After googling for a bit, I came across an article called "How Curiosity Changes the Brain to Enhance Learning." Being college students, I'm sure we're all interested in figuring out how to "enhance our learning." I mean that couldn't hurt on test day.... Everyone knows that people will remember more about what they are actually interested in. That's why classes that are interesting to us are generally not as painful to study for and easier to do well in. However, this study wanted to take it one step further...
For the experiment, the participants were first asked to rate their curiosity levels of given trivia questions. They were then later asked trivia questions that they were interested in and ones that they were not, but before they could answer, were shown neutral/unrelated faces. Afterwards they were given a memory test for facial recognition and a memory test for the trivia. As expected the results showed that the more curious one was about a particular trivia question, the more likely they were to remember the answer. But... who cares, right? Those results showed what we already knew. The study was designed to test more than that though. Because of the neutral faces placed within the trivia questions, the researchers were also able to see that once the curiosity was aroused, an individual could be better at learning entirely unrelated information. In other words, the people that were given trivia they actually cared about remembered more of the random faces they were shown. The people that were shown trivia that they didn't care about were less likely to remember the trivia as well as the faces that they were shown.
They were also able to see a correlation between curiosity/interest level and the reward system in the brain as well as increased activity in the hippocampus, a part of the brain related to memory. The article states, "Understanding the relationship between motivation and memory could therefore stimulate new efforts to improve memory in the healthy elderly and to develop new approaches for treating patients with disorders that affect memory."
The research sounds very interesting and maybe in the future could be used to change teaching styles. I mean what teacher wouldn't want their students to learn more simply by making them interested in the original material? If they could harness the students' curiosity about something they are naturally motivated to learn then maybe they could be more engaged in what really matters...the applied learning outside of the classroom.
I'd be interested in seeing the actual data for the experiment and perhaps some variations of the study in order to determine the validity of what they're suggesting. But from my standpoint, the results sound pretty darn good.
The link to the article can be found here:
http://neurosciencenews.com/curiosity-memory-learning-neuroscience-1388/
Maybe this is something I need to do for some of my exams! I wonder what would happen though if they had used another form of neutral stimuli, if that would affect the results at all? I feel like faces could also add to the curiosity, especially if its someone the subject considers attractive. Not really sure if that would do anything, but it would definitely be interesting to see the actual data from the experiment and the reasoning behind why they chose faces.
ReplyDeleteThis article is definitely true! I know that I'm more motivated to do well in classes that I like and am curious about. I wonder if the participants age or gender makes a difference. Teenagers and young adults might have different curiosity levels than older adults and it would be interesting to see a study comparing the two age groups.
ReplyDeleteI really like this research especially in relation to teaching. Trying to get students to explore a topic based on their own interests seems like it would be more effective. We talked about this concept in my philosophy class where we wanted to structure the main theme of of our essays around topics we were interested in or relating the essays' themes back to our majors. A lot of the students expressed that they may have done better on these essays if that was an option. I think it would be a difficult concept to employ in the classroom, but tailoring assignments to student's individual interests could be an option, similar to the assignment list we had for this class. In my previous experience, I learn and retain more information when I can relate the information to something in my life that carries significant meaning. I'm then naturally more curious in the topic. I am interested to see if more research is conducted relating to helping elderly patients with memory impairments. I have a grandma with dementia and I am always curious to read about research that could help her.
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