Learning to learn: the neurocognitive vision

The idea of learning to learn is a strange subject for neurocognition. This is because the brain is designed for learning genetically and evolutionally, on it depends the survival of the species (Dzib Goodin, 2011).

But from this perspective, learning can be analyzed from at least 3 different levels such as the biological, cognitive and behavioral. Biology examines the process from genetic, molecular and cellular understanding, while cognitive perspective allows the understanding of children's skills over time. A behavioral analysis, learning focuses on patterns of action that can be repeated and therefore observable and measurable (Benares, Sebastian, Lipina, Segretín, Hermida and Colombo, 2010).

That is why the link between neurocognition, opened the door to analysis and explanation of cognitive disorders, seeking relationship between neuronal development and environmental relationships that enable the creation of an image in the world, primarily in children with a learning disability (Manning, 1990).

From the many studies, it clear to understand that learning requires strategies, of course, but mostly, it requires brain structures that give coherence to environmental information. A brain development begins within a few weeks after conception, works 24 hours for 7 days, even during sleep, it processes all kind of proteins and holds or removes the information depending how much valuable is. Do not stop learning, which is independent of a classroom, or mood of a teacher. Learns alone or accompanied, and works every day of our life.

From this perspective, the student has prior learning, which began before birth, genetic loads and strategies are needed to underpin what we already know or correct perceptual errors. The brain is flexible; it's not a rigid structure incapable of adapting to the needs. Learning is a pleasure, a need, the goal is to adapt to the environment and the use and management of information.

If the brain were a smartphone, we would say it's delivered with a predetermined with a program to assure it can be turn on. The experiences and strategies are applications that are slowly customizing the system, but unlike an edge technological apparatus, whose renewal involves a change of equipment, the human brain adapts itself forever in your carrying case, it grows and adjusted to the needs, but in the end, we must care the kit that was given at birth. Life depends of it.

Although the question from cognition is how do we learn?, the question from  neurocognition is what do we learn with?, so a deviation in the learning process is not conceived as a failure of the student, but as a wrong perception due that a neural network has been set wrongly or perceptual trouble, as in the case of studies about the difficulties of reading or writing (Dehaene, Nakamura, Jobert, Kuroki, Ogawa and Cohen, 2009).

In this sense, language disorders are analyzed from the auditory processing, which, in case of being affected may have impact not only in spoken language, but in reading and writing (Idiazábal Saperas Aletxa and Rodriguez, 2008).

In the ambit of arithmetic, the strategies must adjust once you know the difficulties of the student before the task; this is a common example that goes unnoticed by formal education:

    56

+ 16  

  117

An educator who has in mind the cognitive point of view, after seeing the error, will try a strategy to teach the child to add, but first,  will let him know what has done wrong. But if somoene takes 3 minutes to understand how this child is carrying out the process of addition, as  Jean Piaget mentioned it almost a century ago, we would   discover that this child knows to add, but  doesn't do it  vertically,  but horizontally.

    56®

+ 16 ®

    117    

In this case, the strategy to use depends on the student's prior knowledge, making a bridge between what student does and what is capable of achieving.

Furthermore, learning occurs not only in a classroom when the teacher is present, it must be considerate that child absorbs information from every enviromental interaction and every one has an impact, at one way or another on the brain.  Even if it's not obvious, children learn for example, rhythm and timing when they are listening to music and this opens benefit at other areas such as reading and math (Trainor, Shahin and Roberts, 2009).

Children learn from what they hear at home, which is why vicarious learning-by-example has such educational sense, the TV becomes an invaluable teaching tool, social relationships, provide information too, but above all this stimulate the brain, since the interact with others, and some of those skills can  not be shared when a child is reading a book or playing alone.

Learning is a process, whose progress is given step by step. It is built on a chain of events that together result in a skill. For example in the case of reading, student do not read phrases, reads one letter at a time, one word at a time and one phrase at a time, with practice, becomes a comprehension reading . However, the beginning, there are only points for the recognition of which differ depending on their location in space, and although it seems obvious, one a is different from a g (Forget, Buiatti, and Dehaene, 2009). This, to an expert reader, it’s the dumbest statement you can imagine, but for a newbie brain is not a remarkable difference. Especially if the task is not only view the letter, but write it in a specific context.

And things are further complicated when you have to do a task that involves two or more mental operations (Sackur and Dehaene, 2009). The process required to create micro tasks and keep sustained attention in order to achieve the motivation to get the goal.

Other aspects will become a breeding ground for learning, for example, there have been studies showing that the place of children in families make a difference in schools (Zajonc, 1976), and the idea maybe is not preposterous considering that the more children at home, you may be achieved peer modeling and scaffolding, which benefit the way to grasp.

All kind of stimuli have an impact on the way the brain learns through the day. Since the biochemical exchanges that are triggered as part of the brain processes that require a specific balance (Cortes Romero, Galindo, Isasmendi and Flores, 2011). There will also be joining the memory process, which unlike the perceptual processes requires the development of the hypothalamus and health (Baddeley, 1992).

And finally, learning depends of the specific action of neurons and their relationships (Barlow, 1985). Thus, difficulties in the learning process do not depend on a child who refuses to learn or is denied to it. Nor is solely based on the strategies and experience from a teacher front the group, or the theoretical perspective of the curriculum. Learning has to focus on students and their needs as well as their usefulness.

Learning to learn is how to survive and why not?, learn to adapt to the circumstances and draw from them, the better.

Alma Dzib Goodin
If you would like to know more about my writing you can visit my web site:
http://www.almadzib.com

References

Baddeley, A. (1992) Is working memory working? The fifteenth Bartlett lecture. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.  Section A, 44 (1) 1-31.

Barlow, HB. (1985) The twelfth Bartlett memorial lecture: The role of single neurons in the psychology of perception. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Section A, 37 (2) 121-145.

Benarós, S., Sebastián, J., Lipina, M., Segretín, S., Hermida, J. y Colombo, JA. (2010) Neurociencia y educación: hacia la construcción de puentes interactivos. Rev. Neurol. 50 (3). 179-186.

Cortes Romero, C. Galindo, F. Isasmendi, G. y Flores, A. (2011) GABA: ¿dualidad funcional? Transición durante el neurodesarrollo. Rev Neurol.52 (11) 665-675.

Dehaene, S., Nakamura, K., Jobert, A., Kuroki, C., Ogawa, S. and Cohen, L. (2009) Why do children make mirror errors in reading? Neural correlates of mirror invariance in the visual word form area. Neuroimage. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.09.024.

Dzib Goodin, A. (2011) Introducción a los procesos neurocognitivos del aprendizaje: lenguaje, lectura, escritura y matemáticas. Servicios Editoriales Balám. México. En prensa.

Forget, J., Buiatti, M. and Dehaene, S. (2009) Temporal integration in visual word recognition. Journal of cognitive neuroscience. 1 (2) 1-15.

Idiazábal Aletxa, MA. y Saperas Rodriguez, M. (2008) Procesamiento auditivo en el trastorno específico del lenguaje. Rev. Neurol. 46 (Supl 1) S91-S95.

Manning, L. (1990) Neuropsicología cognitiva: consideraciones metodológicas. Estudios de Psicología. 153- 168.

Sackur, J. and Dehaene, S. (2009) The cognitive architecture for chaining of mental operations. Cognition. 111. 187-211.

Trainor, LJ., Shahin, AJ. and Roberts, LE. (2009) Understanding the benefits of musical training: Effects on oscillatory brain activity. Annals of the New York Academy of Science. 1169. 133-142.

Zajonc, RB. (1976) Family configuration and intelligence. Science. 192 (4236) 227-236.

Learning to learn: cognitive point of view

It was in the 1970s when researchers began working from cognitive perspective, learning processes and some spanish articles called to this issue The Holy Grail of education. Not much to say about it, it seems clear there is a need to provide strategies to students, to enable them to automate skills and this is the dreamed goal. But many years later, thousands of articles in all languages, theoretical proposals, which come and go, conferences, books and gallons of ink, it seems that still there is no perfect strategy to achieve it.

While learning to learn sounds like an excellent target, the process is complex. By way of definition, although not unique, it's said that humans learn when the information and meanings can be considered useful for the purpose of life (Perez Gomez, Gomez Soto, Sola Servan Fernandez and Nunez, 2009). This implies another concept known as meaningful learning. But the goal sought is to have students able to reach a critical thinking whose main premise is to achieve a mental activity of evaluating arguments and proposals based on the decision-making that may develop well-planned beliefs and actions (Astleitner, 2002).

Sounds simple!, does it not?, then someone will have to explain why international evaluations have failed to find evidence of formal educational attainment. Several studies have been seeking to reach the goal, as an example of this can include Delphi2 Project; its development began in 1988 in the United States and whose central purpose was the consensuses of experts to evaluate and develop instructional programs that enable make students think more critically.

It was then, that cognitive studies focused part of its efforts to understand the differences in the ways of thinking of students, suggesting that these discrepancies identified specific forms of action, under the assumption that every student comes from different environments (Facione, 2000). This measurement scales were developed and of course, flooded the research between statistics. More ink, more effort, it seems they forgot the main question: how important is to explain the critical thinking?, or, does the student is able to develop the critical thinking and use it in life?.

While there were those who focused on the development of strategies as metacognitive and problem-based learning, known as ABP, in instructional strategies, another group remained determined to measure the skills, and of course there were those who were focused on the division of definitions  leading to conceptual knowledge focusing basically on two possibilities: disciplinary knowledge defined as knowledge, focusing primarily on reading, writing and information management, and on the other side lie the skills or know-how, which can be considered metacognitive functions (Lederman, 1999).

On the other hand, there are also instrumental skills of cognitive type, focusing on the analysis and synthesis of information, organization and planning and communicating ideas, that are related to systemic skills, which are the ultimate goal as metacognition for learning in an autonomous way (Monereo and Badia, 2004).

Then, we can say that from this perspective, student begins from cognitive skills necessary to grasp simple communication  as verbal, reading, writing and arithmetic processes, until  be able to make decisions based on the needs of the context and the information and tools available.

How do student do it?, from this perspective that depends on schooling and all  teacher´s instructional strategies that develop from the curricular needs. Specific content contains a particular strategy with specific goals (Maturana, Soliveres and Macias, 2002). In the early years, instruction focuses on monitoring the student's activities, supervise micro tasks, shaping the work without allowing the student to take many decisions, not allowing the deviation of the results. Any wrong answer from the student will give as a result, to repeat the task, at this sense, learning from formal school, depends of the teacher.

As the students achieve the skills, the scaffolding takes the place of modeling, gradually allowing the student to pass from the micro tasks to specific tasks and even, some freedom, as new knowledge requires innovative forms of learning, as example of this are teaching science or art (Lederman, 1999).

The decisive step is when students  have to make decisions about their future, such as what career to choose?, for this decision, student will have to be  able to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, and finally,  decide their own life based on their prior learning, career goals, personality and resources (Monereo Badia, 2004).

But sometimes, great achievements not give the speed in a school curriculum planned, or under the supervision of a teacher who faithfully believes that changes occur over time or due to the school structure. All curriculums are designed on what experts of the professional field, often successful at work, think that is what the learner should know. But students have individual academic histories that sometimes hit on the wall. Even the most successful universities in the world face academic support because of the lack of adaptation of a group of students and while there are subjects that are enjoyable, easy, others require special assistance to find the way to use all information.

The most basic skills, starting from the cognitive, it's the recognition of the differences between natural language and symbols of mathematics. The use and management of the sounds of both languages are the gateway to the rest of knowledge (Dzib Goodin, 2011). Each of these processes has its specific needs for the acquisition, and in the case of reading and writing depends on environmental stimulation as well as strategies to facilitate acquisition. Hence the importance of good school practices.

Once purchased the bases, the following process shall be on the analysis and synthesis of information and how to use it. Getting to the point where student is able to create and share its own ideas.

Hence, the student will be responsible for his ideas, the learning environment, speed and use its own ideas, take decisions, and be able to be a creator of its own strategies.

Between the second and third stage, there is a moment to develop metacognitive skills, seeking awareness of actions, including, for example, being able to retrace his own steps to determine the sources of error. This opens the possibility to modeling, share and choose different chains of action, looking for targets defined by its own efforts.

Thus, learning is a complex process that probably involves a lifetime, which can not be restricted to formal education. The passage that begins long before birth and that will benefit, no doubt, from all the support possible, enabling it to determine the best way to learn. Learning to learn is a personal responsibility but depends on the means to take flight. Sometimes you never achieved, not by the cognitive system itself can not, if not the scaffolding or modeling strategies are not right, not used at the right time or long enough or the student accounts with more effective strategies.

The literature on metacognitive processes, usually see the college students  as the trustees of this level of thinking, however, it's common to see students at this level who are not able to make decisions for themselves, while people with extensive experience are able to determine the best course of successful companies. That's why you should not underestimate the student's own skills. And strategies should consider the student, rather than the curriculum. The learning center is not only a successful educational program.

There are not instant experts or geniuses; they develop from the way that recognizes the needs of the environment. There is no one school in the world capable of producing 100% of world leaders, presidents, artists, athletes or entrepreneurs. Only a few will achieve social success, but others will have a cognitive development capable to adapt to the environment. Success can be found in daily actions. And the process will continue to expand forever.

There is not way to forget the role of motivation in the activation of cognitive processes certainly must be present and valued. And it's time for a little metacognitive exercise: How did you learn to learn?

Alma Dzib Goodin

If you would like to know more about my writing you can visit my web site:
http://www.almadzib.com

References

Astleitner, H. (2002) Teaching critical thinking on line. Journal of instructional psychology.29 (2) 53-76.

Badia, A. y Monereo, C. (2004) La construcción de conocimiento profesional docente: Análisis de un curso de formación sobre la enseñanza estratégica. Anuario de psicología. 35 (1) 47-70.

Dzib Goodin, A. (2011) Introducción a los proceso neurocognitivos del aprendizaje: lenguaje, lectura, escritura y matemáticas. Servicios Editoriales Balam. Mexico. En prensa.

Facione, PA. (2000) The disposition toward critical thinking: its character, measurement, and relationship to critical thinking skill. Informal Logic. 20 (1) 61-84.

Facione, PA., Sanchez, CA.  y Facione NC. (1994) Are college students disposed to think? The California Academic Press. USA.

Lederman, NG. (1999) Teachers’ understanding of the nature of science and classroom practice: factors that facilitate or impede the relationship. Journal of research in science teaching. 36 (8) 916-929.

Maturano, CI., Soliveres MA.  y Macias, A. (2002) Estrategias cognitivas y metacognitivas en la comprensión de un texto de ciencias.  Enseñanza de las ciencias. 20 (3) 415-425.

Pérez Gómez, A., Soto Gómez, E., Sola Fernández, M. y Serván Nuñez, MJ. (2009) Aprender como aprender: Autonomía y responsabilidad. Akal. España.

Learning and strategies: a well kept secret

 The brain performs many processes at the same time under the best, ideal and worst circumstances, who has not had a bad day or a brilliant moment?.

But how do we learn to do all that?, Why do some things seem so simple that you can do it  with closed eyes and others tasks simply seem to be denied?.

This is where learning process has its reason for being. It is common to hear that nobody is born knowing, but it's not entirely true, because learning has a certain factors, both personal and adaptive. Personal factors are loaded with a bit of genetics and joy for certain activities, which create an innate facility for carrying out certain tasks (Stanovich, 2009).

This creates confidence in the performance of tasks and facilitates the repetition of them. That's why it's wrong to believe that superior intelligence or ability is the key to success, it just puts pressure on people, because this idea is based on the perspective of a rigid and not malleable brain (Dweck, 2007). The idea under this is:  You are what you can be and you never will be anything else, but this is an impoverished perspective of learning.

On the other hand, neurocognition perspective opens the door to a moldable brain, changeable, able to learn from the strategies for the acquisition of necessary skills (Hawkins and Blakeslee, 2004). If the brain were seen as a computer, then all it needs to perform a variety of executions is a program that lets it perform tasks for which it's not designed, and this creates sufficient self-discipline and motivation to performance anything (Duckworth and Seligman, 2005).

The question then is whether anyone can be a successful pianist or a gymnast capable of carrying out perfect executions .The most obvious answer is: Yes, just have to try, but then it will have to consider the environment and conditions to do it.  So, it's not possible to know if you can do something until you try and that's where the environment becomes relevant (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich and Hoffman, 2006).

Looking at the human brain as static is similar to the vision that was created of the universe, probably by Heinrich Olbers (Hawking, 2002) and has long since been established conclusively that the universe expands, creates and build itself, and the same has been said about the brain, although education insists that if an ability is not possible for something specific, measured at a certain time and under specific circumstances, can never be acquired, only intelligent people progress, only the school can educate ... I hope to live enough  to laugh about this and see a society motivated to learn.

How?, the first idea is trying and that's why strategies has a reason to be designed. The strategies are the means or steps, which help to reach a skill. Similar to algorithms or heuristics that achieve a result in any exact science, whose final product is to achieve knowledge of the world (Frank, 1974).

These strategies require two conditions: the first is motivation to follow the steps, and the second is that strategy contains in itself the self-correction (Blanchette & Richards, 2010).

With no motivation to learn, brain gets bored and focuses on irrelevant details, because motivation is a combination of attention to the environment, a mixture of neurotransmitters and personality (Goslin, 2007).

Motivation is one of the engines that makes brain of creatures, including humans,  forces to the limit and achieve  goals. Which human race thank every day, because it is a sign of progress.

But the complements of the strategies are mental processes, since they require systematic explanation of how to carry out a task, breaking it into elemental steps to share with others.

From the standpoint of education, the goal is the cognitive development and metacognitive skills, under the scheme of learning to learn, creating the myth that intelligence can overcome any obstacle. At this sense, cognitive skills are the most easiest to learn into a classroom from the early grades, refer to the acquisition and management of environmental information for instance, while metacognitives skills, need self-monitoring skills of the execution itself, in order to correct task performance and require enhanced cognitive development (Monereo and Castello, 2001; Monereo and Badia, 2001)

Basically a strategy is the systematic process of steps, divided into micro or macro instruction to learn something. From this you can find multiple ways to achieve first, the understanding of the strategy and then becomes in a skill.

Any strategy must have a goal of what you want to teach, taking into account execution level where students start and where you want to take them (Beltrán Llera, 2003). In this sense, Vygostky's picture emerges from the zone of proximal development to measure the achievement of the strategy in the light of knowledge acquired. And of course has to be considered what to teach and to whom, and with the strategy, let us decide the how.

From this, it's possible to establish techniques or procedures how to teach to  students, deciding the moment to accompanying, for which there are techniques such as modeling, scaffolding, and the goal is self-executing of the task.

Now we can consider the next ingredient, since it must be remembered that the information reaches the brain through the senses, and I believe that some of the learning difficulties are nothing but problems acquiring information, and this has relevance because exists the  idea that vision is the main sensory processing and then a strategy can be designed  from something called vicarious learning, also named observational learning, but don’t forget the hearing as a means of learning, for example in the case of language learning (Fischer, 2010).

A design of strategies require a systematic analysis of teaching and learning scheme, for example, if there is a need of teaching  someone to write, we must first ask, what are the interactions of this person with the writing process?, because for writing, although it seems logical, it's often forgotten, a need of  oculomotor development and a dominant hand, the absence of the sustained development of it, can produce  writing difficulties, such as writing on multiple non-uniform areas of the sheet. It will be also important if the person knows the relationship letter- sound.

There are many techniques for teaching writing, all of them are successful, no doubt, but if you think about the brain and how it interacts, you can choose best the technique having on mind the level of progress in the acquisition, allowing you to freely analyze and observing how the student takes either a pencil or pen and the way that is placed on the surface, and how it will slide to make a shape to a letter, a word, an idea.

Choosing a technique, and believe it will have to work for everyone, means to deny the existence of learners and their context. There is a technique for everyone, and of course you can combine, modify, extend, shorten depending on the needs and it should be considered that the learner will also make their own adaptations. The most common mistake is to believe that everyone understands the same. Say, take the pencil with your right hand and write, is to deny the left-handed action as a dominant hand.

There is then a subdivision of tasks, the goal of the task is to write but, what do you expect to be written? A book or just a word, how?: Capital letters, lower case, on what surface?: Using only the large squares on a sheet, lines or a white sheet, and this is not the same as writing on a blackboard 40 X 60 inches. The medium is a standard pencil or a crayon. Is there enough light or brightness on the surface?.

There are contents that can be made from micro tasks and other that require only one or two steps. The more steps required, the slower will be the acquisition of the process, but sometimes a person needs more insight into the task that is why we say that a strategy can and should be self-corrected (Roediger III and Finn, 2010).

The sophistication of the techniques and the choice of them, should consider the level of understanding that the person has on a subject and how much they allow the systematic practice that leads to consolidation. An example of this is the driving or flight simulators, which are fun tools even for video games, while allowing the continued practice and it will be always a step towards implementation with scenarios and real variables.

As well, you can have previous steps leading up to the task, similar to rear wheels of a bicycle , which are removed once the learner feels confident enough to move in space considering the speed and terrain.

And the choice of technique employed, it shouldn't forget that memory has a prediction system that helps the brain to complete pieces of puzzles or events (Hawkins and Blakeslee, 2004) in this regard, it's possible to skip steps, but also if you think that an element of the chain is necessary in a specific situation, can be added if necessary, this will be especially important when working with cognitive strategies.

In the case of metacognitive strategies, the important point is to make aware the process that is carried out, to get a self monitoring of execution, under the scheme of what has to be done, how, under what goal, what tools, what skill required for each tool, whether micro monitors are more likely to correct errors as soon as they arise (Solomon, 2007).

The goal then is to make a person capable to determine its scopes and limitations, determined to use their cognitive tools to benefit our own development. That's why some issues are interwoven such as creativity, motivation and enthusiasm.

But the implementation of strategies is not a matter of magic or immediate success. A strategy can work at short-term or after very long time, depending on the goal to achieve. An example is reading or writing, although the first years of school build the bases of both processes, the use and management thereof, makes the difference between a good writer or an expert reader, able to use what they read in a work. And this is another point against the world's educational vision, because it's expected that children know things, such as divine command, but if there is a reason for it, the knowledge system simply can not sustain for long time the information under the principle of the cognitive economy. Brain needs repeate tasks, enjoy them and get a benefit pro the system, creating neural networks to develop a stable foundation for future learning. That is not an order from a teacher, but by the determination of structures of the frontal and prefrontal areas of the brain, where it mostly holds the decision making process (Roberts, Anderson, and Husain, 2010).

The cabling system of networks, will then take an important role, because thanks them, the task will become a habit, or a bridge for new tasks (Tirapu-Ustárroz, Luna-Lario, Hernandez-Goñi and Garcia- Suescun, 2011). And then the student has passed from a strategy, from the minimal to the experts’ level.

Some tasks allow modeling, based on vicarious or imitation learning,  especially those that require a motor skills, such as those used in sports, writing, arts, while others require more prior knowledge, as the instructional strategies used in  classrooms (Anderson, 1997).

Scaffolding is the support provided by an expert to a novice, it is always necessary, but not all rookies require the same dose, it must be considerate prior learning and the level of sophistication of the task. How often do you find a: I saw it at the National Geographic or Discovery Channel?, and never minimize the role of television series or peer activities (Dweck, 2007).

The more difficult a goal is, more support is required, and more motivation to have a successful student, but if the task is too simple, it can be boring and therefore impractical.

That's why instructional design models can be unsuccessful, regardless of the degree of sophistication with which they were designed. A strategy may work perfect for a group of people and not enough for another. Hence there are as many strategic models as leaves on a tree. Every one can be great, if used under the proper framework, but any mistake can result in a horror in teaching.

One of the strategies currently used with  greater advance in education are ludic strategies. We may fall in the debate of whether they are strategies or techniques, but the point is they allow monitor for effectiveness of learning in most cases, because the goal is clear, is motivating and fun, and it's making learning breaks classic schemes. But even if this is not something to be applauded in formal education, it's the way that species evolved to learn, playing, exploring, through trial and error, repeating over and over again the same, to reach the domain of something that if is not achieved, it can cost your life, then we must not forget that learning is at the service of conservation of the species. And it's the way someone become a major league baseball player, and that's how trust is achieved in itself, that's key to success. It may not be able to do other things, but for your domain field, you're the best, how did you get it?.

Hence, the problem-based learning or simulation has been at the forefront of teaching especially in the medical and economic areas (González López Frias Castro, 2011; Graeml, Baena and Mihai Yannaki, 2011), trying to create an expert before reaching the battlefield. But not to forget that reality can have combinations of more complex variables.

Reach the domain of something,  takes time, requires motivation, activation of brain areas that  are modified from the repetition of tasks, these are complemented by others that call prior learning, and every day you can learn and modify the muscle cognitive. It is flexible, likes to learn, likes to also demonstrate what it knows, but it can not learn like other brains. So an important ability is to monitor the strategies, and enjoy the change. Our cognitive economy saves energy when it creates habits, it is true, we should not think about how to fasten a button or turning on a laptop, is done in automatic, but think for a moment, how many attempts it took to achieve it?.

Alma Dzib Goodin

If you would like to know more about my writing you can visit my web site:
http://www.almadzib.com

References

Anderson, R. (1997) A neurocognitive perspective on current learning theory and science instructional strategies. Science education. 81. 67-89.

Beltrán Llera, J. (2003) Estrategias de aprendizaje. Revista de educación. 332. 55-73.

Blanchette, I. and Richards, A. (2010) The influence of affect o higher level cognition: A review of research on interpretation, judgment, decision making and reasoning. Cognition & Emotion. 24 (4) 561-595.

Dweck, CS. (2007) The secret to raising smart kids. Scientific American Mind. 18 (6) 37- 43.

Ericsson, KA., Charness, N., Feltovich, PJ.,  and Hoffman, RR. (2006) The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. Cambridge University Press. USA.

Fischer, B. (2010) A sensory Fix for problems in school. Scientific American Mind. 21 (1) 32-37.

Frank, JJ. (1974) Towards understanding, understanding. W. Weimer and D. Palermo (1974) Cognition and symbolic processes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. USA.

González Frias, MT. y Castro López, A. (2011) Impacto del ABP en el desarrollo de la habilidad para formular preguntas en estudiantes universitarios. Revista de docencia Universitaria REDU. 9 (1) 57-66.

Gosline, A. (2007) Bored?. Scientific American Mind. 18 (6) 20-27.

Graeml, F., Baena, V. y Mihai Yannaki, S. (2011) La integración de distintos campos de conocimiento en juegos de simulación empresarial. Revista de Docencia Universitaria. 8 (2) 29- 44.

Hawking, S. (2002) Historia del tiempo: del big bang a los agujeros negros. Drakronos- Critica. Barcelona.

Hawkins, J., and Blakeslee, S. (2004) On intelligence. Times Books. USA.

Monereo, C., Badia, A. (2001) Ser estratégico y autónomo aprendiendo. Grao. Barcelona.

Monereo, C., Castello, M. (2001) Estrategias de enseñanza y aprendizaje. Grao. Barcelona.

Roberts, R.E., Anderson, E. J., Husain, M. (2010) Expert Cognitive Control and Individual Differences Associated with Frontal and Parietal White Matter Microstructure. The Journal of Neuroscience. 30 (50): 17063-17067.

Roediger III, HL., and  Finn, B. (2010) The pluses of getting wrong. 21 (1) 38-41.

Solomon, J. (2007) Metaphors at work: identify and meaning in professional life. Fetzer Institute. USA.

Stanovich, K. (2009) Rational and irrational thought: the thinking that IQ test miss. Scientific American Mind. 20 (6) 34-39.

Tirapu-Ustárroz, J.,  Luna-Lario, P., Hernáez-Goñi, P., García-Suescun, I. (2011) Relación entre la sustancia blanca y las funciones cognitivas. Rev Neurol. 52 (12): 725-742.

3D image: Juan Conde Tovani