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An interesting read. I don't think I agree with the argument that emotional involvement is the foundation for understanding. I see the author conflating memory

An interesting read. I don't think I agree with the argument that emotional involvement is the foundation for understanding. I see the author conflating memory and understanding where the emotional connection he discusses are just associative memory triggers. We can use associative memory tricks to recall many things we do not understand. IMHO what unlocks understanding is use not emotion. I can "kind of" understand a mathematical or programming concept by reading or demonstration but only through active use in dozens of exercises or practical experience do I really come to understand it. This is what matters about the Brett Victor example he shows - it proposes environments for people to use and play with concepts which IMHO is much more significant factor in understanding. Maybe the author is only talking about the motivation to understand. To take his example of topics with the depth of QM then such an investment of time and effort is just so vast that there has to be something self-motivating about the topic itself for someone to excel. Its the reward of the topic in-itself that has sustained abstract topics like math and I find "ways to make the topic more appealing" almost always doomed to failure. If people are not inclined to substantial abstract thought then putting it in a frilly dress isn't going to change much. What makes these topics special to me is the loss of self as your mind becomes infused with abstract concepts. Its the elegance that becomes exciting and takes you deeper from curiosity and wonder. I don't need a game to understand a programming concept, programming itself is already my preferred game. Finally, I would say that emotional connections are a distraction from achieving such flow mental states of understanding. If I feel I have something to lose by not understanding, if I might be shamed or under some other emotional pressure, it will interfere, not encourage my understanding.

pirateking 13y ago
I read Mindstorms after Bret Victor recommended a couple years ago, and find myself going back to it quite often as I research learning systems. In it, Seymour Papert mentions emotion and feeling as important concepts in mental model building[0]. You might find it an interesting viewpoint. "What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned these models. Thus the “laws of learning” must be about how intellectual structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire both logical and emotional form." It is also worth reading Papert's colleague Marvin Minsky's book, The Emotion Machine. It makes quite a more interesting study of emotion as the foundation of understanding[1]. [0] http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine
- duncanawoods 13y ago
  Thank you. I have read the gears.pdf. I'd be interested to see some of your research if you have any links? I can clarify that I don't doubt emotion is integral to cognition and I think its commonly understood the role of a good teacher is to help a student find a sense of wonder, fascination and excitement about a topic. What I do doubt is that adding an unrelated emotional context like a gamified incentive or a movie plot around the explanation of an abstract topic will fundamentally improve understanding. I think its superficial and can even dilute the relationship one needs to build with the topic itself. To interpret the author more generously, it would be a worthy goal for learning tools to build the right sort of emotional connections like the old St. Exupery quote: > If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea
  - pirateking 13y ago
    I don't have any of my work related to this topic online yet, but I will post something, someday, maybe. I agree that game-ification and tangential devices will not directly improve understanding of a topic, if at all. I grew up playing many edutainment games which were nothing but boring classroom textbooks, with animated characters and sound effects. Strangely though, the fond memories of some of those characters has, I like to think, gave me positive associations with the actual subject matter, and has led to study of it later in life. More importantly, as you say, it could have diluted my interest or caused a negative association just as well.

pirateking 13y ago

I read Mindstorms after Bret Victor recommended a couple years ago, and find myself going back to it quite often as I research learning systems. In it, Seymour Papert mentions emotion and feeling as important concepts in mental model building[0]. You might find it an interesting viewpoint. "What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned these models. Thus the “laws of learning” must be about how intellectual structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire both logical and emotional form." It is also worth reading Papert's colleague Marvin Minsky's book, The Emotion Machine. It makes quite a more interesting study of emotion as the foundation of understanding[1]. [0] http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine

duncanawoods 13y ago
Thank you. I have read the gears.pdf. I'd be interested to see some of your research if you have any links? I can clarify that I don't doubt emotion is integral to cognition and I think its commonly understood the role of a good teacher is to help a student find a sense of wonder, fascination and excitement about a topic. What I do doubt is that adding an unrelated emotional context like a gamified incentive or a movie plot around the explanation of an abstract topic will fundamentally improve understanding. I think its superficial and can even dilute the relationship one needs to build with the topic itself. To interpret the author more generously, it would be a worthy goal for learning tools to build the right sort of emotional connections like the old St. Exupery quote: > If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea
- pirateking 13y ago
  I don't have any of my work related to this topic online yet, but I will post something, someday, maybe. I agree that game-ification and tangential devices will not directly improve understanding of a topic, if at all. I grew up playing many edutainment games which were nothing but boring classroom textbooks, with animated characters and sound effects. Strangely though, the fond memories of some of those characters has, I like to think, gave me positive associations with the actual subject matter, and has led to study of it later in life. More importantly, as you say, it could have diluted my interest or caused a negative association just as well.