From the time I was a child I can remember my mother sprinkling her communications to me with words that you wouldn’t expect a child to understand, but when she labeled me dilatory or exasperating, I understood very well what she meant.

I have been told one or two times that I shouldn’t speak in adult language to children because they don’t understand. But how do children learn any word, indeed, how do they learn language? By hearing it spoken. When I speak in Spanish to my 7-year-old son, people ask in amazement “Does he speak Spanish”? I usually answer, “No, not yet”.

Now some research done by a Johns Hopkins undergraduate shows that toddlers learn words faster if they learn by inference rather than instruction. Letting children puzzle out the meaning of a word for themselves leads to longer lasting knowledge than teaching by instruction only.

Meredith Brinster worked with children 36 to 42 months. By introducing objects and names for them in two ways, she measured how quickly children learned new words and which method helped them remember what they had learned.

Using a familiar object, say a ball and a second, unfamiliar object such as a tool, Brinster introduced a nonsense word like “blicket” and ask children to point out the object that went with the word. Because the ball was familiar and the children knew the name for that object, they were able to infer that the unfamiliar object was the “blicket”.

A second group of children was shown an object and told that it was a “blicket” using a direct instructional form of teaching.

Later when children were asked to point out the “blicket” it was clear that those children who had used reason to determine which object was the “blicket” remembered the information better and longer than those who had simply been taught the name of the object.

Undergrad: Kids Learn Words Best by Working out Meaning Study by New Jersey senior shows inference is best strategy for toddlers

Teach students how to think for themselves and they will learn more and perform better. That’s the startling conclusion of Steve Rissing,a professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State University, who presented his findings during a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

First year biology students were previously being taught using what Rissing called the “cookbook method” which gave them step-by-step instructions on how to carry out an experiment and display their results. They were also provided with a standard, prepared enzyme solution.

Rissing conducted his own experiment, by dividing 300 students into two groups, one that used the cookbook method and a second group that was given less instruction and more room and freedom to use critical thinking and hands-on discovery. They also had to prepare their own enzyme solution from a piece of raw turnip.

Following the experiment, students were all asked one simple question “Where are enzymes found?” The answer is: from living tissue. Of the students in the cookbook group, only 23 percent got the right answer. But 83 percent of the students who had less instruction and therefore developed their own method, answered the question correctly.

The real discovery is that when allowed to discover and think, students increase knowledge and perform better than when given step-by-step instructions.

Rissing’s overarching goal is to teach students to be independent and objective thinkers, to create a group of scientifically literate citizens who can intelligently discuss multi-faceted issues such as stem cell biology, evolution, genetically modified organisms and the like. This applies to science majors and non-majors alike.

Scientific Literacy Happens…When Students Think for Themselves - Ohio State University Research News

If you believe you can get smarter, you will. Studies have previously shown that IQ is not fixed but can be influenced by many factors. Home environment, community and education all affect IQ.

Findings of a study on how students views of their intelligence affected their math grades showed that those who believed that intelligence can be developed did in fact improve their math performance.

One study monitored 12 year olds over two years of school. The students who believed that their intelligence could be expanded outperformed those who believed that intelligence is fixed. Over the two years, the difference in performance levels widened, even though both groups had started out on an equal achievement level.

A second study concentrated on students whose math grades were declining. One group was taught that intelligence is not fixed, but expandable. Another group was not told that intelligence could be developed. Both groups went through an 8-session workshop on study skills. The students who were taught that their intelligence could be expanded reversed the decline in their grades in contrast to the second group, whose math grades continued on a downward slope.

Researchers believe that when students believe they are capable of achieving more, they concentrate more on learning and the power of their own effort. The results of the studies indicate that what students believe about intelligence can affect their academic progress and motivation.

The two studies were conducted by researchers at Columbia University and Stanford University, and are published in the January/February 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

Society for Research in Child Development

Much has been made of a new study that says adults over 70 with higher education levels forgot words at a higher rate than those with less education. The buzz in the news is almost enough to have people demanding their college tuition fees back.

But before you start panicking over headlines like “Higher Education Rots Your Brain”, let’s look at what researchers actually said about this study.

These tests measured verbal memory by immediate and delayed recall. Ten common nouns were read aloud by the interviewer, followed by a request for respondents to remember as many nouns as possible from the list. Five minutes later, participants were asked how many of the words they could recall.

What the test seems to measure is short term memory, and in this area, education did nothing to protect older adults from age-related decline. Those with higher education do better on cognitive tests at any age and performed better in this testing as well. The surprising result was that those with more education seemed to experience decline at a faster rate than those with less education.

More education is consistently related to better cognitive performance in older adults and in this study, too, individuals with higher levels of education had a higher ability at any given age. However, it was those with the highest education whose performance dropped the most.

“Even though we find in this research that those with higher education do better on mental status tests that look for dementia-like symptoms, education does not protect against more normal, age-related declines, like those seen on memory tests,” said lead author Dawn Alley of the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted the research while a doctoral student at the USC Davis School.

The upshot is that education is good for you, doesn’t rot your brain and in fact, improves cognitive ability and staves off dementia. Unfortunately, we will all age and age takes some toll on some aspects of our mental abilities. And it may be true that the better educated lose abilities at a greater rate than others but, since they start off from a better position, they are still winners in the end. Keeping our brains active and learning is still the best way to keep them young.