Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: and Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest
Speaker 1: who will stimulate your mind and give you a greater
Speaker 1: understanding of yourself, others, and the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. So today on
Speaker 1: this podcast we have Annie Murphy Paul, who is an
Speaker 1: excellent science writer, thinker, public intellectual educator. What else are
Speaker 1: you did? I cover the main basis mother, mother, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and teacher. I have taught also, so you've really cover
Speaker 1: a lot of topics within learning and education. I read
Speaker 1: a lot of your stuff. I read your brilliant blog
Speaker 1: almost religiously. It's really good. It's good for my attention
Speaker 1: span as well, because you keep it pithy and short.
Speaker 1: You know. Oh, I thought you were going to say
Speaker 1: it's good for my attention span because it so long.
Speaker 1: I have a reader who writes me after every newsletter
Speaker 1: to say that it's too long. Oh, that's ridiculous. Tell
Speaker 1: them to go in academia, right right. If they think
Speaker 1: that's too all my stuff will seem short. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Compared to journal articles and stuff, and then you have
Speaker 1: the appropriate links if you want to venture forward. But
Speaker 1: I find it a really good go to resource for
Speaker 1: Paron's teachers, educators, everyone. I wanted to ask you, is
Speaker 1: there some sort of main mission you have or some
Speaker 1: unifying theme that you think ties together all these various
Speaker 1: topics you talk about. Yes, I mean, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about the span of my whole career, and I've written
Speaker 1: books that are about One book was cultural history and
Speaker 1: scientific critique of personality, testing that, as you know, called
Speaker 1: The Culture Personality, and another one was about the science
Speaker 1: of prenatal influences called Origin, and then now I'm working
Speaker 1: on this book called Brilliant, the Science of How We
Speaker 1: Get Smarter. And I would say the thing that links
Speaker 1: twenty years of writing is really this question that is
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating to me, which is what makes us the
Speaker 1: way we are? And I've found the usual answers to
Speaker 1: that question kind of unsatisfying. I mean, usually we hear
Speaker 1: about nature, nurture, genes, environment, and each of my books
Speaker 1: has been an exploration of another kind of answer, you know.
Speaker 1: The first one, obviously was looking at personality and the
Speaker 1: inadequacies of personality tests to capture who we are, and
Speaker 1: some other ways that we might think about defining who
Speaker 1: we are, like telling stories about ourselves, for example. And
Speaker 1: the second book, Origins, was about these really consequential nine
Speaker 1: months between the moment when our genetic inheritance is put
Speaker 1: into place a conception, and then when we come into
Speaker 1: the world. And that's when we think of nurture as beginning.
Speaker 1: But of course it starts happening earlier than that, much
Speaker 1: earlier than that in the womb. So now my current book,
Speaker 1: I'm very unsatisfied with the idea that intelligence, which I
Speaker 1: know is a lasting interest of yours, that intelligence is
Speaker 1: this sort of innate, unchanging characteristic that is either their
Speaker 1: product of genes or perhaps of childhood how we have
Speaker 1: as children. I'm really interested in situational influences on intelligence
Speaker 1: and how the environments in which we learn and work
Speaker 1: really profoundly affect how intelligently we can think and act
Speaker 1: in that moment. And so that's everything I write these
Speaker 1: days about learning about intelligence, about education in the workplace
Speaker 1: is animated by that frame, that perspective. That's great. I
Speaker 1: want to ask you a question, you know, within the
Speaker 1: field of my field of psychology. It seems like social
Speaker 1: psychology seems to be one of your biggest interests and
Speaker 1: how that relates to our changing nature of who we
Speaker 1: are and who we believe ourselves to be. I would
Speaker 1: like to talk a little bit about this nature nurture controversy.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's both, but what extent do you think there is,
Speaker 1: Like even going back to your book about I really
Speaker 1: liked your book and personality and Personality, just think just
Speaker 1: how the loads some of the predictions are and what
Speaker 1: it really says about who we are. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you think that there is a self that is stable
Speaker 1: to some degree? Just how influenced by the environment is
Speaker 1: our personality? Do you think it's much more influenced than
Speaker 1: we give the credit for in society generally. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's much more influenced by situational factors than we
Speaker 1: normally think it to be. It's easier cognitively, and it's
Speaker 1: more satisfying emotionally. I think to think of ourselves as
Speaker 1: very stable and unchanging, and to think of other people
Speaker 1: in our lives as stable and unchanging. But if just
Speaker 1: really a moment's reflection, we'll show you that it's really
Speaker 1: a fiction. I mean, I think one of the appeals
Speaker 1: of traveling, for example, is that you get to put
Speaker 1: yourself in a completely different situation and feel the thrill
Speaker 1: of almost being a different person. But then we when
Speaker 1: we go home, you know, we're back to our old selves.
Speaker 1: But really, if you've ever had the experience, and I
Speaker 1: can't imagine anyone who hasn't of you know, being at
Speaker 1: a party, for example, and talking to one person and
Speaker 1: feeling like you're you're just on, you're smart, you're witty,
Speaker 1: you're you know, all your jokes are just going over
Speaker 1: or going over just right. I've never experienced that. Come on, God,
Speaker 1: I've seen you. And then you turn to another person
Speaker 1: and it's like you feel kind of dumb, you know,
Speaker 1: dumb and dull witted. Maybe you've never felt this way,
Speaker 1: but I oh, in my wholely childhood time. And what's different.
Speaker 1: You're the same person, but relationship between you and that
Speaker 1: other person is different, and it's evoking something different from you.
Speaker 1: You know, I personally experienced that. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people will really resonate with that. You know, let's
Speaker 1: jump right into standardized test, you know, it's like dump,
Speaker 1: jump right into it. I feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: people in that sort of testing mode, their mind changes,
Speaker 1: increase their anxiety. Perhaps, would you say they're not at
Speaker 1: their best cognitively under such a Yeah, yeah, we know
Speaker 1: that from all the research on stereotype threat that the
Speaker 1: testing situation is just that it's a very specific situation.
Speaker 1: And although you know each time you take a test
Speaker 1: it's in some sense a new situation, the circumstances of
Speaker 1: the testing situation are kept very uniform purposely so that
Speaker 1: the results will be consistent. But it also means that
Speaker 1: some people, a large number of people consistently underperform when
Speaker 1: they take standardized tests because of the situation that they're in.
Speaker 1: It's a recurring situation, and so that's why the work
Speaker 1: of you know, people like Josh Aronson and Claude Steele
Speaker 1: and Gregory Walden and Jeffrey Cohen is so important. Looking
Speaker 1: at Carol dwac Yeah, looking at the testing situation as
Speaker 1: a situation and thinking about how we can modify that situation, like,
Speaker 1: for example, giving students a values affirmation right before they
Speaker 1: take in a test like that, or having them engage
Speaker 1: in a ten minute writing exercise where they sort of
Speaker 1: download all those anxieties, and so those anxieties don't use
Speaker 1: up cognitive resources while they're taking the test. So those
Speaker 1: kinds of interventions are so interesting to me because it's
Speaker 1: not saying you have to change something fundamental, either about
Speaker 1: you know, an entire school or workplace, or really anything
Speaker 1: about yourself. It's more releasing something that's already there. I
Speaker 1: like that unleasing. Yeah, maybe there's some things we don't
Speaker 1: want to unleash in students though, And let's segue into
Speaker 1: that because you've also written on the value of discipline
Speaker 1: as well. Right, maybe we don't need to unleash everything
Speaker 1: all the time. Maybe there's a value to actually self
Speaker 1: control you have written about as well. Did you want
Speaker 1: to speak about that at all? Self control interesting? Do
Speaker 1: you mean like regulatory strategies like trolling one's attention or
Speaker 1: metacognitive kind of strategies or impulse control all those things. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, you've argued that there can be great value
Speaker 1: in studying things that you don't like to study. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm referring to. Huh huh, things that might not
Speaker 1: be fun. Yes, learning is not always fun. That's definitely
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no, that just could go in so
Speaker 1: many different directions. The one thing that immediately occurs to me,
Speaker 1: because it's research that I've been reading about and I
Speaker 1: really find interesting, is research led by David Yeager at
Speaker 1: University of Texas and Angela Duckworth is your colleague is
Speaker 1: involved with this, is right. Yeah, So the idea that
Speaker 1: you know, in learning, in education, there are going to
Speaker 1: be times when the learning is when the tasks are boring,
Speaker 1: they're repetitive, or they're not just not a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: but you really do have to engage in them to
Speaker 1: create a solid foundation. I mean, I think of something
Speaker 1: like learning your multiplication tables, or learning how to spell
Speaker 1: certain words, things that are not creative or fun but
Speaker 1: aren't necessary. And so what Yaeger and Duckworth and the
Speaker 1: others have looked into is whether having a beyond the
Speaker 1: self purpose for learning can allow us to regulate our impulses.
Speaker 1: In this case, our impulse would be to like just
Speaker 1: stop doing this really boring thing, but to keep at it,
Speaker 1: to be persistent, to have that kind of grit that
Speaker 1: keeps you going forward. And in fact, it is the
Speaker 1: case that when you have a beyond the self purpose,
Speaker 1: a purpose that transcends you, maybe it's because you want
Speaker 1: to use your education to give back to your community,
Speaker 1: or ultimately you want to become a doctor and you
Speaker 1: want to help people. That kind of thing can help
Speaker 1: us discipline our unruly impulses and keep us on track. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then how do you reconcile that? And this is
Speaker 1: something I've been trying to do my own research. I
Speaker 1: agree that that's so important. But then there's this other
Speaker 1: set of variables that I know both of us are
Speaker 1: deeply interested in things like curiosity, interest, motivation, engagement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it seems like too much. It's like a pendulum,
Speaker 1: maybe too much of the pure grit without those other variables,
Speaker 1: it just sold. It seems like duty, right, But it
Speaker 1: seems like if you can combine all these things, then
Speaker 1: you get like the best outcomes. Would you agree? I do?
Speaker 1: I do? And that's why you know something I see,
Speaker 1: especially in my work on educational technology. I write a
Speaker 1: column about a lot of helping for the Heckanja Report,
Speaker 1: and it also runs in Slate. You know, some of
Speaker 1: the more over enthusiastic proponents of educational technology will suggest
Speaker 1: that we don't really need teachers anymore because we have
Speaker 1: computers that can do everything. And I think that finding
Speaker 1: that balance, especially when we're novice learners, is one reason
Speaker 1: why teachers are so important because they might be the
Speaker 1: ones who can help students say, Okay, go explore this,
Speaker 1: exercise your creativity, find out what's interesting about this, and
Speaker 1: then come back and we can work together on building
Speaker 1: the skills that you need to push that curiosity and
Speaker 1: that interest one step further. You know, it can be
Speaker 1: hard to know how to do that on our own,
Speaker 1: although that's part of learning. How to learn is learning
Speaker 1: how to manage your own processes of learning, figuring out
Speaker 1: what you still need to learn, buckling down to do
Speaker 1: that maybe hard or boring work, and then going out
Speaker 1: and exploring again. But in the early stages, I think
Speaker 1: a teacher can be so important in helping a student
Speaker 1: find that balance. Yeah, and you've also been though it
Speaker 1: can backfire if it's it feels like it's pressured too much. Right,
Speaker 1: you said, there's great value in having this student discover
Speaker 1: on their own that it's relevant exactly. Now. That's research
Speaker 1: that I absolutely love by Chris Fullman and Judo Thrakovich
Speaker 1: that says that if you tell students you know, this
Speaker 1: is important because you're going to need this someday, which
Speaker 1: was a message that we've all heard at one time
Speaker 1: or another from a teacher or a parent that often backfires,
Speaker 1: especially among students who aren't doing very well or don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of confidence, because basically what you're telling
Speaker 1: them is you're going to need this, and they interpret
Speaker 1: that as and I'm no good at this, so I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really screwed. Yeah, but yeah, if a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff does. And that's why I think
Speaker 1: it's so important, as I'm sure you agree that, to
Speaker 1: look at the research and not go on what our
Speaker 1: intuitions lead us to do, because so often our intuitions
Speaker 1: will steer us wrong. But back to that research, if
Speaker 1: you encourage students to make their own connections and say,
Speaker 1: how do you think this will be valuable or useful
Speaker 1: to you in the future, then that is much more
Speaker 1: motivating to students sort of have them figure that out
Speaker 1: or write and maybe reflect or write about it on
Speaker 1: their own. Yeah. My friend who's a delightful teacher, her
Speaker 1: name's Lara Jean linked in Florida. She has developed these
Speaker 1: what she calls the Sensitivity Sketch books, where there are
Speaker 1: these personal journals that all the students in the classroom
Speaker 1: have and she gives them time to be sensitive to
Speaker 1: their own internal state and their own internal life and
Speaker 1: now connects to the material and they can all write
Speaker 1: in these sketch books and they're kind of like journals,
Speaker 1: and she says, the kids love them. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: such a great idea. I'm sure over time that helps
Speaker 1: them become more aware of what they're feeling, because we're
Speaker 1: not usually encouraged to tune into that at school. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, she said that, like one of like
Speaker 1: the big beefy like football players or whatever, said was like,
Speaker 1: why I want more of the sensitivity sketchbooks. She found
Speaker 1: that hilarious. Maybe he didn't say that in front of
Speaker 1: his peers, but that's awesome. Yeah. So there are so
Speaker 1: many different topics that you cover and maybe at the
Speaker 1: end of this we can like have a grand unified
Speaker 1: theory pal connects. But if we don't, that's okay, too
Speaker 1: computational thinking. Uh huh, why is it important? Uh huh?
Speaker 1: So this is you're drawing this from McCollum I recently
Speaker 1: wrote for Slate, which was about the very counterintuitive idea
Speaker 1: of teaching computer science without using a computer. And the
Speaker 1: idea there is that computational thinking is something separate from
Speaker 1: a computer, the principles on which computers and databases operate,
Speaker 1: and that's information that all of us, living in a
Speaker 1: computer filled world should have. The program I was writing
Speaker 1: about is called Computer Science Unplugged. That's what the I
Speaker 1: love that, yeah, that the founders of Computer Science Unplugged
Speaker 1: believe and I have come to believe that as well,
Speaker 1: that it's not just computer science majors who need to
Speaker 1: know how computers work, the principles on which computers work,
Speaker 1: it's all of us. I mean, we all use computers
Speaker 1: on the continuously throughout our day. So Computer Science Unplugged
Speaker 1: is come up with a lot of these really fun,
Speaker 1: engaging often like very active and social physically active and
Speaker 1: social exercises, which is not usually something you associate with
Speaker 1: computer science, but that can be used even by children
Speaker 1: as young as kindergarten and elementary school students all the
Speaker 1: way up through high school and college that they can
Speaker 1: use to learn about the principles of computational thinking. And
Speaker 1: I just thought it was such a cool idea that
Speaker 1: you could be introducing kids to this fundamental way of
Speaker 1: interacting with the world really early and earlier probably than
Speaker 1: they would be able to do anything on the computer.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the initial idea behind Computer Science Unplugged,
Speaker 1: that you had to have a certain level of proficiency
Speaker 1: in programming before you could get to some of the
Speaker 1: cool ideas behind computational thinking the way it was traditionally taught.
Speaker 1: So they found an alternative way of teaching that allowed
Speaker 1: students to get into those school ideas before they could
Speaker 1: ever have hoped to be programming. That's really cool. And
Speaker 1: one of my degrees was in human computer interaction, and
Speaker 1: I didn't haven't done anything with it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like the human interaction thing, I haven't really done anything
Speaker 1: with it, maybe subconsciously like that kind of competational thinking
Speaker 1: has helped me, Yeah, in being a more smart individual.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you can be smarter even if
Speaker 1: you're a Q score never budgets your whole life? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, smart means dealing effectively with the
Speaker 1: real world. So I really love the phrase by Edwin
Speaker 1: Hutchin's Cognition in the Wild. It was the title of
Speaker 1: his study of how thinking works in the real world,
Speaker 1: and he actually studied people on who were on like
Speaker 1: a navy battleship, and how in that real world setting,
Speaker 1: each individual was a part of this almost hive mind
Speaker 1: that was kind of running this ship. And he was
Speaker 1: interested in there was a kind of collective intelligence among
Speaker 1: the people running this ship. And so I think for
Speaker 1: so long we have looked at cognition and captivity, you know,
Speaker 1: basically like cutting and as it happens on a paper
Speaker 1: and pencil test in a room under a ticking clock,
Speaker 1: you know, And I just think that's limbs some usefulness.
Speaker 1: It does, you know, predict some outcomes, but it's not
Speaker 1: by any means the whole story. And so I'm not
Speaker 1: really interested in IQ tests or IQ scores. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in how intelligently and effectively someone is able to advance
Speaker 1: their own goals, which is actually a lot like your
Speaker 1: definition I think of personal and intelligence. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to really bring personal goals into the mix, right, So
Speaker 1: I wear a couple of hats. One is as a
Speaker 1: personality psychologist and individual differences researcher. I do think there
Speaker 1: are relatively stable traits across real life span. Will Fleeson
Speaker 1: has done some really cool research on personality showing that
Speaker 1: self reports of the Big five personality heroticism, extra version,
Speaker 1: conscious is agreeable to open experience. Those self reports are
Speaker 1: moderately correlated in the real world, in the wild with
Speaker 1: the app behavior that you have, and in this great
Speaker 1: situational versus dispositional debate that like Walter Michelle and Seymour
Speaker 1: Epstein had and like the seventies, has tended to be
Speaker 1: reconciled that there are definitely situational influences, but when you
Speaker 1: aggregate it all together, there's something that it means to
Speaker 1: be me or you on these dimensions, and then also
Speaker 1: on IQ. Something that I've been trying to do is
Speaker 1: reconcile that research with a lot of the great things
Speaker 1: you're saying, which are true. We don't have to equate
Speaker 1: intelligence with cognitive ability testing scores, cognitive testability. We don't
Speaker 1: have to. Most IQ researchers do, right, They equate intelligence
Speaker 1: with that kind of skill set required to do all
Speaker 1: night you tess, and I guess if you break out
Speaker 1: of that paradigm, then it does open up a whole world.
Speaker 1: You know, when, at least in terms of personality, these
Speaker 1: things are moderately correlated, so it's not like personality is
Speaker 1: completely in the wild or like right, And I don't
Speaker 1: think you would say with that, No, I always want
Speaker 1: to emphasize that I'm not saying that there are no
Speaker 1: stable characteristics relatively stable. Yeah, but then maybe we haven't
Speaker 1: paid enough attention to those things that are situationally inflected.
Speaker 1: And because there's such a dominant sense among many scientists
Speaker 1: and among the public the general public that personality intelligence
Speaker 1: are fixed and innate and not subject to situational factors,
Speaker 1: I just want to be calling attention to this other
Speaker 1: piece that we have not been paying enough attention to
Speaker 1: in the past. Yeah, it's a great thing that you're doing,
Speaker 1: that you're bringing attention to that, it's it's much needed.
Speaker 1: IQ researchers will strip all context away because they don't
Speaker 1: want any prior influences. They think that's what pure intelligence
Speaker 1: is or raw intelligence is. As much as we strip,
Speaker 1: but of course you can't strip. You can never And
Speaker 1: I think they would realize that, you know, even as
Speaker 1: much as they the ideal would be to completely you know,
Speaker 1: all these things are you know, my advisor, Robert Sterenberg,
Speaker 1: I studied how these things are very culturally based as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we have a tendency. I think once we've created
Speaker 1: an entity like IQ, then we start treating it like
Speaker 1: it's really yet. Yeah, we start reifying it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think it's very easy to fall into that trap.
Speaker 1: I agree absolutely. I think like people like you are
Speaker 1: in the minority though, and me as well, and we're
Speaker 1: completely satisfied not equating intelligence with general cognitive ability, which
Speaker 1: is what I keep test makers tend to equate it.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a long history and education of equating
Speaker 1: the two because of some of the most you know,
Speaker 1: like worst urnmin and his advocacy of gifted talented education
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties made the argument that that's
Speaker 1: the only line where you're going to find the geniuses, right,
Speaker 1: And he made an argument so it became grounded in
Speaker 1: education and is such a strong part of education that
Speaker 1: not many people are challenging it because it's been there
Speaker 1: for first fifty years, that sort of idea. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: remember having a conversation with Gregory Walden and he was great,
Speaker 1: wel Yeah, Stanford, who is one of my favorite thinkers
Speaker 1: on this, and I remember him saying it's really all
Speaker 1: term and spault. I would agree with that. To some degree. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very strong beliefs. And it's interesting. You know, he did
Speaker 1: this long and chunal study where he followed up these
Speaker 1: high i Q kids selected based just in their IQ,
Speaker 1: and he found that at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like he admitted it, that the i Q was not
Speaker 1: the most important variable. It was predicting. It was personality traits,
Speaker 1: not these non cognitive traits like perseverance and motivation and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know what, Angela Duckworth is giving us empirical evidence
Speaker 1: for right and but angel Duckworth is studying it as
Speaker 1: a tree as you measure this and it's reliable and
Speaker 1: valid and something that she is trying to study, but
Speaker 1: we don't have conclusive answers yet. Is that can grit
Speaker 1: be improved? Yeah? What's much confident that it can be?
Speaker 1: Well again, I would say, let's think about the environments
Speaker 1: in which people are working and learning. Are they supportive
Speaker 1: of expressing grit or carrying through with perseverance? And I'm
Speaker 1: reading a book right now that's coming out soon by
Speaker 1: personality psychologists Brian Little called Me, Myself and Us I Think,
Speaker 1: and he talks about how there are relatively stable personality traits,
Speaker 1: but that people's I think he calls them personal projects.
Speaker 1: People's passions basically can bring out all kinds of new
Speaker 1: dimensions of personality that no one had seen before. Like
Speaker 1: you can imagine an introverted, rather timid person who has
Speaker 1: some kind of cause that is really meaningful to her,
Speaker 1: and she becomes able to testify in front of congress
Speaker 1: or speak in front of hundreds of people. You know.
Speaker 1: So I think I would always want to keep in
Speaker 1: mind the situational influences, like is someone in the grip
Speaker 1: of a personal passion and if so, that can change
Speaker 1: what it means to have a kind of subtled personality. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really like that phrase, grip of personal passion. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah did you just come up with that
Speaker 1: on the spot. No, Well, she might have said passion,
Speaker 1: but he calls them personal projects, I think. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the passion element, you know, there's different kinds of passion.
Speaker 1: There's like a harmonious and obsessive. Actually, what do you
Speaker 1: think is the difference between passionate and interest? Well, I
Speaker 1: think it would probably be a matter of degree of
Speaker 1: affect that you bring to it. I guess maybe passion
Speaker 1: has a more affective component, Like you bring all kinds
Speaker 1: of emotion to it, and interest is more purely like cerebral.
Speaker 1: But also I think of passion as something that's stronger
Speaker 1: than an interest. You could have a passionate interest, cool,
Speaker 1: passionate interests, that's cool. Yeah, you can have a non
Speaker 1: passionate interest as well. Yeah, sure, you could have a
Speaker 1: passing interest in something so common core good or bad.
Speaker 1: It's all about the implementation. I actually think the ideas
Speaker 1: behind it are solid and supported by research. I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of Ed Hirsch and his ideas about the
Speaker 1: importance of background knowledge to comprehension. And again, that's kind
Speaker 1: of another situation, and in this case an internal situation
Speaker 1: that makes us more intelligent. When we have knowledge and
Speaker 1: it's deep and it's interconnected and it's transferable knowledge, our
Speaker 1: minds just work better, you know, we're smarter. That's it's
Speaker 1: a domain specific kind of phenomenon where we're able to
Speaker 1: make better judgments or perform tasks more effectively in areas
Speaker 1: where we know stuff than where we don't. And that's
Speaker 1: another thing that I sometimes see people in the educational
Speaker 1: technology world saying that kids don't really need to learn
Speaker 1: facts anymore because you can always just google it. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: facts have to be jored in here for all those
Speaker 1: cognitive processes to work. I've seen you hold up a
Speaker 1: sign of a one sentence op ed which relates to this.
Speaker 1: Do you want to say what there was? Well, you've
Speaker 1: been google stalking Me's like, I like can quote it
Speaker 1: for there better than I can do. It was something
Speaker 1: like we need knowledge and not just skills. Am I right?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't mean, I'm not like that
Speaker 1: much of a stalker right now, knowledge and not just skills.
Speaker 1: You know, you hear a lot of these days about
Speaker 1: twenty first century education, and you know that it's become
Speaker 1: kind of a buzz and meaningless buzzword. But too often
Speaker 1: when people talk about twenty first century education, they're talking
Speaker 1: about skills and knowledge is left out. But knowledge is
Speaker 1: just as important or more important than it was in
Speaker 1: the era before Google. That's cool, Yeah, I really like that.
Speaker 1: You know, like IQ tests and our measures of intelligence
Speaker 1: we call intelligence tests try to strip as much knowledge away,
Speaker 1: but maybe we should allow students to gather as much
Speaker 1: knowledge as possible and give them a chance to like
Speaker 1: synthesize it or reflect on it. As opposed to just
Speaker 1: regurgitate it. Well, yeah, have you heard about the theories
Speaker 1: of Kieran Egan, where this deep learning where students might
Speaker 1: study one subject for like years, like apples or dust
Speaker 1: or like was a big advocate of that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there is something to that that becoming an
Speaker 1: expert in one domain helps you understand something about the
Speaker 1: nature of expertise in general. And I think lots of
Speaker 1: kids are making themselves into experts on their own. You know,
Speaker 1: my older son is an eight year old expert in
Speaker 1: American history and in baseball, and you know, lots of
Speaker 1: kids become experts in dinosaurs or you know, things that
Speaker 1: interest them, and that's an incredibly motivating force when you have,
Speaker 1: again a personal passion of personal interest and then you
Speaker 1: become an expert almost in the course of pursuing your passion.
Speaker 1: I think we could do a lot more of encouraging
Speaker 1: students to do that. Yeah, Annie, you study a lot
Speaker 1: about what are good ways to learn and what are not?
Speaker 1: Do you mind telling the audience will some optimal things
Speaker 1: that've come across in your research the optimal ways of learning? Mm? Hm, Well,
Speaker 1: you know again, I'm always looking at how the environments
Speaker 1: in which we learn are the word I'd like to use,
Speaker 1: evoke our intelligence or suppress our intelligence. And unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of learning environments schools around the country
Speaker 1: are suppressing kids intelligence rather than evoking it. But one
Speaker 1: example of an evocative environment would be one in which
Speaker 1: kids feel they belong. And I think we often don't
Speaker 1: recognize how important the social element of learning is and
Speaker 1: how important it is feel for students to feel part
Speaker 1: of a community, a community of learners, of stocking, belonging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in middle school. The evidence is pretty clear that many,
Speaker 1: many students do not feel that they belong in school
Speaker 1: and that you can just see their academic performance dropping
Speaker 1: because they don't really feel like they have a place
Speaker 1: there that they're accepted for who they are. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of changes we could make to middle school
Speaker 1: to make sure that that sense of belonging states as
Speaker 1: well as academia. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of women in South Yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point. Yeah, Yeah, it's so important.
Speaker 1: I really like that you raise attention to that, what
Speaker 1: are there good not just like situational factors, but things
Speaker 1: that the person can do active learning strategies something to
Speaker 1: be a better learner. What what are some good strategies
Speaker 1: are you thinking more of, like the cognitive strategies of
Speaker 1: like how to memorize things? And you know, I'll ask
Speaker 1: you because you're next. You're the next. Thing I was
Speaker 1: going to mention might not be quite what you have
Speaker 1: in mind, but you you have nothing in mind any
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm trying to get your wisdom right right,
Speaker 1: So I was going to mention Carol else work on
Speaker 1: the gross mindset. I'm really impressed with how important it
Speaker 1: is to mindsets. Yeah, to believe that intelligence can be
Speaker 1: expanded through one's hard work and effort. And how you know,
Speaker 1: the fixed mindset which a lot of people have. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm this, I'm this smart and no smarter. Nothing I
Speaker 1: do is going to change that. That's really confirmed every
Speaker 1: day for a lot of students who get that message
Speaker 1: from the teachers and other adults around them. So that
Speaker 1: would be something that can be changed. Carol Dwreck has
Speaker 1: shown that the gross mindset can be cultivated, so that
Speaker 1: would be another important piece. I would think of an
Speaker 1: evocative learning and environment. What about like like highlighting or
Speaker 1: like underwining teaching yourself going to the office hours. Which
Speaker 1: ones should students do? Yeah, well, throw out the highlighter,
Speaker 1: step away. Oh yeah, okay, I'll throw that in my
Speaker 1: whole book. No, I mean the problem is that students
Speaker 1: use highlighting and rereading. They rely way too heavily on
Speaker 1: those strategies. Those are some of the most popular strategies
Speaker 1: for studying, and they are the least effective. So really,
Speaker 1: what students should be doing is not rereading that textbook
Speaker 1: for the tenth time, which gives you this illusion of fluency,
Speaker 1: that this illusion of knowledge that you know it, but
Speaker 1: as soon as the test is in front of you,
Speaker 1: it's like poof, it's gone. What students should do is
Speaker 1: close that textbook and engage in what is known as
Speaker 1: retrieval practice, which is basically testing yourself. And in this
Speaker 1: one regard, an old fashioned technique is really still really useful.
Speaker 1: That's flashcards, because that's effectively, you know, retrieval practice, high
Speaker 1: the answer from yourself and practicing pulling that up from
Speaker 1: your memory. Because we think of testing as a way
Speaker 1: to measure what you know, but testing, engaging in the
Speaker 1: practice of testing self testing actually changes what you know.
Speaker 1: So every time you bring it up out of your memory.
Speaker 1: You're strengthening that connection. So retrieval practice and then space repetition,
Speaker 1: which is something that we've known about for so long.
Speaker 1: Psychnology is known about for so long, and still we
Speaker 1: don't do it, you know, And that's not cramming the
Speaker 1: night before test, but revisiting the material at spaced out
Speaker 1: intervals throughout the space out all the time. Annie, I'm
Speaker 1: really good at that. I'm good at space talk about
Speaker 1: daydreaming and the importance of day dreaming. But I would
Speaker 1: just add one more technique. And it's funny. I didn't
Speaker 1: bring these up at first because I feel like people
Speaker 1: hear these and they're like, yeah, yeah, like another study tip.
Speaker 1: But these things really work. I feel like if maybe
Speaker 1: if teachers incorporated them more into the way that they teach,
Speaker 1: in the way that they review for help their students
Speaker 1: review for exams, or you know, they're being incorporated into
Speaker 1: technological tools. So maybe that'll be the thing that brings
Speaker 1: space repetition and retrieval practice and this other thing I
Speaker 1: was going to mention interleaving into the mainstream. Even though
Speaker 1: you know, as I say, we've known about these things
Speaker 1: for decades and they've kind of never caught on. But Interleavingah,
Speaker 1: interleaving is when you know, usually when a kid is
Speaker 1: completing a homework assignment, they'll get blocks of say, math problems,
Speaker 1: like here's your addition problems, here's your subtraction problems, here's
Speaker 1: your multipation problems, and then the student knows exactly which
Speaker 1: solution strategy they're going to be using even before they
Speaker 1: start on the problems. But of course that's not how
Speaker 1: problems come to us in the real world or on tests.
Speaker 1: Usually the hardest part about the problem is figuring out
Speaker 1: what solutions strategy to apply. So it's much more effective
Speaker 1: to mix up those types of questions, have them in blocks,
Speaker 1: so that with each question you have to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of problem is this and what do I
Speaker 1: need to do to solve it. So that's something that
Speaker 1: teachers or even parents or students themselves could implement pretty easily.
Speaker 1: I think very cool. You've read a lot about learning disabilities,
Speaker 1: dyslexia in particular, Yeah, you wrote a lot. Why are
Speaker 1: you so interested in dyslexia out of it is the
Speaker 1: most prominent, most rates of learning disabilities? How do you
Speaker 1: get interested in that topic? And well, there is dyslexia
Speaker 1: in my family go it. Yeah, that is something that
Speaker 1: has personally affected me because I've seen people that I
Speaker 1: love struggle with dyslexia. But also I'm very interested in
Speaker 1: reading and the mechanics of reading, and so of course
Speaker 1: when something goes wrong with a process, that can be
Speaker 1: a window into understanding it more generally. And it's also,
Speaker 1: interestingly one of the few places where and you might
Speaker 1: disagree with me about this, it'd be interesting to know
Speaker 1: if you agree or disagree with me. But I disagree
Speaker 1: well because I know you know a lot about the brain,
Speaker 1: and you write a lot about the brain. But I'm
Speaker 1: persuaded that at this point there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: that neuroscience has to offer in terms of direct prescriptions
Speaker 1: for what to do in education. And you know that's
Speaker 1: not a widely shared view. If you look at how
Speaker 1: much stuff there is out there about brain based learning,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of junk out there. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of junk out there, and so I dyslexia strikes me
Speaker 1: as one of the areas where research in brain science
Speaker 1: really has contributed to telling us what to do about it,
Speaker 1: what to do about the condition of dyslexia, that the
Speaker 1: neuroscience research that has showed us that it's really an
Speaker 1: oral problem, a problem of hearing rather than seeing, is
Speaker 1: a really useful insight which we can use to treat
Speaker 1: dyslexic people and help them more effectively. But in general,
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you see applications for neuroscience. I
Speaker 1: know that you've argued recently that there's a lot it's
Speaker 1: a lot more malleable and culturally based dyslexia, and you've
Speaker 1: reviewed some gray matter research on that. Yes, Well, the
Speaker 1: idea that really none of us have brains that were
Speaker 1: wired to read, you know, that's not a program that
Speaker 1: our brains have evolved to have. So we have to
Speaker 1: kind of painstakingly rewire our brains one at a time
Speaker 1: to learn to read. And the one of the ways
Speaker 1: that that happens is simply getting a lot of reading practice.
Speaker 1: But for dyslexics, reading is so difficult that they do
Speaker 1: less of it and so their brains change less. So
Speaker 1: it's part of when we're examining a dyslexic child, we're
Speaker 1: not just seeing that initial deficit, that initial kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's different about their brain. We're also seeing the
Speaker 1: result of maybe many years of getting less practice at
Speaker 1: reading and thus less change of the brain. I have
Speaker 1: a question, why do you make the argument that we
Speaker 1: our brains aren't wired to read, Like, what's the evidence
Speaker 1: for that that our brains didn't evolve brain mechanisms to
Speaker 1: support the active reading. Well, reading is just such a
Speaker 1: recently developed technology. There hasn't been time for our brains
Speaker 1: to develop a sort of reading specific module. So, you know,
Speaker 1: there's really interesting books by Stanislaus Dehane, Is that how
Speaker 1: you say it? And Marian Wolfe tough about how the
Speaker 1: brain has to undergo a transformation really to become literate,
Speaker 1: and fascinating experiments looking at Colombian gorillas, for example, who
Speaker 1: literally grew up fighting and so never learned to read,
Speaker 1: but then became literate as adults, and the changes that
Speaker 1: their brains underwent as they became literate. Because often when
Speaker 1: people don't become literate, it's not an unselected population. There's
Speaker 1: some reason that they didn't learn to read. But in
Speaker 1: this case, it was just like everybody who grew up
Speaker 1: in this community was a gorilla fighter rather than a
Speaker 1: school child. So it made them a good population to
Speaker 1: look at, right, So we could say that, like neurologically speaking,
Speaker 1: that people who have difficulty reading or have difficulty with
Speaker 1: language more generally because reading just plays on our evolved
Speaker 1: mechanisms for language, but predominant in the left hemisphere Brokers area,
Speaker 1: Bernicke's area, that people who have difficulty with this do
Speaker 1: have some sort of different kind of structural wiring or so.
Speaker 1: But of course that structural wiring is influenced by experience,
Speaker 1: is experience dependent as well as influenced by genes. They're
Speaker 1: both in interaction. So you could use neuroscience as a
Speaker 1: guide to what specific kind of language functions are impaired
Speaker 1: or need remediation. See neuroscience could make the case that
Speaker 1: that's true. But I agree that we should be very
Speaker 1: hesitant about and be worried about just how much and
Speaker 1: not get too a we're excited that we really know
Speaker 1: that much about how to apply it. So I'm totally
Speaker 1: with you on that, right, right, I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: let's talk about robo graders. Oh yeah, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, anything we can do to make kids more
Speaker 1: interested in learning, more willing and motivated to keep persevering,
Speaker 1: and it seems like robo graders might be an answer
Speaker 1: to that, right, right, And to give your listeners background
Speaker 1: on why it would be that robo graders might have
Speaker 1: that effect, because of course, when most people can hear
Speaker 1: the term robo readers or robograders, yeah, the idea of
Speaker 1: subjecting a piece of you know, because when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about robo readers or robo graders, we're not I'm not
Speaker 1: just talking about scoring a bubble test. There are software
Speaker 1: programs now that claim to be able to assess and
Speaker 1: evaluate pieces of writing, you know, And so there's been
Speaker 1: a huge pushback from you know, faculty who teach writing,
Speaker 1: for example, who say there's no way that a computer,
Speaker 1: that a machine can evaluate the quality of a piece
Speaker 1: of writing. And I generally agree with that. I don't
Speaker 1: think they're ready for prime time in that regard. But
Speaker 1: I did find very interesting some studies that suggested that
Speaker 1: feedback from an automated program on students writing on pretty
Speaker 1: basic stuff like you know, send structure or punctuation or
Speaker 1: the way that a piece was organized, that students responded
Speaker 1: very differently to that kind of feedback from a machine
Speaker 1: than similar than to similar feedback from a person and
Speaker 1: in this case, it was the very non humanness of
Speaker 1: the robograder that made it a better tool for learning.
Speaker 1: You know, usually we think that the human element is
Speaker 1: the most important thing in education, and it usually is,
Speaker 1: but in this case, it was the fact that it
Speaker 1: wasn't a person saying you did this wrong that made
Speaker 1: the feedback seem less threatening to the student, and so
Speaker 1: they were more willing to robot to repeatedly revise, and
Speaker 1: they actually ultimately wrote better papers because of this. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder, like if you did a study where you
Speaker 1: just specifically isolate good teachers versus robo graders, versus all
Speaker 1: teachers versus robo graders. I wonder how we can apply
Speaker 1: these principles to Like I wonder if it's not really
Speaker 1: the human versus robot dimension, but it's the non judgmental
Speaker 1: mentioned What if we actually had I was thinking when
Speaker 1: I was reading your article, what if we meet everything
Speaker 1: more revisable and this growth back to this growth mindset
Speaker 1: culture where students know that on every assessment and everything,
Speaker 1: they're not being judged, it's just feedback that they can revise.
Speaker 1: Is there a lessons we can learn from robots? Yeah? Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I like that a lot. I like that a lot.
Speaker 1: I Also it makes me think of, you know again
Speaker 1: Greg Walden's idea of whise interventions wise, you know, because
Speaker 1: negative feedback can be experienced is very alienating, like you
Speaker 1: don't belong here, You're not a part of this community,
Speaker 1: You're not good enough. And so a wise feedback says, basically,
Speaker 1: I have high expectations. I know you can meet them,
Speaker 1: and that's why I'm giving you this feedback and even
Speaker 1: just a little post it note, you know, put on
Speaker 1: top of a regularly grated assignment that says I have
Speaker 1: high expectations, I know you can meet them. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this has amazingly you know, positive effects
Speaker 1: on students willingness to revise and to react to that feedback.
Speaker 1: So I think that's like a really cool way to
Speaker 1: go forward to. I love it. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for this interview. Any I have very high expectations for
Speaker 1: your new book. You know I can keep them right, Yes? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Would you like to end with any sort of lasting
Speaker 1: advice for parents, educators, or individuals who want to learn
Speaker 1: and become smarter. Yes, pay attention to the environment in
Speaker 1: which the immediate conditions in which you're learning, and make
Speaker 1: sure that they're evoking intelligence and not suppressing it. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman.
Speaker 1: I hope you found this episode just as a formative
Speaker 1: and thought proboling if I did. If you don't like
Speaker 1: to read the show notes for this episode or here
Speaker 1: past episodes, you can go to the Psychology Podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Oh you