{"id":4024,"date":"2018-11-25T21:01:35","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T02:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4024"},"modified":"2018-11-17T11:34:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-17T16:34:51","slug":"why-do-choices-interfere-with-your-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/why-do-choices-interfere-with-your-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do Choices Interfere with Your Learning?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous experiment.<\/p>\n

If you give shoppers many jam choices to sample, they’re delighted to taste your wares. But, if you give them\u00a0fewer choices<\/em>, they’re more likely to — ahem — buy some jam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"choices<\/a><\/p>\n

In other words: choices both motivate and demotive in a complex pattern.<\/p>\n

What effect might this finding have on education?<\/p>\n

Choices Overwhelm Brains? Choices Harm Learning?<\/h2>\n

In a recent study<\/a>, Elena Reutskaja and colleagues explored the neural basis of this intriguing finding.<\/p>\n

They gave study participants choices about the image to be printed on a tee-shirt or mug. Crucially, some got a few choices: 6. Others got more choices: 12. And others got A LOT more: 24.<\/p>\n

What happened in participants’ brains?<\/p>\n

The short version: two crucial brain regions behaved differently with 12 choices.<\/p>\n

The anterior cingulate cortex<\/em>\u00a0(ACC) and the striatum<\/em> showed more activity when given a manageable number of choices than when they had too many or too few.<\/p>\n

By the way: the prefrontal cortex showed a similar pattern, but to a smaller degree.<\/p>\n

(Important wonky caveat:\u00a0more brain activity<\/em> ISN’T\u00a0always better<\/em>. In this case, more activity in these regions coincided with self-reports of greater pleasure.<\/p>\n

In other cases — say,\u00a0dyslexia<\/em> — more brain activity coincides with lots of reading difficulty.)<\/p>\n

These results mean that we’ve got two reasons to think too many choices are bad.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>:\u00a0behaviorally,\u00a0<\/em>people react badly with too many choices. (If you try to navigate the toothpaste section of your local CVS, you know what I mean.)<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>:\u00a0neurobiologically<\/em>, brains react badly with too many choices.<\/p>\n

In other words, those people running the behavior experiments weren’t making things up or misreading the data. Instead, they identified real problems.<\/p>\n

Teaching Implications<\/h2>\n

We might reasonably start with the presumption that choices enhance learning. The more that our students get to choose what they’re doing, the more intrinsically motivated they will be.<\/p>\n

However, as we see more and more studies like this one we realize that — just possibly — choices harm learning. Faced with more options than they can readily process, students feel their ACC shut down.<\/p>\n

The result: not more learning and motivation, but less.<\/p>\n

What, then, is the\u00a0perfect number of choices<\/em>?<\/p>\n

One answer is: the authors suggest between 8 and 15.<\/p>\n

A much better answer: honestly, research really can’t answer that question<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the first place, they’re currently doing research with consumers getting choices to buy stuff. That’s not the situation our students are in.<\/p>\n

In the second place, this research pool works with adults. Almost certainly, younger students can manage fewer choices than older students — who manage fewer than adults.<\/p>\n

In the third place, the “choices” that students make vary in complexity. If I have to define 5 of 6 vocabulary words, that’s a straightforward process.<\/p>\n

If, however, I have to solve 5 of 6 calculus problems, then I’m likely to start the early steps of solving each one to test out their trickiness.<\/p>\n

In this case, I’ve got A LOT more info rattling around in working memory, even thought the number of choices has remained the same.<\/p>\n

In other words, the correct number varies from case to case to case. As is so often true, you — the classroom teacher — will have the best vantage point from which to suss out the answer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At times, choices might help motivate students. However, at other times, choices harm learning. When we distinguish between the two, we help our students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-4024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4024"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4026,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions\/4026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}