The cost of being right… can you afford it?

The cost of being right… There is no doubt that being right can be empowering. That being said, is it actually contributing to our growth?

Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive psychology professor at the Collège de France (Paris), stipulates that play, concentration and sleep can increase our learning capacities.

He states that knowing how to actually learn is pivotal in optimizing brain function for scholastic results.

If one can be impressed by AI, consider that a baby operates 10 to 1000 times faster than actual artificial networks, says Dehaene.

In his very first months, a baby formulates hypotheses based on observations that stem from what he makes out of his environment.

A baby experiments constantly. Take, for example, when he drops a spoon from his chair, for the tenth time. If some would think that he is testing his parents’ patience, others can think that he is learning the law of gravity.

Based on observation of babies, we can proclaim that learning resides on four pillars. The first pillar is attention. Attention amplifies information so that it can be memorized, for example.

The second pillar is active engagement. The child needs to constantly generate new hypothesis. As a teacher, for instance, you create active engagement by asking questions to the students. Students that are actively involved in learning actually perform better by 33%.

The third pillar is the possibility to go back to a mistake. That already means you accept the very fact that you made a mistake. To make a mistake is the actual condition for learning. We know that positive emotions nourish curiosity and enthusiasm in a child while negative emotions block learning. This being said, grades can be seen by some as a necessary measure yet, they aren’t the greatest to promote learning.

The fourth pillar is consolidation. Here, repetition is required. To favour long-term memorization, we must review our knowledge basis at regular intervals. Sleep is key in consolidation. When we sleep, our neurons replay twenty times faster what we have learned during the day.

So there you have it… want to get smarter… look forward to making mistakes!

https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/lerreur-condition-meme-lapprentissage