What is one of the fastest ways for you and your children to learn? Through Associations. Understanding associative learning is an important key to unlocking learning, creativity, and memory formation as part of a natural process. Using metaphor is a powerful approach to associative thinking. As a parent in the homeschool learning process, you will discover other powerful tools relating to The Hebbian Learning Rule, simultaneous firing of neurons, and the power of emotions. Our focus here is on why it is essential to learn concepts before details and how to use it for fast and lasting learning.
Your brain can’t think in isolation. Virtually every mind scientist and philosopher, has examined the role association plays in the learning process. In Cracking the Learning Code we will share detailed scientific research and the results of these studies.
Metaphor is an expression used to describes a person, object or situation by referring to something that is different but possessing similar characteristics to that person or object. As we will describe in detail later, metaphors are a very powerful tool for your brain to learn new knowledge by connecting to information you are familiar with.
In terms of learning, metaphors are an effective way to trigger your brain’s learning code by increasing connections with similar but different information that is already resides in your long-term memory.
The important shift from simply adapting our behaviors to fit changing environments to powerfully manipulating our environment to fit us is guided by our more complex prefrontal lobe.
The frontal lobe has been instrumental in human development innovations that include the plow, the city, medicine, the automobile, the computer, the internet, and space travel.
Think about this. Before the development of a prefrontal lobe, humans were learning how to add a chip to sharpen a tool at the incredibly slow rate of one chip every 21,000 years—certainly not an indication of learning society.
Prefrontal lobe function is instrumental in the process of rational thinking and the control of impulsive behaviors.
The Learning Code Institute is considered the world leader in understanding the scientific bases of how we learn and remember. We are launching the first online program in the world that uses the latest neuroscience to help homeschool parents like you, more effectively and joyfully support your child to learn and remember. It is called, Cracking The Learning Code For Homeschool Parents; How To Use Neuroscience To Have Your Child Love Learning Forever!
This is why in our example firing neurons in the memory network holding your mother’s nose automatically stimulates neurons in the networks holding the memory of her entire face, and yes – also your feelings about her. In this complex system, each of your 100 billion neurons is directly or indirectly connected to every other neuron in a memory network and automatically fires up neurons in other memory networks. Associations become the rule, not the exception.
To get a picture of how a single concept network is composed of many different associations in your brain, think of something simple like a lemon. It may surprise you to learn that the conceptual memory you hold of a lemon isn’t held in one isolated place in your brain, rather as a survival mechanism (so that damage to one brain area won’t completely destroy memories), the lemon is encoded by association between millions upon millions of neurons, and these are extensively dispersed throughout your brain.
The “Hebbian Learning Rule” defines the result of scientific research determining that associative learning can be created only when large groups of neural networks are fired at the same time – that associations are made, learning is created, and memory is cemented when large groups of neurons fire simultaneously in your brain. When neurons fire in unison, memory is heightened because the possibility is increased than a single neuron will be stimulated at more than one location on its dendrite branches. In other words, the memory process commences when a receiving neuron is provoked by other neurons at more than one location. When a neuron is stimulated in this manner, it leads to the neurochemical–genetic conditions that produce long-term memory.
The Hebbian Learning Rule, one of the most important findings in the field of learning neuroscience, is often described as “neurons that wire together fire together or, neurons that fire together wire together”.
This important concept provides an understanding of how new memories can be easily formed by the corresponding firing of concept networks that haven’t been previously linked. Previously independent or weakly connected concept networks that are fired at the same time will be linked in the phase sequence. This is how a child learns to fear bees. When stung, his/her pain, fear, and bee networks all fire concurrently.
This is the foundation of the conditioned response, which has fascinated behaviorists for many years. “Pavlov’s dogs” learned to salivate at something that had no food value— the ringing of a bell. He caused the dogs’ previously unconnected neural networks for bells and food to fire at the same time. Once linked by simultaneous firing, every time Pavlov rang a bell, his dogs would salivate. Without realizing it, Pavlov confirmed the modern neuroscientific maxim, “neurons that fire together wire together”.
Teaching with an emphasis on metaphor has produced extremely positive results. A school program in Lawrence, Massachusetts, implemented metaphoric thinking and teaching programs. One year after the program started, first graders showed a 363 percent increase in knowledge of letters and sounds, a 286 percent increase in oral comprehension, and a 1,038 percent increase in word reading.
Metaphors provide pre-established sets of relationships and positive emotional experiences with rich sensory memories in which new knowledge can be embedded. They become a powerful vehicle to engage all the systems of the brain/mind.
Teaching with an emphasis on metaphor has produced extremely positive results. A school program in Lawrence, Massachusetts, implemented metaphoric thinking and teaching programs. One year after the program started, first graders showed a 363 percent increase in knowledge of letters and sounds, a 286 percent increase in oral comprehension, and a 1,038 percent increase in word reading.
There’s anecdotal evidence that this form of teaching translates to a more lavish writing style in the middle grades, high school, and college. For parents participating in homeschooling, metaphors are one of the most powerful tools available to transform the effectiveness, joy and satisfaction of learning for both parents and their children.
