Sailing The Seven C’s of Cognition
ship michael-blum https://unsplash.com/photos/uk1YeeAi5t0
I’ve been on a quest this season. By learning more about how the human brain works I am seeking more effective approaches to learning that explicitly leverage the brain’s unique excellences. I don’t think I’m a curmudgeon, but I have to say that
Most approaches to learning wantonly disregard the design of the brain.
Do I have your attention? Are your juices flowing? Good. Curiosity is the essential motive force behind all learning. It is the foundational fundamental of the 7 C’s of Cognition that I’ve developed this season. Deep curiosity about how and why is the only thing sufficient to light the fire of learning.
All seven C’s are functionally related, but some are logically prior to the others. Conceptualization begins at birth, if not before. It is basic to the conscious mind.
Concept (idea) formation is the “C” that is most egregiously trampled on by professional educators.
All neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists acknowledge concept development—that is the formation of logical categories—as a significant element of learning. You’ll have to look hard, however, to find one who values concepts as the brain prioritizes them. The human brain is a pattern detector/maker par excellence. Concepts are patterns. The brain learns through formulating (and revising) its concepts based on new instances or by apparent conflicts between patterns.
The lack of clear thinking about concepts is appalling and disheartening. The quantum shift you must make is to focus learning (and teaching) on the development of ideas through experiences that maximize pattern formation. You developed incredible verbal skills before the age of three by just this means.
Pattern recognition is the brain in native mode (or beast mode for you athletes).
Teaching as telling is still primary in educational circles. As a result, some educators who say they value concepts and patterns treat them as facts for students to memorize. This fails to reckon with the reality that real learning is directly related to the process by which the student individually comes to recognize the pattern.
As critical thinking authority, the late Richard Paul, put it,
“Whatever is to have meaning to them must be given meaning by them.” (italics original) (p. 322)
Meaning is discoverable, but constrained by reality. Paul says, “If what we figure out can be anything we want it to be, anything we fantasize it as being, then there is no logic to the expression ‘figure out.’” (p. 18)
Concepts don’t exist in isolation. Connectivity is next in priority. Concepts are patterns that logically relate to other patterns in a web (or network) of interconnections. Finding the right home for a new idea will take some time and probably multiple revisions.
Bringing ideas forward from working memory to interact with new patterns in working memory is a never-ending process that serves to constantly remodel our concepts and networks of concepts all the way up to schemata and models. This reshaping is key to being flexible as learners. We don’t want our brains populated with outdated, untrue, or useless knowledge.
The frequency of retrieval is directly related to the strength of our long-term memory of a concept.
Students may commandeer the principle of retrieval frequency to cram for a test only to never visit the ideas again. The brain will eventually erase these orphaned ideas. Long-term learning requires long-term retrieval. I would hasten to add that the retrieval need not be contrived and artificial. Ideally omnivorous intellectual curiosity retrieves many concepts and schemata unconsciously as we work to find a home for new concepts or exemplars and even to revise high-level patterns like schemata and models.
We all do better with concrete examples. Let’s use the preceding principles of learning (3 of the 7 C’s) on a recent claim from the exercise physiology literature that
Icing down muscles after an intense workout to reduce soreness and swelling is a poor choice.
The practice of icing is long-standing so why is the advice changing now? That’s the Curiosity provoking question. What Concepts are involved in understanding the old practice and what kind of evidence would call it into question?
I’ve extracted (below in red) concepts from a recent news article which made the claim that icing muscles after exercise is not a good idea.
This is step 1 in what has been called the Feynman Technique for learning (which has many permutations: see links at the bottom).
"Richard Feynman" by tlwmdbt is marked with CC BY-SA 2.0.
Most versions of the technique call for listing a single concept which you will then need to explain to someone else in the simplest way possible. It’s obvious from the numbered propositions below (concepts in red) that there are many concepts in play in real fact claims. Choosing one concept at the outset is simplistic and works against the reality of Connectivity; concepts exist in logically connected networks and not in isolation.
Strenuous workouts tear muscle fibers creating localized damage.
Healing the damage requires metabolism.
Healing the damage results in muscle growth and improved strength.
Ice is used to locally lower body temperature.
Ice numbs tissue which temporarily reduces pain.
Lower temperature slows metabolism down.
Lower temperature slows migration of white blood cells associated with inflammation and clearing cell debris (phagocytosis).
Delaying inflammation causes a series of problems because damage lingers.
Handling these eight propositions is going to put a strain on working memory (limit 3-5 items simultaneously). This Constrained Capacity (cognitive load limit) requires us to parcel out the propositions so that we don’t overload working memory.
It is likely we’ll have to take the propositions apart one at a time. We may already have some of these concepts in long-term memory; so much the better. The issue will then become how robust our previous conceptualization has been. We may find some serious deficiencies which we will need to remedy before we get down to the real business at hand.
The remedy will probably involve both additional encoding (by consulting reputable sources) and selective refinement of our conceptions including outright erasure of misconceptions. The pruning and erasure primarily come at night and are part of Consolidation. Consolidation leads to insight which you’ll need to solve this problem.
It is only after deliberating about each of the eight propositions and their interrelationships that I may have enough clarity to identify a concept that is central to the simple takeaway, “They say using ice packs on strained muscles is not a good idea after exercise.” Stating this as a bald fact isn’t satisfying. Who says it? Based on what evidence ? Those are the real questions.
To answer these questions requires first that the central idea is identified, then thoroughly understood, and finally woven into an explanatory narrative that takes the connections to the remaining concepts into account.
I think the Central Concept is inflammation. What is the purpose of the inflammatory response? Increased blood flow due to inflammation brings chemical substances and white blood cells to an area where damage has been detected. The designed purpose is to mediate healing; swelling is an unavoidable side-effect. Ice is used to tamp down inflammation to avoid swelling. Is that a good idea or a bad one?
These questions direct you to formulate an explanatory narrative.
Inflammation is actually a very complex group of processes; it is a schema. (A schema is an example of complex Chunking—a response to our limited working memory). In your narrative can you articulate at least an overall sense of why inflammation is programmed into a response to tissue damage?
It is only after you can trace the normal course of inflammation that you are equipped to render a judgement about whether blunting inflammation is ever a good idea. Then you can move into the specifics of icing down stressed muscles.
If you’ve taken inventory of bold face C’s, you’ll notice that I haven’t listed Creativity—until now.
Creativity is actually evident in the entire approach to learning I’ve outlined.
This approach is creative and breaks from tradition for all the right reasons. Fundamentally it is not different for the mere sake of difference. It is different because it is a response to what we know about how the brain learns.
An example of constraint in the business world. Creativity can still flourish here.
Image by Dirk Wouters from Pixabay
Creativity is perhaps most evident when it must work within constraints, and we’ve pointed out two major limitations of the brain this season.
Routine sensory overload forces us to choose inputs that appeal to our curiosity because they may help answer questions that are compelling to us.
The constrained capacity of the working memory thwarts our attempts at becoming walking fact encyclopedias.
Creativity is exhibited in the ability to focus on what is most important.
Elegant and powerful simplicity in the brain’s schemata is a direct result of selective forgetting. By playing to the brain’s unrivaled ability as a perceiver and a constructor of patterns, we are rewarded with deep understanding because patterns are baked into the structure of the universe.
“Creativity, as a term of praise, involves more than a mere haphazard or uncritical making, more than the raw process of bringing something into being. It requires that what is brought into being meet criteria intrinsic to what it is we are trying to make. Novelty alone will not do, for it is easy to produce worthless novelty. Intellectual standards and discipline do not stand in the way of creativity. Rather, they provide a way to begin to generate it, as it must be generated: slowly and painfully, one student at a time, one problem at a time, one insight at a time.”
Richard Paul, p. 32. (emphasis mine)
The process I’ve illustrated above shows how you can make facts your own, since we’re so often served facts instead of concepts. This approach enables you to move past passive reception to knowledge with understanding. It isn’t easy, but it will produce lasting learning because memory is intended to be a byproduct of pattern recognition and pattern maturation.
The more you cooperate with the design of your brain, the more reflexive all of this will become and the more your robust conceptual frameworks will be up to making sense of the world. It will be like compound interest which Einstein called the 8th Wonder of the World. The 1st Wonder of the World is the human brain because it invented all the human-built wonders!
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
For the record, here are the 7 C’s of Cognition in a logical order:
Curiosity
Conceptualization
Connectivity
Constrained Capacity (Cognitive load)
Chunking
Consolidation
Creativity (permeates 1-6)
Two helpful posts on the Feynman Technique:
https://fs.blog/feynman-learning-technique/
https://fs.blog/feynman-technique/
The video below is a very popular presentation of the Feynman Technique. It has some significant deficiencies in steps 3 and 4. In step 3 it isn’t clear what you are trying to accomplish by your review. In step 4 the use of “terms” betrays “the vice of verbalism” rather than a conceptual approach.
Richard Paul, Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, Revised 2nd ed., Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1992.
5 theses about the nature of creativity.
Barbara Oakley shares her approach to learning which has many parallels with what I’ve outlined above. Oakley traces her journey from a self-diagnosed math flunkey to a Professor of Engineering who uses mathematics regularly and deeply.