Mind, Brain, and Education

Ronstadt, Katie; Yellin, Paul B.

2010 Mind, Brain, and Education

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2010.01088.x

It has been suggested that the field of Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) requires a stable infrastructure for translating research into practice. Hinton and Fischer (2008) point to the academic medical center as a model for similar translational work and suggest a similar approach for linking scientists to research schools. We propose expanding their model to include a formal role for clinicians. Including clinicians who work with children with learning problems brings an important perspective to the translational work. For example, the integration of the concept of “differential diagnosis,” a core precept in clinical medicine, would bring needed diagnostic specificity to the field of MBE. We describe a virtual infrastructure for collaboration, or “collaboratory,” consisting of research scientists, educators, and clinicians, linked to an academic institution. We anticipate that MBE graduates can play a critical role in the collaboratory model. With additional training, they can become “neuroeducators” capable of moving comfortably among the disciplines, building linkages, fostering communication, and facilitating collaboration.

Newcombe, Nora S.; Frick, Andrea

2010 Mind, Brain, and Education

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2010.01089.x

Spatial representation and thinking have evolutionary importance for any mobile organism. In addition, they help reasoning in domains that are not obviously spatial, for example, through the use of graphs and diagrams. This article reviews the literature suggesting that mental spatial transformation abilities, while present in some precursory form in infants, toddlers, and preschool children, also undergo considerable development and show important individual differences, which are malleable. These findings provide the basis for thinking about how to promote spatial thinking in preschools, at home, and in children's play. Integrating spatial content into formal and informal instruction could not only improve spatial functioning in general but also reduce differences related to gender and socioeconomic status that may impede full participation in a technological society.

Doucerain, Marina; Schwartz, Marc S.

2010 Mind, Brain, and Education

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2010.01090.x

We probed the impact of two teaching strategies, guided inquiry and argumentation, on students' conceptual understanding of the conservation of matter. Conservation of matter is a central concept in middle school science curriculum and a prerequisite upon which rests more complex constructs in chemistry. The results indicate that guided inquiry was particularly effective in improving students' conceptual understanding, as evidenced by pre/posttest results and by a skill analysis of in‐depth interviews of student dyads. We also discuss how the challenges inherent to educational contexts can undermine the quality and limit the impact of empirical research carried out in many schools. We suggest how these challenges could be met in the emerging infrastructures for change called the Research Schools Network.

Macedonia, Manuela; Müller, Karsten; Friederici, Angela D.

2010 Mind, Brain, and Education

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2010.01091.x

Learning vocabulary in a foreign language is a laborious task which people perform with varying levels of success. Here, we investigated the neural underpinning of high performance on this task. In a within‐subjects paradigm, participants learned 92 vocabulary items under two multimodal conditions: one condition paired novel words with iconic gestures and the other with meaningless gestures. Memory performance was assessed through single‐word translation tests. High performers consistently learned more items than low performers, regardless of the training condition, the time, and the difficulty of the task. Brain activity measured upon word recognition using functional magnetic resonance imaging was parametrically related to the behavioral data. High performance correlated with activity in the left angular gyrus (BA 39) and in the right extrastriate cortex (BA 19). These cortical areas mediate integration of information across different modalities as well as memory processes. Thus, high performance in vocabulary learning seems to depend on individual capacities to integrate and associate a word's semantics with sensorial stimuli. This may have important implications for education.

Della Chiesa, Bruno

2010 Mind, Brain, and Education

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2010.01092.x

For potential consideration by the Mind, Brain, and Education community, here is a modest but provocative hypothesis regarding the relationships between acquisition of languages, awareness of cultures, and development of ethics in human beings. Starting from the basic idea according to which “a fish does not know what water is,” and using both various literature sources and my personal experience of linguistic/cultural diversity, I postulate, using the mathematical metaphor of the “tesseract,” that mastery of several languages is not only essential to developing cultural awareness but also a key to (partial) access to global awareness. This might open research avenues for colleagues interested in some of these fields, or in all of them; if sound neuroscientific work, possibly combined with quantitative studies, proves the hypothesis right, then we may hope to take one small step toward more tolerance: yet another “giant leap for mankind”? Let us dream—it is not forbidden yet.

Scott, Jessica A.; Curran, Christopher M.

2010 Mind, Brain, and Education

doi: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2010.01093.x

Neuroscience is a rapidly expanding scientific field, and its influence on our perceptions of fundamental aspects of human life is becoming widespread, particularly in the social and behavioral sciences. This influence has many philosophical implications, only one of which will be addressed in this article. For many centuries, philosophers have grappled with the myriad problems presented by consciousness, not the least of which is the so‐called “mind–body problem”; now, the gains made in the field of neuroscience promise to answer questions that have been traditionally unanswerable. The richness of neuroscientific data notwithstanding, there are still fundamental philosophical problems in play. This article seeks to answer the question: How do neuroscientists and articles drawing primarily on neuroscience use language to characterize the brain and the mind? Is the same terminology and language used interchangeably, suggesting that the mind and the brain are inherently the same, or does this influential field draw distinctions between the two? We argue that neuroscientific research uses language in a way that does not acknowledge the potential philosophical objections to a mind–brain identity thesis. By doing this, neuroscientific research does not acknowledge the historically problematic discourse about consciousness.