Functional brain
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brings exciting new insights into our
understanding of how gifted thinkers think. The first thing you notice when you
look at the fMRIs of gifted groups is that it looks like a 'brain on fire.'
Bright red blazes of high metabolic activity burst out all over the scan. Each
red patch represents millions of microcombustion events in which glucose is
metabolized to provide fuel for the working brain. Gifted brains are remarkably
intense and diffuse metabolizers. But the amazing insights do not stop there.
The orchestration of activity is planned and complex, and it seems to require
the coordination of diverse visual, spatial, verbal, and sensory areas of
brain. Gifted thinkers are rarely one-mode thinkers. Rather, they are great
organizers of diverse and multimodal information. For teachers and parents of
young gifted thinkers, we begin to understand why certain young gifted thinker
go awry, and why organization should be an essential aspect of gifted education.
There is the abundant
available evidence that gifted children show enhanced sensory activation and
awareness. Gifted brains are essentially "hyper-sensitive," and can
be rendered even more so through training. Not only are the initial impressions
especially strong, but also the later recollections are often unusually intense
or vivid. Because vivid initial impressions correlate with better recollection,
gifted brains are also characterized by increased memory efficiency and
capacity. These memories are not only especially intense and enduring memories,
but they are also frequently characterized by multimodality, involving memory
areas that store many different types of memories, such as personal
associations, different sensory modalities like color, sound, smell, or visual
images, or verbal or factual impressions. This multimodality means that gifted
thinkers often make connections in ways other people don't. They frequently
have special abilities in associational thinking (including analogy and
metaphor) and in analytical or organizational skills (through which diverse
associations are understood and systematized).
As a result of these
special brain characteristics, gifted thinkers typically enjoy benefits
including more vivid sensing, prodigious memory, greater fund of knowledge,
more frequent and varied associations, and greater analytic ability. However,
these same neurological characteristics carry a number of potential drawbacks,
including sensory, emotional, and memory overload, sensory hypersensitivities,
personal disorganization, sensory distractibility, delayed processing due to
"analysis paralysis" (or getting "lost in thought" due to
an excess of options), and mental fatigue.
One of the keys to
maintaining this appropriate balance lies within the front of the brain of
gifted thinkers. This balance can be achieved through a coordinated interaction
of the right and left lobes in what we've termed "Creative Corporate
Thinking." Creative Corporate Thinking consists of a partnership between
the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on the left, and the Creativity Director on
the right. The interaction between these two entities is that "corporate
balancing act" between the "Suit" or CEO on the left that
focuses and prioritizes goals, works out details, and implements strategies,
and the "Talent" or Creativity Director on the right that dreams,
combines ideas, sensations, and images, generates alternative approaches, and
is oriented toward the "Big Picture." Each of these functions has its
distinct "corporate culture" with its unique style and language, and
each is essential for good corporate function. The key to optimal thinking is
to maintain productive communication and cooperation between the two sides.
This cooperation is essential regardless of the task. Even seemingly
"analytical" skills like math involve tremendous amounts of
imaginative, dreamy, associational thinking; and even seemingly "abstract
and creative" skills like painting or sculpting involve tremendous amounts
of detailed planning.
There are a number of
implications of these findings about gifted brains for teaching gifted
children. First, because of their enhanced sensitivity, gifted children tend to
learn with fewer repetitions, and to need less extensive explanations in class,
although it is important to remember that their sensitivity may be modality
specific (that is, hearing, seeing, kinesthetic) rather than across the board.
Enhanced sensitivity also frequently results in enhanced distractibility, and
gifted children may at times be suspected because of this to have ADHD.
However, it is important to remember that in gifted children, distractibility
is frequently accompanied by considerable persistence, and even though their
attention seems often to wander, so long as it keeps returning to the task at
hand and the work gets done, it should not be considered an impediment. In
fact, there is considerable evidence that such "distractibility" is
one of the roots of creativity. Enhanced sensitivity that results in impaired
learning, however, whether because of distractibility to visual, auditory,
tactile, or other sensory cues, is a real problem that requires evaluation and
treatment.
Second, because of
their enhanced memory, gifted children require less review and come to class
with more outside knowledge than other children. Frequently they acquire
knowledge through "incidental learning"--that is, snatches of
overheard, glimpsed, or observed information that are taken in outside of their
formal education. Because of their combination of enhanced sensitivity and
memory, these kids are like "cognitive flypaper" in that they grab
and hold onto ideas and information much more avidly than their peers. Too
often this facility for acquiring information has been interpreted as a sign
that gifted education should consist of "filling up their brains"
with vast quantities of information. However, the exact opposite is true.
Because gifted students are able with significantly less effort to acquire the
standard knowledge base, information acquisition should actually be given less
space in the curriculum rather than more. Rather than simply acquiring more
facts, these students should use their extra time learning how to think like
experts. They are already information wealthy--they do not need a greater
largesse of facts. What they need is to learn what to do with what they already
have.
Finally, we believe
that a greater proportion of gifted education be allocated toward learning how
to organize and process information. Gifted children have a critical need to:
understand the nature of their thinking, understand the quality of their
information, and understand the uses of information.
By
"understanding the nature of thinking" we mean the sort of
metacognitive training (or "thinking about thinking") that would
allow gifted thinkers more effectively to direct and manage their own thinking.
This training would equip them to understand the nature of memory, sensory
processing, mental organization and learning styles, and would arm them with
knowledge of mnemonic, organizational, interpersonal, and other problem solving
strategies. This training would enable them to approach specific problems and
learning in general with the greatest possible chance of success. Gifted
students need more time for rumination and reflection, moving back toward a
classical model of education in which a few resources were studied in depth and
reflected on at length, rather immersed in barrage of information whose depths
they are never allowed to explore.
By
"understanding the nature of information" we mean equipping students
with the ability to evaluate the quality or status of a piece of information as
knowledge. With the increasing availability of information in overwhelming
amounts from the Internet, it is especially important that students have the
ability to independently evaluate the quality and reliability of information.
They must be able to ask the right questions of information and be able to
evaluate the answers they receive. They must be able to recognize when
something is proved or not, what kinds of information count as knowledge and
what only as opinions, which sorts of questions can receive final answers, and
which only provisional ones. They must be shown how knowledge is acquired and
validated in the real world; what the nature of expertise really is in
different fields; and how they can play a role in the advance of knowledge. In
this way, they will come to realize that knowledge is a dynamic process rather
than a static repository of information.
Students need to seek
for instrumental or practical uses of information as well as their rational
value. In contrast to the abstract, ahistorical way in which subjects like math
and science are often taught, children need to learn that society has been
advanced by attempts to answer questions that were of practical value to a
community, rather than the pursuit of knowledge "for its own sake."
Finally, we recommend
training gifted students in a discipline we called "neuro-rhetoric"--
that is, teaching them how to understand the structure and power of arguments,
and how it affects what we know. Increasing students' self-awareness about
their own thinking and reasoning processes-- and about the nature of
information itself-- will ideally equip them both to live as productive leaders
in our current information age, but will also allow them to take their places
as participants rather than mere observers in the ages old process of seeking
and advancing knowledge.
About the
Authors
Brock and Fernette
Eide are physicians and consultants to a wide range of parent, teacher, and
clinical groups seeking more information about learning and brain-based
solutions. Together they have authored more than 50 articles and they speak
internationally for keynote lectures, seminars, and small groups. The Eides
have a free Neurolearning Newsletter and can be contacted through their website
at:www.neurolearning.com or by email at: feide@u.washington.edu ordrseide@neurolearning.com.
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