1-1. Does studying make you smarter? Thorndike and the dawn of educational research
Educational research began with cats
More than 100 years ago, at the end of the 1890s, a young psychologist named Edward L. Thorndike placed a hungry cat inside a box.
There was food outside the box. The cat could not get out unless it performed a specific action, such as pulling a string or pressing a lever.
How does a cat's behavior change when it is placed in the same box repeatedly?
How can changes in behavior be measured?
Are successful actions learned?
At the time, there were two schools of thought regarding animal behavior.
Is it instinct? Or is it intelligence?
A smart cat. A smart dog. And a smart person.
Is that intelligence determined at birth?
Or does it change through experience?
Inside the box, the cat initially moves around randomly.
It tries to get out through gaps, scratches at strings or bars, bites, and meows. Then, if it happens to perform the movement that opens the door, it gets out and reaches the food.
As this is repeated many times, the cat eliminates useless movements and becomes able to escape the box in a short amount of time.
This is a change you would naturally observe if you live with a pet.
He observed it, recorded it, and transformed it into something others could verify.
He measured the invisible quality of intelligence by the time it took to exit the box.
Modern learning research began from such beginnings [1].
From cats to humans
At the time, there was one strong common sense in education.
If you study, your mind is trained.
Learning Latin improves memory.
Solving math problems makes you logical.
Reading difficult books develops your thinking ability.
Studying is not just for increasing knowledge.
Through study, you train the human mind itself.
But is that really true?
In 1901, Thorndike, then an assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, along with Robert S. Woodworth, attempted to verify this question through experiments [2].
In the experiment, subjects were shown various shapes, such as rectangles, triangles, and circles, and were asked to estimate their areas based on appearance rather than calculation.
Then, they practiced only with rectangles repeatedly.
Each time they answered, the subjects were told the correct area and checked the error themselves.
Afterward, the subjects who finished the practice were asked to estimate the areas of various shapes.
If studying trains the power of thinking itself, those who practiced with rectangles should be able to estimate triangles and circles more accurately than before.
The results were not that simple.
While the error for rectangles decreased, the improvement in error for triangles and circles was small.
The closer the task is to what was practiced, the more the improvement remains.
The further away it is, the weaker the effect of the practice becomes.
This conclusion seems obvious, but it might also apply to us.
Whether at work or in study, we repeat only similar tasks.
It can make you feel like you have accomplished something. But what is growing there is the ability to get used to that task. You get better at the practice, but it is not guaranteed that you can use it in other situations.
So, is learning that can be used in other situations possible?
To what extent can what you have practiced be used?
The content practiced and the new tasks encountered.
Thorndike and Woodworth called the overlap between two tasks "common elements."
When there is common knowledge, perspectives, or procedures, what you have learned can be used in other situations. However, even if there are commonalities, you cannot use them if you do not notice them.
What do you want people to acquire?
Where do you want them to be able to use it?
What kind of experience should be prepared for that purpose?
Education shifted from something discussed only in terms of enthusiasm and talent to something where design is questioned.
This idea became one of the foundations of later educational technology.
Under what conditions do people acquire what they are taught?
The person who delved deeper into this question and connected it to design is B. F. Skinner, who appears next.
Edward L. Thorndike, an American psychologist who earned his doctorate at Columbia University, repeatedly recorded the time and behavioral changes until escape from a puzzle box, using subjects such as cats. He experimentally demonstrated the process in which successful actions remain through trial and error, and the time to escape decreases. Thorndike, E. L. (1898). “Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals.” Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, 2(4), i–109.
Thorndike, E. L., & Woodworth, R. S. (1901). “The Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function upon the Efficiency of Other Functions: II. The Estimation of Magnitudes.” Psychological Review, 8(4), 384–395.Edward L. Thorndike of Teachers College, Columbia University, and Robert S. Woodworth, who studied psychology at Columbia University, investigated with human subjects how much training in one task transfers to performance in another task. They dealt with area estimation, letter and word searching, and memory tasks, and argued that the effect of training depends on the elements common between tasks. Thorndike, E. L., & Woodworth, R. S. (1901). “The Influence of Improvement in One Mental Function upon the Efficiency of Other Functions (I).” Psychological Review, 8(3), 247–261.
[Book Introduction] The Art of Being Taught for Adults Revealed by Educational Technology
Turn "it's too late" into "starting now."
People who continue to change even after becoming adults are not people with special talents.
They are people who have the ability to honestly accept what they are taught, try it themselves, and connect it to the next step.
“The Art of Being Taught for Adults Revealed by Educational Technology” translates the techniques for acquiring the "ability to be taught" into practical tools for the field, based on insights from educational psychology, learning science, cognitive psychology, and organizational psychology, with a focus on educational technology.
It is a book for adult re-learning, systematized into 40 skills.