Evolution and learning

A couple of days ago I put a link to an article, on another blog site, which briefly reported a paper by David Geary concerning evolution and education. This has actually been reported on several blogs, but the reports are all very similar and appear to be based on a press release. David Geary has actually published several pieces on evolution and education, but the recent blogs are based on a target article that appeared in Educational Psychologist (issue for October - December 2008). This article was followed by some commentaries and a response by Geary.

I've now read the original article and found it very interesting and thought-provoking. It is not, in fact, an empirical study. Rather, David Geary uses evolutionary theory to make predictions about the nature of learning and to explain the findings of previously-published research. At the most basic level, Geary argues that children find it much easier to learn about the things that would have been important for survival throughout most of human (and pre-human) history, as compared to many of the topics we try to teach in schools and universities. The former kind of learning is what he refers to as "primary learning".

Primary learning falls into the categories of folk psychology, folk, biology, and folk physics. Examples of folk psychology include learning and thinking about oneself, about others (e.g. the meaning of facial expressions, understanding language, etc.), and about groups (who is kin, who is part of your in-group or out-group). Folk biology includes learning about plants, prey, and predators. Folk physics involves understanding the ecology, including learning to navigate and to construct basic tools. Much of the learning and reasoning in these domains is fast, unconscious, and automatic, because the mind has evolved over millions of years to respond to these problems.

However, the human mind has also evolved a degree of plasticity; that is, it has evolved a capacity to engage with novel problems that are encountered in the environment. This is what Geary calls "secondary learning". Novel problems require people to construct internal models of the environment that they then manipulate in an attempt to reach solutions or decisions. This kind of thinking is slower, more controlled, and conscious, although sufficient practice in a domain can lead to processes becoming automatic (as with reading and writing). It is this kind of thinking where we would expect to find the most variation between individuals.

As Geary notes, throughout most children's development language is quickly learned, as is the ability to understand the expressions of others, one's own status within a group, and so on. Consistent with this evolutionary perspective on learning, children are most happy when chatting with friends and engaging in sporting activities (in-group/out-group competition), and least happy when engaged in school activities (lessons, homework, etc.). Furthermore, between childhood and adulthood the best predictor of global self-esteem is not performance at school, but one's perceived physical attractiveness.

One implication of this perspective is that we should not rely on children's "natural curiosity" to guide their secondary learning. Indeed, we should not assume a smooth transition between primary learning and secondary learning. Children themselves need to be taught that the topics of secondary learning will not be learned as effortlessly as the topics of primary learning. If they do not realise this, then the inevitable failures that occur when children engage in secondary learning may lead to disengagement. This is often the case in mathematics, where children frequently believe (and are encouraged by parents to believe) that unless you have innate talent then you can't do maths.

Geary also cautions against uncritical acceptance of currently-popular social constructivist approaches to learning, which emphasise group learning over individual learning. The fact that children learn a great deal of social knowledge through their participation in groups does not mean that group participation will have the same effect for secondary learning. This is an area where more research is needed, as was noted by the American National Mathematics Advisory Panel (cited in Geary's response to commentaries):

"All-encompassing recommendations that instruction should be entirely "child-centred" or "teacher-directed" are not supported by research. If such recommendations exist, they should be rescinded. If they are being considered, they should be avoided. High-quality research does not support the exclusive use of either approach".

Although Geary talks about school age children through his paper, for those of us teaching in higher education the evolutionary perspective must still be salient. Many of our students are still in their teenage years, are still learning about themselves, learning about new people and groups that they encounter, and about their position within those groups. It is not always clear that students appreciate the effort that must be made in order to learn much of the material that is encountered, and some topics are percieved as harder than others. In addition, there is much pressure to move towards a "student-centred" model of teaching, just as schools have been encouraged to use "child-centred" teaching. But as Geary shows us, on the basis of current evidence it is far from clear whether one model is superior to the other, or should be used to the exclusion of the other.

Addendum, June 12th

In relation to group learning, I should have also made reference to my posting about "The Apprentice" on June 9th. There I referred to the research on brainstorming, which has found that it is more effective for members of a group to generate their ideas individually rather than within the context of a group. Along similar lines, research into group decision making has found that people in groups tend to share information that is already known to all members, whilst information that is unique to a given member often goes unshared. Thus groups may fail to take advantage of any diversity among their members (one qualification here is that the research to date is largely based on groups created by the researchers, rather than long-standing groups whose members are familiar to each other and who may feel more at ease sharing). I talk about this work in my textbook Judgment and Decision Making: Psychological Perspectives.

However, it may be that using the new social media applications (blogs, wikis, Twitter, etc.) may overcome some of the limitations of traditional group interaction. Just as electronic brainstorming has been found to work better than face-to-face brainstorming, so asynchronous electronic communication may allow for a more beneficial exchange of information; for example, by allowing students to consider what they want to say before posting a message, as opposed to feeling pressurised to provide a fast response in a face-to-face situation. Clearly this is an area where more research is needed.

Reference

Geary, D.C. (2008). An evolutionarily informed education science. Educational Psychologist, 43 (4), 179-195.

Geary, D.C. (2008). Whither evolutionary educational psychology? Educational Psychologist, 43 (4), 217-226.