This is the first in a series of guest posts from Tom Stafford, co-author of Mind Hacks and School of Everything's psychologist-in-residence.
Once you have learnt something you see the world differently. Not only can you appreciate or do something that you couldn't appreciate or do before, but the way you saw the world before is now lost to you. This works for the small things as well as the big picture. If you learn the meaning of a new word, you won't be able to ignore it like you did previously. If you learn how to make a cup of out of clay you won't ever be able to see cups like you used to before.
This means it is hard to imagine what it is like for someone else who hasn't learnt what you've learnt. The psychologist Paul Bloom calls this the curse of knowledge in the context of being unable to model what other people don't know, rather than on what you yourself used not to know. If you've ever organised a surprise party for someone, or had another kind of secret, you'll know the feeling. It seems so *obvious* what you are keeping hidden, but usually the person you are hiding it from doesn't catch on. They don't catch on because the clues are only obvious to you, knowing the secret, and you find it hard to imagine what they see not knowing it.
The reason this occurs is because of two facts about the mind that are not widely appreciated. The first is that memory is not kept in a separate store away from the rest of the mind's functions. Although there are brain regions crucial to memory, the memories themselves are not stored separately from the regions which do perception, processing and output. Unlike a digital computer, your mind does not have to fetch stored information when it needs it, instead your memories affect every part of your perception and behaviour.
The second important fact about the mind is related to the first. It is that learning something involves changing the structures of the mind that are involved in perception and behaviour. Memories are not kept in a separate store, but are constituted by the connections between the neurons in your brain. This means that when you learn something --- when you create new memories --- it isn't just *added* to your mind, but it changes the structures that make up your mind so that your perceptions, behaviour and potentially all of your previous memories are changed too.
We can see this in microcosm if we look at a small example of what is called one-shot perceptual learning. What do you think this is?
Now probably you don't know, but I would like you do savour the feeling of not knowing. Try and taste, like a rare wine, what the perceptual experience is like. You can see the parts of the picture, the blacks and the whites, various shapes, some connected to others and some isolated.
If you now look at this popup here then you will have this taste washed out of your mind and irrevocably removed. It will be gone, and you will never be able to recover it. This is why I asked you to savour it. Now look at the original again. Notice how the parts are now joined in a whole. You just cannot see the splotches of black and white, the groups, the isolated parts, again. When you learn the meaning of the whole picture this removed the potential for that experience. Even the memory is tantalisingly out of reach. You can't recover an experience that you yourself had two minutes ago!
One-shot learning is unusual. Most learning happens over a far longer time-scale, so it is even harder to keep a grip on what it was like to not know. All of us will have had the experience of a bad teacher who simply couldn't see why we had a problem - they simply couldn't see that we couldn't understand or do what was obvious or easy to them. A good teacher has to have the dual-mind of knowing something, but also being able to empathise with someone who doesn't know it, someone for whom what is obvious isn't obvious yet. It is because learning has this tendency to make itself invisible that teaching is such a difficult and noble tradition.
Link: A Mindhacks.com post in which I discuss a similar thing in the context of the role expectations play in our perception.
The reference I took the picture from: Rubin, N., Nakayama, K. and Shapley, R. (2002), The role of insight in perceptual learning: evidence from illusory contour perception. In: Perceptual Learning, Fahle, M. and Poggio, T. (Eds.), MIT Press.
Subscribe to RSS feed
Very interesting. This is a welcome addition to mindhacks, I look forward to your next post! Cheers.
I was with you until you assumed I couldn't see the frog without the additional information in the popup.
Although difficult, it is possible, with some effort, to recall how the form appeared initially, as you describe: A good teacher has to have the dual-mind of knowing something, but also being able to empathise with someone who doesn't know it, someone for whom what is obvious isn't obvious yet.
Rather than saying that most learning occurs over a far longer time-scale a far longer time-scale, I would suggest that more accurately, most learning occurs in small increments which are accrued over a longer period of time. Units of learning within a curriculum, if you think of it that way - it seems obvious to someone who has learned, over a long period of time, to think of it that way.
"It is because learning has this tendency to make itself invisible that teaching is such a difficult and noble tradition."
I don't know if I agree with this. Names like Tyler, Bloom, Bruner, and many others have been involved in identifying domains of knowledge and levels of knowledge, scope and span of curricula, and there is a vast literature about both the philosophy and the logistics and mechanics of education and instruction. Unfortunately (soapbox) in the USA we pay millions for distractions and entertainment and a pittance for teaching our children how to learn and how to think.
Paying homage is no substitute for wages if you wish to attract skilled and effective teachers. Until then, teaching will attract a few noble and idealistic professionals with the skills and motivation to excel, and a multitude of mediocre practitioners with less ability and little ambition.
Good post - I am looking forward to the rest of the series here and on Mind Hacks.
Thanks for the comment. What would be my first port of call to learn about the vast literature on the mechanics of education and instruction?
"I was with you until you assumed I couldn't see the frog without the additional information in the popup."
I was with you until you assumed I would see the frog after I saw the information in the popup. It still looks totally like a soldier having a cigarette to me. His mouth is below the frog's left eye; his eyes are above it, he's looking to the left. The frog's right eye is his ear. He's wearing a camouflage helmet with a chin strap, and his white hand holds a black cigarette.
This is much more convincing than your "frog" theory, which is based on just the "eyes" and a couple corners of a mouth that doesn't even go all the way across the face. All the other details are just splotches of white.
Anyway, your main point is good, because every once in a while I realize I need to give someone Philosophy 101 to see my point, and I know there are a lot of times when I should realize that but don't.
The sensation of ignorance or loss of recognition can return; I don't think it is "lost forever". Sometimes seeing things in the old way is an option, and sometimes a necessity precipitated by, well, would you say it is a memory deficit? I find that feeling enjoyable.
It occasionally happens to me when in a familiar place that I somehow understand from a different angle or aspect and thus see as one of many interpretations of the place I have stored in memory, and sometimes new ones emerge as well.
It also happens with common letters, numbers, and symbols when they first are perceived as some strange shapes or images that resemble an object rather than assuming their usual identities. I can often recognize the letters, words, and images simultaneously, but sometimes I need to recognize them "properly" as "what they are" again before reintegrating.
I don't think this is brain damage, that's all.
No, it's definitely not brain damage!
Psychologists call this 'jamais vu', http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamais_vu but the idea is old, appearing in practices like Zen for example, where profound practice and experience with a task or object is supposed to be able to return you to a state of original innocence.