January 12, 2006
More on the causal arrow and happiness.
Studies consistently showed that happiness tended to precede fulfilling work, satisfying relationships and a long life.
Also from the BPS Research Blog,
apparently, teaching little children to look away
from the questioner helps their proficiency at solving problems. As in
all studies, there are questions about sample and sample size, but we
have a couple of hypotheses.
- Part of the motivation to answer is the "demand" of the questioner; and motivation seques easily into stress. Looking away de-stresses the child vis-a-vis the demand, while the presence of the questioner maintains the priority of the task.
- We suspect that energy flows to differential parts of the nervous system when one is trying to please (obtain love, approval, or attention from) someone else than when one is addressing data, creative solutions, and plausible results. Part of the explanation is "overload," but we believe there is an additional stratum of contradictory processes. Observing perplexing encounters between NTs and NFs has caused us to suspect something like this for a long time. The tasks are exclusive, though they may be engaged serially.
The cognifive pioneer Byron Katie
explains her motivation for kindness, doing good things, and finding
solutions: "Only for my sake!" Part of the reference is enlightened
self-interest; part, in our opinion, precisely this kind of neural
management.
Who knows? We may, perhaps, as neural science advances.
And
to the extent that elementary student-progress guidelines require, as
our memory suggests Texas' may, a student to "look at the person
speaking" as a sign of socialization, well, someone needs to look again. Past clichés.
Update, from the same blog: All that we can remember, or, probably, imagine, is available as experience. Time travel has always been here.
As you search for memories of a particular event, your brain state progressively comes to resemble the state it was in when you initially experienced the event.
Via, as so often, Marginal Revolution. We really should contribute...
Reading this caused me to immediately connect with the different eye direction shifts that usually accompany recall of auditory, visual and kinesthetic information. The shifts are almost certainly a trigger that changes brain states/patterns and aids recall of the requested information.
Shifting the gaze away from the questioner may be a similar trigger that removes a distraction and changes state, as well.
Posted by: Wahrheit | January 13, 2006 at 11:43 AM
I didn't notice that the study indicated the direction in which the children looked, but the point you raise is likely part of it.
"Rolling the eyes" or a child's looking up to remember may be not only a search for the information, but a psychoneurological gesture to lighten his/her mood and lift anxiety.
This old post, with a very different point, also alluded to some of this:
http://goodandhappy.typepad.com/g_as_in_good_h_as_in_happ/2005/06/authoritarian_w.html
Posted by: dilys | January 16, 2006 at 08:17 AM