The Power of Mindful Learning (15 page)

In the three cultures (mainland Chinese, American Deaf,
and hearing American) we measured the following three
hypotheses: (1) The Chinese and hearing-impaired American
cultures hold more positive views of aging than does the hearing mainstream American culture. (2) Young subjects in each
culture perform similarly on the memory tests, whereas the
elder Chinese and American Deaf participants outperform the
elder hearing American group. (3) There is a relationship
between positive views toward aging and better memory performance found among the older subjects.

We selected thirty participants from each culture. Half the
members of these three groups consisted of young adults (aged
15 to 30 years; mean = 22 years), and half consisted of elderly
adults (aged 59 to 91 years; mean = 70 years). We selected fiftynine years as the starting age for the old group because in
China, most women retire by the age of fifty-five and most
men retire at the age of sixty;23 in addition, age fifty-nine is
about when people in the hearing-impaired community begin
to attend social events planned for older adults.24 We matched
subjects in the three cultures by years of education, socioeconomic status, and age.

In the United States, experimenters recruited all participants from the Boston area. We recruited the fifteen younger
hearing individuals from youth organizations and the fifteen
older hearing participants from a senior drop-in center. We
recruited the fifteen younger Deaf individuals from a Deaf cultural organization and the fifteen Deaf elderly from a senior
drop-in center. In China, interviewers recruited the thirty sub jects from a pencil factory located in the western district of
Beijing. The fifteen younger subjects were currently working at
the pencil factory, and the fifteen older subjects returned to the
factory once a month to collect their pension checks.

To test memory, we showed subjects photos of elderly individuals whom they were told they would one day meet. For the
hearing sample, each photo was presented for five seconds, the
experimenter read a passage about an activity involving the photographed person (e.g., swimming every day), and then the subject examined the photo again. In the hearing-impaired sample,
the statement about the activity was signed. For the Chinese
groups, the photos were of elderly Chinese. All subjects were
then shown the photos and asked to give us the matched activity.

The three groups of young subjects performed similarly on
the memory task, as we had predicted. The elder Deaf and
elder Chinese participants clearly outperformed the elder hearing group. There was no difference in memory performance
between the two Chinese age groups.

We also rated the views toward aging in these three cultures
by having subjects in each group answer the question, "What are
the first five words or descriptions that come to mind when
thinking of somebody old?" Answers were evaluated for positivity by raters who were unaware of the culture or age of the subject. We found that these views correlated with the performance
of the three groups, that is, negative views correlated with poorer
performance in the older groups. These results support the view
that cultural beliefs about aging play a role in determining the
degree of memory loss that people experience in old age.

The rigid mindsets we hold about ourselves affect our performance. These mindsets, including our beliefs about old age,
are often unwittingly accepted at a time when they may seem
irrelevant to our current concerns. Children who do not care
about school may accept negative assessments of their abilities.
Later, when they come to care about the particular abilities in
question, these assessments are already fixed in their minds. At
that point the damage is done. The mindset does not get
tested; it is treated as though it is necessarily true. This may be
how we accept the so-called inevitable memory decline with
age. If we are led to believe that we have poor memories or that
we are poor students, these mindsets can become self-fulfilling
prophecies.

The negative assumption about mental capacity in old age
can be seen in many adult education courses. Although there is
no reason to believe that information imparted to older people
should differ from that taught in colleges, catalogs aimed at
older adults are filled with far more narrow topics. They typically deal with retirement and health issues or with lightweight
courses in appreciating art or music. The experience of younger
people in college courses may be shortchanged by the absence of
older adults. Older adults are more likely to have had experiences that tell us that the new facts being imparted are more
true in some contexts than in others. Diversity provokes mindfulness. Their more extensive and varied experiences may reveal
the meaningfulness of certain information that would otherwise
appear irrelevant. Not only is education not wasted on the old
but, without their participation, it may be wasted on the young.

A man who lived on the northern frontier of
China was skilled in interpreting events. One
day, for no reason, his horse ran away to the
nomads across the border. Everyone tried to console him, but his father said, "What makes you so
sure this isn't a blessing?" Some months later his
horse returned, bringing a splendid nomad stallion. Everyone congratulated him, but his father
said, "What makes you so sure this isn't a disaster?" Their household was richer by a fine horse,
which his son loved to ride. One day he fell and
broke his hip. Everyone tried to console him, but
his father said, "What makes you so sure this isn't
a blessing?"

A year later the nomads came in force across the border, and
every able-bodied man took his bow and went into battle. The Chinese frontiersmen lost nine of every ten men. Only because the son
was lame did the father and son survive to take care of each other. Truly, blessing turns to disaster, and disaster to blessing: the changes
have no end, nor can the mystery be fathomed.

The Lost Horse

CHINESE FOLKTALE

The very notion of intelligence may be clouded by a myth:
the belief that being intelligent means knowing what is out
there. Many theories of intelligence assume that there is an
absolute reality out there, and the more intelligent the person,
the greater his or her awareness of this reality. Great intelligence, in this view, implies an optimal fit between individual
and environment. An alternative view, which is at the base of
mindfulness research, is that individuals may always define
their relation to their environment in several ways, essentially
creating the reality that is out there. What is out there is
shaped by how we view it.

Despite the emphasis in current intelligence theory on several kinds of intelligence, there is still an assumption of an
absolute, external reality revealed by greater or lesser degrees of
these various sorts of intelligence. This assumption is of more
than academic interest; it may have detrimental effects on selfperception, perception of others, personal control, and the educational process itself.

As we will see in this chapter, belief that one's perceptions
must correspond to the environment and that the level of correspondence is a measure of intelligence stems from a nineteenth-century view but continues to be influential today. A theory of correspondence between cognitive faculties and
environment can be found in a variety of concepts of intelligence, ranging from Charles Spearman'sl "g," a general factor
that describes the correlation among many cognitive abilities,
to Howard Gardner's2 multiple intelligences, which are any
socially valued abilities. The assessment of each ability depends on an assumption of a certain reality; the intelligence in
question corresponds to that reality. For instance, the currently
popular notion of emotional intelligence implies that certain
people have a keener sense than others of what other people
are actually thinking and feeling? Research that my colleagues
and I have conducted has shown how this theory of correspondence can be intellectually, emotionally, and physically
debilitating.

Before discussing the damaging effects of such a view, it
may be helpful to look for its source by tracing the roots of
intelligence theory back to the nineteenth century.

In 1854, Hermann von Helmholtz observed a curious phenomenon. When he looked with each eye on a different-colored square-a red square for one eye and a green square for
the other, with a divider separating the two-he was able to
bring only one square into focus at a time; also, his attention
tended to drift from one color to the other.' His inability to
control what part of his perceptual world came into focus and his failure to bring these two pieces-these small squares-of
experience together in a unified visual field led Helmholtz to
extensive speculation and empirical research about the ways in
which we make sense of our environment.

Our inability to attend to both of Helmholtz's images
simultaneously-a phenomenon that has been frequently replicated-raises this question: If only one image can be within our
perceptual field at a time and we cannot directly perceive the
relation between these images, why do we automatically form a
conception of their relationship? There are two approaches to
answering this question. For many theorists of intelligence, the
question is primarily epistemological: "How can I know what
relationships exist among the pieces of my experience if I do
not perceive the relations directly?" From the point of view of
mindfulness theory, this question is primarily an issue of personal control: "Is my way of perceiving the relationships among
the pieces of my experience so automatic that it is beyond my
control?" The deliberately ambiguous image in Figure 1 may
make these questions more concrete.