Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (26 page)

Can the teacher’s result be applied to classrooms all over the world? Actually, the experiment is not a result at all. It is a comment. This is not a battle that can be won by testing one classroom in a single school year. This is a battle properly fought by testing hundreds of classrooms and thousands of students from all walks of life, over a period of years.

Use gender teams in the workplace

One day, I spoke about gender with a group of executives-in-training at the Boeing Leadership Center in St. Louis. After showing some of Larry Cahill’s data about gist and detail, I said, “Sometimes women are accused of being more emotional than men, from the home to the workplace. I think that women might not be any more emotional than anyone else.” I explained that because women perceive their emotional landscape with more data points (that’s the detail) and see it in greater resolution, women may simply have more information to which they are capable of reacting. If men perceived the same number of data points, they might have the same number of reactions. Two women in the back began crying softly. After the lecture, I asked them about their reactions, fearing I may have offended them. What they said instead blew me away. “It was the first time in my professional life,” one of them said, “that I didn’t feel like I had to apologize for who I was.”

And that got me to thinking. In our evolutionary history, having a team that could simultaneously understand the gist and details of a given stressful situation helped us conquer the world. Why would the world of business be exempted from that advantage? Having an executive team or work group capable of simultaneously understanding both the emotional forests and the trees of a stressful project, such as a merger, might be a marriage made in business heaven. It could even affect the bottom line.

Companies often conduct management training with situation simulations. They could take a mixed-gendered team and a unisex team and have them go at a project together. Take another set of two teams, but first teach them about the known gender-based differences before taking on the same project. You have four potential outcomes. Would the mixed teams do better than the mono teams? Would the trained groups do better than the untrained groups? Would these results be stable in, say, six months? You might find that management teams with a gist/ detail balance create the best shot for productivity. At the very least, this means that both men and women have an equal right to be at the decision-making table.

We could have environments where gender differences are both noted and celebrated, as opposed to ignored and marginalized. Had this been done earlier, we might have more women in science and engineering now. We might have shattered the archetypal glass ceiling and saved companies a lot of money. Heck, it may even have salvaged the Harvard president’s job.

Summary

Rule #11
Male and female brains are different.

• The X chromosome that males have one of and females have two of—though one acts as a backup—is a cognitive “hot spot,” carrying an unusually large percentage of genes involved in brain manufacture.

• Women are genetically more complex, because the active X chromosomes in their cells are a mix of Mom’s and Dad’s. Men’s X chromosomes all come from Mom, and their Y chromosome carries less than 100 genes, compared with about 1,500 for the X chromosome.

• Men’s and women’s brains are different structurally and biochemically—men have a bigger amygdala and produce serotonin faster, for example—but we don’t know if those differences have significance.

• Men and women respond differently to acute stress:Women activate the left hemisphere’s amygdala and remember the emotional details. Men use the right amygdala and get the gist.

Get more at www.brainrules.net/gender

It was a warm, sunny afternoon. We were playing the “pointing game,” a simple exercise where he would point at something, and I would look. Then we’d both laugh. Josh had been told not to touch bumblebees because they could sting him; we used the word “danger” whenever he approached one. There, in a patch of clover, he spotted a big, furry, buzzing temptress. As he reached for it, I calmly said, “Danger,” and he obediently withdrew his hand. He pointed at a distant bush, continuing our game. As I looked toward the bush, I suddenly heard a 110-decibel yelp. While I was looking away, Josh reached for the bee, which promptly stung him. Josh had used the pointing game as a diversion, and I was outwitted by a 2-year-old.

“DANGER!” he sobbed as I held him close. “Danger,” I repeated sadly, hugging him, getting some ice, and wondering what puberty would be like in 10 years or so.
This incident was Dad’s inauguration into a behavioral suite often called the terrible twos. It was a rough baptism for me and the little guy. Yet it also made me smile. The mental faculties kids use to distract their dads are the same they will use as grownups to discover the composition of distant suns or the next alternative energy. We are natural explorers, even if the habit sometimes stings us. The tendency is so strong, it is capable of turning us into lifelong learners. But you can see it best in our youngest citizens (often when they seem at their worst).

breaking stuff

Babies give researchers a clear view, unobstructed by years of contaminating experiences, of how humans naturally acquire information. Preloaded with lots of information-processing software, infants acquire information using surprisingly specific strategies, many of which are preserved into adulthood. In part, understanding how humans learn at this age means understanding how humans learn at any age.

We didn’t always think that way. If you had said something about preset brain wiring to researchers 40 years ago, their response would have been an indignant, “What are you smoking?” or, less politely, “Get out of my laboratory.” This is because researchers for decades thought that babies were a blank slate—a tabula rasa. They thought that everything a baby knew was learned by interactions with its environments, primarily with adults. This perspective undoubtedly was formulated by overworked scientists who never had any children. We know better now. Amazing strides have been made in understanding the cognitive world of the infant. Indeed, the research world now looks to babies to show how humans, including adults, think about practically everything.

Let’s look under the hood of an infant’s mind at the engine that drives its thinking processes and the motivating fuel that keeps its intellect running.

This fuel consists of a clear, high-octane, unquenchable need to know. Babies are born with a deep desire to understand the world around them and an incessant curiosity that compels them to aggressively explore it. This need for explanation is so powerfully stitched into their experience that some scientists describe it as a drive, just as hunger and thirst and sex are drives.

Babies seem preoccupied by the physical properties of objects. Babies younger than a year old will systematically analyze an object with every sensory weapon at their disposal. They will feel it, kick it, try to tear it apart, stick it in their ear, stick it in their mouth, give it to you so you can stick it in your mouth. They appear to be intensely gathering information about the properties of the object. Babies methodically do experiments on the objects to see what else they will do. In our household, this usually meant breaking stuff.

These object-oriented research projects grow increasingly sophisticated. In one famous set of experiments, babies were given a rake and a toy set far apart from each other. The babies quickly learned to use the rake to get the toy. This is not exactly a groundbreaking discovery, as every parent knows. Then the researchers observed an astonishing thing. After a few successful attempts, the babies lost interest in the toy. But not in the experiment. They would take the toy and move it to different places, then use the rake to grab it. They even placed the toy out of reach to see what the rake could do. The toy didn’t seem to matter to them at all. What mattered was the fact that the rake could move it closer. They were experimenting with the relationship between objects, specifically with how one object could influence the other.

Hypothesis testing like that is the way all babies gather information. They use a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas to figure out how the world works. They actively test their environment, much as a scientist would: Make a sensory observation, form a hypothesis about what is going on, design an experiment capable of testing the hypothesis, and then draw conclusions from the findings.

tongue testing

In 1979, Andy Meltzoff rocked the world of infant psychology by sticking out his tongue at a newborn and being polite enough to wait for a reply. What he found astonished him. The baby stuck her tongue back out at him! He reliably measured this imitative behavior with infants only 42 minutes old. The baby had never seen a tongue before, not Meltzoff’s and not her own, yet the baby knew she had a tongue, knew Meltzoff had a tongue, and somehow intuited the idea of mirroring. The baby knew that if she stimulated a series of nerves in a certain sequence, she could also stick her tongue out (definitely not consistent with the notion of tabula rasa).

I tried this with my son Noah. He and I started our relationship in life by sticking our tongues out at each other. In his first 30 minutes of life, we had struck up an imitative conversation. By the end of his first week, we were well entrenched in dialogue: Every time I came into his crib room, we greeted each other with tongue protrusions. It was purely adaptive on his part, even as it was purely delightful on my part. If I had not stuck my tongue out initially, he would not be doing so with such predictability every time I came into his visual range.

Three months later, my wife picked me up after a lecture at a medical school, Noah in tow. I was still fielding questions, but I scooped up Noah and held him close while answering. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Noah gazing at me expectantly, flicking his tongue out about every five seconds. I smiled and stuck my tongue out at Noah mid-question. Immediately he squealed and started sticking his tongue out with abandon, every half-second or so. I knew exactly what he was doing. Noah made an observation (Dad and I stick our tongues out at each other), formed a hypothesis (I bet if I stick my tongue out at Dad, he will stick his tongue back out at me), created and executed his experiment (I will stick my tongue out at Dad), and changed his behavior as a result of the evaluation of his research (sticking his tongue out more frequently). Nobody taught Noah, or any other baby, how to do this. And it is a lifelong strategy. You probably did it this morning when you couldn’t find your glasses, hypothesized they were in the laundry room, and went downstairs to look. From a brain science perspective, we don’t even have a good metaphor to describe how you know to do that. It is so automatic, you probably had no idea you were looking at the results of a successful experiment when you found your spectacles lying on the dryer.

Noah’s story is just one example of how babies use their precious preloaded information-gathering strategies to gain knowledge they didn’t have at birth. We also can see it in disappearing cups and temper tantrums.

Little Emily, before 18 months of age, still believes that if an object is hidden from view, that object has disappeared. She does not have what is known as “object permanence.” That is about to change. Emily has been playing with a washcloth and a cup. She covers the cup with the cloth, and then pauses for a second, a concerned look on her brow. Slowly she pulls the cloth away from the cup. The cup is still there! She glares for a moment, then quickly covers it back up. Thirty seconds go by before her hand tentatively reaches for the cloth. Repeating the experiment, she slowly removes the cloth. The cup is
still
there! She squeals with delight. Now things go quickly. She covers and uncovers the cup again and again, laughing loudly each time. It is dawning on Emily that the cup has object permanence: Even if removed from view, it has not disappeared. She will repeat this experiment for more than half an hour. If you have ever spent time with an 18-month old, you know that getting one to concentrate on anything for 30 minutes is some kind of miracle. Yet it happens, and to babies at this age all over the world.

Though this may sound like a delightful form of peek-a-boo, it is actually an experiment whose failure would have lethal evolutionary consequences. Object permanence is an important concept to have if you live in the savannah. Saber-toothed tigers still exist, for example, even if they suddenly duck down in the tall grass. Those who didn’t acquire this knowledge usually were on some predator’s menu.

testing you, too

The distance between 14 months of age and 18 months of age is extraordinary. This is when children begin to learn that people have desires and preferences separate from their own. They don’t start out that way. They think that because they like something, the whole world likes the same thing. This may be the origin of the “Toddler’s Creed,” or what I like to call “Seven Rules of Management from a Baby’s Perspective”:

If I want it, it is mine.
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it is mine.
If I can take it away from you, it is mine.
If we are building something together, all of the pieces are mine.
If it looks just like mine, it is mine.
If it is mine, it will never belong to anybody else, no matter what.
If it is yours, it is mine.

At 18 months, it dawns on babies that this viewpoint may not always be accurate. They begin to learn that adage that most newlyweds have to relearn in spades: “What is obvious to you is obvious to you.”

How do babies react to such new information? By testing it, as usual. Before the age of 2, babies do plenty of things parents would rather them not do. But after the age of 2, small children will do things
because
their parents don’t want them to. The compliant little darlings seem to transform into rebellious little tyrants. Many parents think their children are actively defying them at this stage. (The thought certainly crossed my mind as I nursed Joshua’s unfortunate bee sting.) That would be a mistake, however. This stage is simply the natural extension of a sophisticated research program begun at birth.

You push the boundaries of people’s preferences, then stand back and see how they react. Then you repeat the experiment, pushing them to their limits over and over again to see how stable the findings are, as if you were playing peek-a-boo. Slowly you begin to perceive the length and height and breadth of people’s desires, and how they differ from yours. Then, just to be sure the boundaries are still in place, you occasionally do the whole experiment over again.

Babies may not have a whole lot of understanding about their world, but they know a whole lot about how to get it. It reminds me of the old Chinese proverb “Catch me a fish and I eat for a day; teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.”

monkey see, monkey do

Why does a baby stick its tongue back out at you? The beginnings of a neural road map have been drawn in the past few years, at least for some of the “simpler” thinking behaviors, such as imitation. Three investigators at the University of Parma were studying the macaque, assessing brain activity as it reached for different objects in the laboratory. The researchers recorded the pattern of neural firing when the monkey picked up a raisin. One day, researcher Leonardo Fogassi walked into the laboratory and casually plucked a raisin from a bowl. Suddenly, the monkey’s brain began to fire excitedly. The recordings were in the raisin-specific pattern,
as if the animal had just picked up the raisin
. But the monkey had not picked up the raisin. It simply saw Fogassi do it.

The astonished researchers quickly replicated and extended their findings, and then published them in a series of landmark papers describing the existence of “mirror neurons.” Mirror neurons are cells whose activity reflect their surroundings. Cues that could elicit mirror neural responses were found to be remarkably subtle. If a primate simply heard the sound of someone doing something it had previously experienced—say, tearing a piece of paper—these neurons could fire as if the monkey were experiencing the full stimulus. It wasn’t long before researchers identified human mirror neurons. These neurons are scattered across the brain, and a subset is involved in action recognition—that classic imitative behavior such as babies sticking out their tongues. Other neurons mirror a variety of motor behaviors.

We also are beginning to understand which regions of the brain are involved in our ability to learn from a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas. We use our right prefrontal cortex to predict error and to retrospectively evaluate input for errors. The anterior cingulate cortex, just south of the prefrontal cortex, signals us when perceived unfavorable circumstances call for a change in behavior. Every year, the brain reveals more and more of its secrets, with babies leading the way.

a lifetime journey

We do not outgrow the thirst for knowledge, a fact brought home to me as a post-doc at the University of Washington. In 1992, Edmond Fischer shared with Edwin Krebs the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. I had the good fortune to be familiar with both their work and their offices. They were just down the hall from mine. By the time I arrived, they were already in their mid-70s. The first thing I noticed upon meeting them was that they were not retired. Not physically and not mentally. Long after they had earned the right to be put out to scientific pasture, both had powerful, productive laboratories in full swing. Every day I would see them walking down the hall, oblivious to others, chatting about some new finding, swapping each other’s journals, listening intently to each other’s ideas. Sometimes they would have someone else along, grilling them and in turn being grilled about some experimental result. They were creative like artists, wise as Solomon, lively as children. They had lost
nothing
. Their intellectual engines were still revving, and curiosity remained the fuel. That’s because our learning abilities don’t have to change as we age. We can remain lifelong learners.