. Because of the interest in brain imaging and cognitive neuroscience, there are people doing it. But one of the problems is that there arent enough experimental psychologists thinking about applications of psychology to education.Part of that is a financial support problem. But its been our palpate at the foundation that if you make resources available for psychologists to snuff it with educators to do that kind of work, you can elicit some very mature proposals. Q. Are you looking more at funding that kind of work? A. Yes. I see an opportunity to work with some cognitive neuroscientists to ask, What educational problems do you think you might be able to solve because of what you know? I would like to se e the foundations interest moving more in that direction over the next five to 10 years. Q. Is t a problem that most cognitive psychologists dont have as much experience with education as with science? A. Yes. In most areas theres some crash between researchers and practitioners. It happens to be pretty evident in education. One way to address that is to encourage long-term collaborations between researchers and practitioners, where theyre working unitedly as peers rather than with the scientists going into schools and acting as master and educators as their servants. 2 things have to happen. The researchers have to become a bit more sensible of and sensitive to the problems teachers confront in the classroom.And teachers need to begin to think like researchersto at least understand the importance of experimental controls, evidence, this kind of thing. Q. And how do you get that collaboration going? A. One thing we have found is if you send out a request for proposals that requi res the teachers, the practitioners and the researchers to come in together on a project, they do it. You want to structure funding programs for research and for improving instruction that incorporate the beat out research thinking and the best practical classroom knowledge.