Howard Gardner, the evolution of the psychology of intelligence, and the rise of neuropedagogy

I went back to review Howard Gardner's book titled Frames of Mind.  This is the book where he more thoroughly postulates his theory of multiple intelligences.  I will start with a disclaimer.  The first section of this post is merely a discussion of how the concept of intelligence has evolved through the last two centuries.  There were some views that today some of us find offensive.  Be patient as we look at the foolishness of centuries past and the slow painful path to where we are now.

1. He starts out by narrating a brief summary of the evolution of intelligence psychology.  This evolution goes as far back as the late 1800's and a person named Franz Joseph Gall.  This person developed what later became known as phrenology.  This school of thought held that a person's physical traits could give you insight into their brain and, thus, to their intellect or lack thereof.  For example he believed that those people who had prominent eyes tended to have very good memory.  Furthermore, if your forehead was a particular size it indicated that you were not quite so smart.  He further believed that other aspects of the shape of your head gave you away if you were immoral and even what kind of immorality you were inclined to do.  This field, of course, was dismissed with the rise of genetics proving that it was your genes, not your intellect, what shaped your head. 

Francis Galton, a philosopher of the same time period took the concept of genetics and intelligence to a new level.  This scientist proposed that intelligence was inherited.  Furthermore, he associated intelligence to literacy.  Therefore, according to him, if you belonged to a culture that does not engage in literacy, you tended to be genetically destined to be of limited intelligence.  As time went by, Alfred Binet developed the first IQ tests which tended to support Galton's point of view.  Although the concept of IQ has lost credibility among some prominent scientists, it is sad to say that there are many people who still hold to this antiquated notion.  In time several scientific developments came about which stated that to a point, intelligence also has something to do with the culture and upbringing of the children.  For example, it was noted that the first IQ tests were in French and English.  This left those whose first language was neither French or English at a disadvantage, especially since many of the tasks involved verbal affinity.  Furthermore, Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky pointed out that culture plays a very important part in learning.  He insisted that a significant part of learning involved socialization into acquiring certain skills valued by the society to which the learner belongs.  A third reason why it was discredited is because the increasing numbers of child prodigies were a direct contradiction of this field of thought which held that IQ, and therefore intelligence, is limited by genetics.  Suddenly you found prodigies excelling even over their own progenitors skills.  The IQ field of thought has no explanation for it.  Furthermore, this school of thought was limited to laboratory pencil and paper results with little evidence of how the individuals used their intelligence in real life situations.  Finally, there is one remaining nail in the proverbial coffin.  The use of IQ tests left too much power in the hands of the person who developed the IQ tests.  We would have to question whether the developer of the tests considered himself such a genius.  After all, he knew all the answers to the test as the developer.  Ultimately, it was this person who developed the test to judge everybody else in terms of his (or her)intelligence.  As more and more people are attending the university, and as more and more people are learning more languages people are realizing that you can nudge your IQ up a few points by merely learning to read and write in another language or to attain one more college degree.  Still, this latter point has turned into the proverbial chicken or egg debate.  Those who still swear by this outdated school of thought claim that those who learn another language or continue their education do so because they already have the intelligence to do so.  This negates the fact that language, for example is a natural inclination of the human race without direct connections to intelligence.  You can learn a language simply by being immersed by it.  This does not imply intelligence.

As time went on, we meet our friend Jean Piaget.  He established a sequence of mastery in which supposedly all toddlers develop their mental capacities.  He claimed that children first need to master the "pre-operational" stage, or the idea that an object does not cease to exist just because you hide it.  Then they need to master the concrete operational stage and then the formal operations stage.    This field of thought eventually came to be limited by several criticisms.  First, his studies were merely empirical and focused merely on French males.  The sample was therefore not varied enough to hold true.  Also, it failed to take into account the role of society and the developments of prodigies.   It also had students being at stage three in one particular area while at stage one in another.  

Not to long ago another view came about.  This was an innovation because it no longer focused on a child's answer to a question, but it also explored how the child reasoned to reach his or her answer.  This became known as the information processing approach and it helped dawn the new era of cognitivism.  However, the tests developed by this field of thought were limited to lab environments and seldom confronted students with real life situations. 

Finally, with the rise in neurological knowledge we have come to see that there are many different skills, each mediated by different region, or combination of neurons.  This view takes into account real life situation and to the role of society and cognitive reasoning in the mastery of different skills, not just verbal or mathematical ones.    To further explore this he proposes some propositions from the field of neurology.

2. To understand the new direction the concept of intelligence is going to we need to understand some basic facts about neurology, namely, neuroplasticity. 

The younger the person, the more readily the brain readapts.  There is more brain plasticity at younger ages than at older ages.  If a child's language development, for example, is hindered until a certain age, the child will likely not acquire the same proficiency in the language. 

Second proposition is that some regions of the brain yield more plasticity than others depending on the age of full maturity for the particular brain region.  The corpus callosum and the Prefrontal Cortex are usually the last ones to develop and therefore have plenty of room for plasticity. 

Thirdly, for brain plasticity to occur there needs to be certain experiences in play.  They realized that lab rats that were blindfolded for the first 3 months of their lives developed blindness due to the visual cortex not receiving proper stimulation.  Of course we cannot say that blindfolding a baby would lead to blindness.  Besides it would be to cruel of an experiment and outside of the law.  However, it has been observed that households that are more stimulating do develop brighter brains. 

Different neurons, or combinations thereof, are responsible for certain tasks.  This discovery came in through a series of unfortunate events.  In the 1890's, A Frenchman who was only known as monsieur C suffered a stroke that affected the occipitotemporal cortex.  Despite being a very skilled reader prior to his accident, he had a hard time recognizing letters, let alone words.  When asked to write the letters he was able, but not when he was shown the letter and asked about it.  It was quickly found out that this was a crucial area for reading.   There were also other accidents that demonstrated that right under the left temple, there's an area called Brocca which is responsible for language.  People who damaged this area found it very difficult to pronounce proper sentences.  A bit further behind there is another area that affects the comprehension of language.  It was called Wernicke's Area. 

3. This awareness of neurophysiology he has come to use as physiological evidence of his concept of multiple skills. I shall go into this in next week's blog  Until then....

Happy teaching and even happier learning.

What is neuropedagogy?  Why is it important for educators?

For the past half century education has been but a series of teaching and learning philosophies.  A sad example of this is the so called reading wars that have been so popular in the 1900's.  On one side there were -- or are- the phonics proponents.  On the other, the Whole Language proponents.  Don't get me wrong, both sides agree that children first need to master phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle during the first stage of reading development, Learning to read.  Where they are at odds is what happens next.  The former insist that fluency, as measured in words per minute, is essential to comprehension.  The latter argue that it is irrelevant at best, detrimental at worse.  Both factions claim to be driven by convincing scientific evidence, yet this is far from the truth.  the same can be said for any subject matter. 

However,

I've been reading about neurology and physical exercise.  The available research out there demonstrates that the best way to have a sound mind in old age is to become physically fit.  According to Ratey, Research performed on retired nuns demonstrate that physical exercises eliminates, or at least greatly reduces the impact of elderly dementia such as Alzheimers.  They found that the nuns who participated in physical exercise outwardly showed no sign of dementia despite the fact that post-humous brain evaluations demonstrated the same scar tissue as those seniors with dementia.  The conclusion was that physical exercise helps create, recruit and reroute neurons to keep the brain healthy and young.

Want to keep your brain young?  Try exercising.

John Medina echoes this notion in his book titled Brain Rules.  He suggests that the reason so many people have cognitive problems is due to a lack of physical activity.  He goes on to claim that the human brain evolved due to the very demanding physical activity that our earliest ancestors had to exert just to survive.  "The earliest humans had to travel 10 to 20 kilometers a day....That means our fancy brains developed not while we were lounging around but while we were working out."   Several paragraphs later he says. "Given our relative wimpiness in the animal kingdom... we grew up in top physical shape or not at all." 

 

A few questions surge from this reading.  How much of our modern brain is really associated with physical activity?  As the perfect sphere that I am, this question hunted me while I read the book.  A closer look at the study revealed that a fit lifestyle helps improve the cardiovascular system. This in turn helps reduce the likelihood of stroke or heart attacks.  This improved blood flow also help irrigate the brain.  This awareness reminded me of the time when I went with fellow educators to a conference a UCLA.  At times we listened to a very monotonous speaker.  You know, the kind of speakers who have the same dynamic speech as a static television set.  Sure enough, after 30 minutes of his speech, I lost focus and was about ready to call it a day.  I got up to go to the bathroom.  Once I reached the bottom of the three flights of stairs, I was exhausted, but I also noticed something that pleasantly surprised me;  My mind was once again and cognitively alert.  I made my way back up the three flights of stairs to the conference and, despite the physical sense of exhaustion, I felt mentally and physically energized. 

 

 

Medina continues to inform us about the role exercise plays on the brain, "exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving and fluid intelligence tasks." This comes as little surprise even to a lounge tater tot as myself.  Dr. Howard Pierce reminds us in Owner's Manual to the Brain  that prior research has demonstrated that the neurotransmitters that are crucial in the formation of memories include dopamine and norepinephrine.  Additional research has demonstrated that exercise stimulates the production of these very neurotransmitters.  Furthermore, John Ratey informs us in Spark: The revolutionary study of brain and body that exercise also helps relieve stress.  The reduction of this stress, then goes on to relax the neurons in the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain.  Neurodynamics informs us that when the amygdala is overly excited by way of excessive emotional distress the signals have less of an opposition to travel to the prefrontal cortex where the higher thinking processes required for proper memory and learning occur.  Numerous studies document this.  Judy Willis, Howard Pierce, John Ratey, John Medina, Jim Krashen, and Jim Cummins are just a few who converge on these essential findings.  Furthermore, exercise strengthens the blood vessels in the dentate gyrus and the hippocampus.  This helps strengthen the brain's formation of memories by increasing oxygen that is available and cleaning out waste products that result from such a busy brain.

 

As an educator, the following lines hit me strong, "Recall that our evolutionary ancestors were used to walking up to 12 miles per day.  This means that our evolutionary history was supported by Olympic caliber bodies.  We were not used to sitting in classrooms for 8 hours at a stretch."  This means that our Victorian style of classroom setup is counter to the natural evolution of the brain.  Sadly, in our standards driven educational context we have eliminated exercise.  Ratey starts the first chapter of Spark by discussing an experiment done in a particular district in the state of Illinois.  The district got hold of heart monitors and had the children wearing them for PE as the first hour of the day.  Students who kept their heart rate at 60

 

 

Certain continued studies demonstrated that if you take a few sedentary people and moved them through physical training, cognitive abilities tend to rise in as little as four months.  The rise itself was not necessarily large, but it was large enough to be statistically significant.  However, there were also these two sobering pieces of information also provided.  First caveat was that too much exertion to the point of extreme exhaustion tended to counteract the effect.  The second caveat was that the cognitive effects of exercise gradually subsided once the exercise regimen ceased.