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It's Not Just How Smart You Are: Curiosity Is Key To Learning
Scientific American reports that a UC Davis study (paywalled) on how learning interacts with curiosity indicates that curiosity can lead to demonstrably better recall. From the SciAm 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."
What does this button do?
If you can come up with the solution faster than it takes to recall it, then long term memory is pointless, maybe even damaging as memories can change. As this is basically rote learning, no thanks.
doing. From the description above: " 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." But the following sentence (and the experimental protocol) state that the face followed (not preceded) the question. So someone was not paying attention. Is it any wonder that non-scientists are confused and bored by rubbish such as this? In the words of Yoda.....
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Isn't this some of those things that kind of is a 'given' ?
Curiosity leads to motivation, stuff you do in an unmotivated or bored state never come out well and (thankfully) will not be remembered.
Curiosity and enthusiasm for your work and an ability to learn? No, you're not a quality hire. We have a culture of mindless ignorant drudgery here. We don't need any free-thinking terrorists on our team.
I would say that curiosity is one of the components ot "being smart" and as such, yes, it is just about how smart you are.
But, "Curiosity" is one of the Big Five factors in psychology, has a genetic basis, and has an antipode, in "Uninterested"!
That means that some students will never get curious enough to learn, but will remain ignorant.
Most schools makes sure to kill curiosity in its nest.
I just wanted to get the test over with and move on to something interesting and worth remembering. Now we have an official report to prove the self-evident. meanwhile - we cancel art, music, electronics, workshop, anything a student would really want to learn. How about combine music. electronics, and math into a short but immersive synthesizer course. They don't have to build anything huge - but they could physically see what all this algebra and electrical stuff means by hearing it, something worth remembering. A biology/art/science course growing plants? Workshop and physics combined into so many possible ways? - no, we just cancel these sorts of things and impose a standardized testing routine with no experimentation. Poor kids, I heard some elementary schools got rid of recess too. Tragic.
boring
Of course the didn't calibrate for knowledge.
You're not going to be curious about an answer to a question if you already know the answer.
You're not going to be interested in something if you don't know what it is.
I'm not sure that curiosity or intrigue is some property that you can just "put" into a question, as the summary suggests.
Curiosity is so-obviously a huge factor in interest, but it's something that is - at least in part - inherent in a personality, not a question. You can ask the most wonderfully "intriguing" question of someone but if they have no interest, no desire to know, then it's not going to spark their interest. At best, they'll think there's more to the question, then be disappointed at the "trick".
As someone who works in schools (including private schools), curiosity is actually quite a rare trait. Most students just aren't interested in what their learning because it is - to the most part - not something they want to learn. They get forced to.
And the bright ones will FIND something intriguing about the most dull of subjects. I was always more fascinated by mathematics, and trying computer science to mathematics, and science to mathematics, and even graphic design to mathematics (the golden ratio, etc.) made it more interesting to me. This is the geek's main skill and the source of their brain power - the interest they can find in the most mundane of subjects.
The students that stand out have an unquenchable curiosity about the most mundane of things. They suck the knowledge from their teachers until they run dry and then move on to the next source.
I work in IT in schools - I'm not a teacher - but I had a student just last term who realised that I actually knew some things that his teachers didn't know (C programming, basic electronics, etc.). His curiosity ran riot and he did everything he could to learn more and schedule time that I could show him things (I'm not a teacher, but the school are really good about focusing on the student, so they allowed it). Hell, I took him into the science lab and showed him how to solder circuits because NOBODY had ever shown him how to do it.
This is a young adult that's since gone to an exclusive private school with the best teachers and resources in the world but because soldering was "new" to him, he took it on and within a couple of hours was proficient in it. It piqued his interest, so he didn't let it rest. Did I make it interesting? Did I come up with some link to other subjects he enjoyed? Did I make up stories about the history of soldering to make it more interesting? No.
Curiosity is a trait to instil in your child, at all costs. Not through trick questions, not through forcing them but to just get them to question and - when they do - answer. I can't tell you the number of teachers and parents I see say "I don't know" to a child's question and leave it at that. Or "it's too hard for you". Or even "Shut up, we need to do this next bit".
Instil curiosity by making curiosity the norm. "Well, how does it do that, do you think? I've no idea myself, son. Let's go find out, shall we? Shall we ask that guy that's running the machine?".
Curiosity is the driver here. It's not something you can make happen, it's certainly not something that you can get into a kid by rewording a question - but it's something you can encourage, by asking questions that all the other adults never bother to ask, and never bother to answer either.
The events happended in the following order:
1. Question
2. Face
3. Answer
The face preceded the answer && The face followed the question.
Try or try not, there is no do.
You don't know if it'll succeed until you're already done.
And in other news, it turns out that being able to walk is not enough to take you places; you also need to WANT to go somewhere.
Neuroscientist Charan Ranganath and his fellow researchers asked 19 participants ...
Do we need to look any further? 19 participants !?!
Why do we continually get in a froth over things that wouldn't count as preliminary results in the real world? 19 participants ?!?
Come back when you've conducted *real* research on a *statistically significant* number of test subjects. 19 participants !?!
Oh, and in case you missed it ... 19 PARTICIPANTS!?!?!
... Really? This wasn't suspected, hadn't been demonstrated a million times over? Wow, curiousity an important factor in learning?! Who knew? OH, EVERYONE!
Sadly, there are some real researchers who still aren't funded.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
You are quite right. Which is why I should not post on /. at 2:30 AM. :)
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
"Curiosity is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein
My advice: Don't waste a lot of time studying things that are already known to be true. (Pretty much everything he said, I take at face value.)
This highlights the whole problem with classic education, a.k.a indoctrination. You can not just put young people in one end of the system and hammer away, and expect engineers and what not to come out the other end, as if the education system is some kind of manufacturing machine.
If someone is not interested in something, then everything you tell them about it will go in one ear and out the other. You can not force them to learn. The people who make the decisions don't understand this, because in a similar irony they are not interested in hearing about it, and will consequently never learn. This is why classic means of education is a miserable failure.
about being curious about being curious about..ad infinitum.
It's not something you can just say 'Oh, I'll be more curious. I'l learn more. You can't fake it but people will because they always do."
Recruiter: "I see you're very curious. You did all these curious things..."
Doesn't mean anything but idiot recruiters will continue to be fooled as they always are.
Curiosity is synonymous with interest, if you aren't interested in a subject you don't apply the same effort.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You just defined what a nerd is in an extremely inefficient way. What's your next trick going to be? Telling us why water is wet and why the sky is blue?
So, everyone but Reagan? Right?
If you rigorously follow the one drop rule, Obama's a white dude. So he's a honky, just like George Bush and Bill Clinton.
Huh? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
Sorry, I should've added the word unhypocritically.