Csaba Pléh Budapest U Technology and Economics pleh@cogsci.bme.hu Keynote address

1. Biological and psychological constraints and determinants of lifelong development and the teaching profession Csaba Pléh Budapest U Technology and Economics pleh@cogsci.bme.hu Keynote address ATEE 2010 Conference Budapest, August 27th 2010

2. Lifelong learning depends on the opennes of human mind for novelty Our mind and brain are open all our life Especially good we are at strategic approaches to learning and in control The new IT is revolutionary here and changes both learning and teaching The human mind is full of constraints, not entirely flexible The mind and brain are open only at certain ages We are constantly slowing down and our memory degrades The new IT is advocating shallow processing and avoids content for superficial scanning Two visions

3. Outline • Teaching and street level learning • Teaching-learning and age • Learning methods and the new IT • Challenges and changes over the lifespan • Rethinking development and decline: The role of activity

4. Teaching and street level learning Teaching-learning and age Learning methods and the new IT Challenges and changes over the lifespan Rethinking development and decline: The role of activity

5. Street level learning Pragmatic functions: KNOWING HOW and what is it for ? Model following Horizontal ? Skill based Man the doer School learning Excellence functions KNOWING WHAT and representation Abstract knowledge Vertical Declarative Man the knower Street epistemology (Russel Hardin) and institutional learning

6. Centrifugal Socialization Interiorization Relativism Learning tools lead Institutions are basic innovations Centripetal Innate structure Thought expression Universalism Tools our slaves Teaching/learning is a biological universal External and internal model of man

7. Three types of psychology starting from the temporal scales of Alan Newell (1989)

8. Three visions of the modifiability of architectures (Michael Cole)

9. Teaching and street level learning Teaching-learning and age Learning methods and new IT Challenges and changes overt the lifespan Rethinking development and decline: The role of activity

10. Acquisition methods and age • Small child street based skills  • Schooling knowledge, vertical transmission  • Lifelong skill horizontal transmission

11. Tomasello on the genesis of sociality and culture

12. Cultural learning and joint intentionality in Tomasello

13. Csibra and Gergely: levels of knowledge acquisition Unlike the traditional selectionists, they consider the change in mechanisms to be crucial

14. Natural pedagogy of George Gergely and Gergely Csibra • Teaching-learning through ostensive cues • Expected teaching • Learning generalities about the world . ‘This is bad’ vs. She is sad • Learning arbitrariness as a foundation of culture

15. Brain responses in 4 monhs nthsolds (4) to mutual gaze

16. Issues of timing The critical period: • Lorenz: imprinting • Specificities: timing 12-36 hours. Effort. • Attachment (Hermann, Harlow) perception, language (Lenneberg) • Timing is different: 1 year, 5 years etc. • Sensitive or critical? • What ends the period?

17. When do they end and why ? • Language prepuberty Newport • Vision 10-11 years • Ilona Kovács

18. Plasticity and age : developmental windows

19. Neural development and selective pruning: Changeux

20. An example for evolved flexibility: Brain and experience in rodents and humans UC Berkeley D. Krech és Mark Rosenzweig D. Krech (1909-1977)

21. Experiential effects in the rodent brain • D. Krech and Mark Rosenzweig 1960-1990. Rich and poor environment • Rich environment between 25-105 days leads to mopholgical changes • Krech: the law of convergence (Stern): selective breading effects the same issues

22. Similar human experiential effects • Bob Jacobs, Matthew Schall, And Arnold B. Scheibel (1993) Wernicke area • Scholing increases dendrites • Left side longer • Longer in women • Decrease with age correlation – 0.69

23. Bilinguals (Mechelli) • Grey matter thicker with increase in L2 proficiency • The earlier L2 learned the better • Early clozing (sound, syntax) and open (word) subsystems in language

24. Musicians Sluming et al, 2002: thicker grey matter in Broca’s areaMore resistance to age related changes

25. Synaptic density and age in the two basic language areas Huttenlocher

26. Age and two basic skills

27. Phenotypic plasticity • Gradual response to environmental gradient OR discrete switching between types • Fixed traits (e.g. size after metamorphosis) OR labile traits (e.g. behavioral) • Change in the phenotypic mean (reaction norm) OR change in the phenotypic variance • Response to a directional environmental shift OR response to residual environmental “noise” • Adaptive, evolved response OR side effect of basic physiology

28. The issue of evolution based cortical recycling: Some structures are put to new use. Word form visual area: it was adapted for fine form processing, and recycled for reading Dehaene

29. Canalization following Conrad Waddington: Evolution shapes the optimal path Multiple canalizations

30. Selection levels according to Campbell

31. Organic and cultural evolution according to Wuketsits

32. Traditional oposition between biology and culture and its questioning by Hull (1982)

33. Gary Cziko: hierarchy of selection processes and education

35. Universal reading area?

36. Neuronal recycling: Dehaene, 2008

37. Teaching and street level learning Teaching-learning and age Learning methods and new IT Challenges and changes overt the lifespan Rethinking development and decline: The role of activity

38. Great architectural changes (Donald, 1991, 2001)

39. Changes between traditional and modern knowledge transfer

40. Implications of the theory of Donald • Continuity of change fom biology to culture • Representation and communication change together • New architectures emulating biology • What is the status of present changes?

41. Classical world man on stable place, info moves here displacement for source construct the model of receiver Mobil world man on moving location, with stable accessibility temporal displacement at reception (message) spatial displacement at reception (mobile) construct flexible model of the receiver Temporal and spatial dynamics and the new IT

42. Possible consequences of communicative accessibilty • New conventions and temporal architectures • New issues of personal reliabilty • Classical oral reliability • Written reliability: impersonal, points of no return • New media: rescheduling is too cheap, cheating is too easy • Needs for new etiquettes • Emotional and instrumental codes

43. An example for the nature-culture interface Three visions on the impact of new IT • Social optimists: new technologies do change the manner we think • Social pessimists: new technologies contradict human nature • Biological optimists: new technologies modify, but they build upon existing biological architecture

44. One version of biological optimists: Robin Dunbar Grooming time and the brain

45. Present day networks • Network maximum around 100 • Subgroups: • Emotional closeness and contact frequency

46. A challenging „pessimist” Technology is moulding a generation of children unable to think for themselves or empathise with others • Susan Greenfield • Why is the NET dangerous? • Shallow processing • Ignoring content • Lack of body language, eye contact, all what is natural to natural pedagogy • You have to slow down with the use of the IT tools

47. Computer games emphasize "process" over "content" - method over meaning - in mental activity. Overdose of dopamin Under-functioning prefrontal cortex: total absorption in the here and now, and an inability to consider past and future implications. A euphoric, self-centred ego boost, the pleasure of which can lead to craving and addiction. The first time in human history, individuality could be obliterated in favour of a passive state, reacting to a flood of incoming sensations - a 'yuck' and 'wow' mentality characterised by a premium on momentary experience as the landscape of the brain shifts into one where personalised brain connectivity is either not functional or absent altogether

49. Teaching and street level learning Teaching-learning and age Learning methods and new IT Challenges and changes overt the lifespan Rethinking development and decline: The role of activity

50. Closing windows and puberty Shaw et al, 2006