Sometimes the most important differences between
us are the least visible. That's almost always the
case when it comes to perception, and how our
individual perceptual styles shape priorities,
approach
and personalities.
Take just a moment to try this thought experiment:
Imagine you're standing on the edge of a cliff
gazing out at a forested valley below you. There's
much to look at, but what do you see? Are you
focused
on the vista and the breadth of the landscape before
you, or are your eyes more attracted to details, like
wildlife, trees, and points of interest? And how do you
feel? Are you mesmerized by your vantage point, awed
by the grandeur and beauty of the moment? Or are you
more conscious of your footing, the time of day, and
whether you have enough water for the hike back to
your vehicle?
Although we might intellectually recognize the
benefits of both perspectives, most of us will mentally
drift toward the vista and dreaminess of the moment,
or be inclined to focus on detail and the presence of
risk. In other words, we will find ourselves drawn to
the "shape" of the moment, or the scene's
particulars.
Not only is it nearly impossible to perceive both at
once, our perceptual biases are like magnets, pulling
us toward a relatively consistent way of appraising
and feeling the world around us.
These brain-based, perceptual biases develop
early in life, determining how we learn and what
deserves our attention. Yet when people disagree
about priorities, the role of perceptual differences is
rarely given a second thought. Instead, we mistakenly
assume that we are seeing a situation just as
everyone else does, and that our disagreement stems
from divergent interpretations of the same
observation.
And so the problems begin: "How can you say
that?" "How can you think that?" "Didn't you see what
just happened?"
Hmmm. Let me see if I can think of a living
example. Okay, how about the routine conflicts that
encumber families and classrooms? Conflicts about
where attention should be directed, what is most
important, quantity and quality of communication, and
consideration of others. These sorts of conflicts offend
our righteousness, and their emotional residue often
causes us to become confused about what caused
them.
In such situations, we make the mistake that
human beings have made for as long as human
history has been recorded - we personalize the non-
personal because we forget about (or suppress) the
effect of differing perspectives.
Individual Differences with Big
Consequences
In the last issue of this newsletter I discussed the
massive influence of tone and tempo in sustaining the
ecology of attention. Now we need to turn our attention
to a perceptual phenomenon that shapes a child's
organization and planning skills (Pillars V and VI).
If you've attended one of my talks, you know how
crucial I believe organization and planning are to
school success. And if you're the parent of a middle
school student, you may have first-hand knowledge of
how important organization and planning are to
capability. Schools and families are united in their
desire to increase capability, but when it comes to
working with children themselves, we may find
ourselves at an impasse due to classic differences of
perspective.
For example, focusing on deadlines for university
applications is a detail perspective that doesn't
always jive well with the "big picture" perspective of an
adolescent who may be thinking "what am I getting
myself into?" Consequently, rather than using our
interaction to help this person work through his or her
apprehension about committing to four more years of
education, we inadvertently increase anxiety by
focusing on things like deadlines, major area of study,
and career goals.
*If and when you find yourself in these situations,
please try to avoid moralizing about the conflict.
Perceptual bias is a complex individual difference
that is inherited rather than chosen. Not only does it
reflect the idiosyncrasies of our minds, it is also
affected by gender. For example, males seem to be
attracted to the "contours" of a situation, while females
often excel at retention of detail. Perceptual bias
appears to reflect a notable exception to the left-
hemisphere dominance implicit in so many other
aspects of male psychology.
Gender-based perceptual differences are evident
early in life, on different levels. For example, female
babies are significantly better than males at
recognizing facial details and the sound of their
mother's voice. In contrast, many two year-old boys
can quickly identify a range of trucks simply by the
sound they make as they roar by. The evolutionary
foundations of these difference are complex enough
to warrant a separate article.
Here, I want to emphasize that perceptual
differences help to explain the dichotomy between
boys and girls with respect to organizational skills.
Among many boys, the prevailing perceptual tendency
is "out of sight, out of mind." By contrast, among many
girls there is intense immersion in detail, sometimes
causing them to be caught in the vortex of
perfectionism.
Either perceptual style, taken too far, will lead
to problems accurately assessing a task or
situation. Do you think these gender differences
play a role in family and teacher-student relationships
as well? I certainly do.
Divergent Scopes of Focus
In the same way that gender-based communication
differences color relationships, perceptual differences
about priorities can feel personal, as reflected in the
angrily uttered phrase "that's not what I'm talking
about!" Rather than reflecting a difference of opinion,
this sort of conflict reflects divergent scopes of
focus. We are vulnerable to misperception
because human beings continually forget that their
individual map of reality is not a universal map shared
by all of humankind.
(News media reinforce this false assumption by
reliably deciding for us what is most deserving of our
attention. Does anyone else feel absurdly well
informed about Tiger Woods? Would any agree that
this is the most important news story of 2009?)
Even when we take into account that others may
see things differently, our subconscious resists the
complexity of divergence. Our minds generally prefer
order to chaos (13 and 14 year olds being a notable
exception), making it stressful and fatiguing to
assimilate multiple perspectives, each one owning a
small share of the truth or whole of a situation,
problem, or task.
In this way, executive function is at the core
of human interaction, orchestrating the
interplay of attention, flexibility, and perceptual
organization - and their contribution to relationships,
as well as school work habits.
Head Games
For most of the past century we've simply assumed
that good students will adjust their scope of focus -
the way one might adjust a zoom lens - in the interest
of optimal performance for the work at hand. But the
sheer cacophony of environmental distraction has
made it increasingly difficult for students to
accomplish this adjustment without direction and
coaching.
Add to this equation that the great majority of
children and adolescents we are trying to teach have
been exposed to massive amounts of electronica
which has, in effect, conditioned them to enjoy being
pleasurably mesmerized.
Not only are games fun and intensely stimulating,
they induce a trance-like state. And although games
do require attention to detail, they enable this attention
via high doses of unrelenting stimulation and
feedback.
Have you glanced at children's books or school textbooks lately (if
interested, pay special attention to p. 139, 140, 142)?
They
seem
to be trying to ignite an
equivalent level of stimulation. For example,
information is often organized into blocks and bytes of
information with colored backgrounds and eclectic
typography. It's hard to detect a coherent narrative
because in most cases there isn't one! Book
publishers have recognized that the perceptual
orientation of most kids is to "bits and pieces," rather
than the linear unfolding of events over time.
I believe most of us would be astonished if we
could walk through children's minds to see how they
experience time and history. Rather than a sequential
chronology emphasizing cause and effect, I'd bet that
most young people's construction of history is a
pastiche of images based on themes such as identity,
conflict, and personal relevance. Our task, then, is to
decide whether we want to engage that neurological
reality or somehow try to change it.
When Harvard University's eminent evolutionary
biologist E.O. Wilson suggests "In the future,
education will be more like games," he is forecasting
a time when our collective recognition of the
superiority of games in commanding attention can no
longer be ignored. Although I'm not eager for that day,
I wonder if it has already arrived.
Keeping it Real
If you're getting the sense that problems with
inattention to detail are more prevalent than neglect of
the "big picture," you're right. That helps to explain why
the learning differences of boys are so intensely
scrutinized. However, note that girls who have
interests and leisure activities similar to boys often
have the same perceptual bias as boys, and benefit
from the same types of executive skills coaching that
boys do.
The fact that so many of us have adopted an
obsessive approach to life (i.e., BlackBerry, Twitter,
digital organizers, closet organizers, scrapbooking our
memories, etc.) reflects the unspoken but prevailing
belief that success and happiness reside in
managing life's details; how to do things, when to do
things, deadlines, and keeping things in order.
At the very same time that these demands have
evolved, the leisure activities of kids have evolved to
command their full attention via huge doses of
overstimulation. It's not so much that young
people have lost the ability to pay attention so much
as that the prerequisite for attention has
skyrocketed.
Refocused Priorities
We can't teach attention to detail the same way we
teach algebra or how to drive. But we can reorient
minds to detail when we put young people in
situations where they have a chance to A) detox from
electronica, and, B) are required to make decisions
that have important consequences.
Reshaping the scope of someone's focus
requires some type of timeout from business as
usual. Although we don't have to go on a fulltime
vacation to achieve a timeout, we do need to alter the
tempo of life, allowing boredom to infiltrate minds that
have become expert at eradicating boredom. (Those
who follow this newsletter know about my contention
that boredom is a reassuring presence in the lives
of youth. It reminds us that young minds still have
space
for reflection, deliberation, and planning.)
It's also quite helpful to incorporate physical
involvement. For example, kindergarten students will
learn how to organize a backpack better if given a
chance to demonstrate the task. Tactile involvement
facilitates muscle memory and increases the chance
that new learning will be consolidated into long-term
memory.
The same can be said of middle school students
learning to organize a locker, or high school students
learning how to drive. Clearly, practice is a more
efficient path to becoming a better driver than merely
watching a driver's education video.
E-reality is so compelling because it provides
young people with a facsimile of independence,
accomplishment and mastery (you can battle evil,
build a city, outwit a foe, or become a race car driver,
soldier, etc.) But the falsehood here is that these roles
which cater to our children's desire for difficulty,
danger, creativity, and honor - take place in a
cybersphere that is inherently regressive, because
the "other" is always programmed, predictable, and
ultimately not there.
We foster growth and development when we help
children and adolescents to step outside of the
subjective, egocentric reality that is the essence of
childhood toward a more objective relationship with
the world around them. When we talk of maturity, I
think we mean the shift from a subjective to a more
objective understanding of oneself and the world.
Making that shift requires us to zoom in or zoom out in
an effort to complement whatever perspective we
come by naturally.
I'm not advocating that we fast-forward past
childhood to promote maturity before its time.
However, whether our primary role is as the leader of
a school, classroom, or family, we are in essence
orchestrating the minds and focal points of others. In
our capacity as "maestros" we have an opportunity to
explore how perception winds its way through every
aspect of human activity.
Like the major 20th century paradigms of
emotional intelligence and multiple intelligences, the
power of executive function can only be known and felt
fully when we make it explicit. We have to talk about its
role in our lives from day to day, hour to hour. Those
conversations are the bridge from subjectivity to
objectivity - the stepping stones of capability.
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