Passive Learning Is Still Learning
July 15, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Charlie often looks out of the corners of his eyes and looks in the distance when someone’s talking to him. Over time, I’ve learned that this does not mean that he’s not paying attention or listening, and a new study suggests that passive, observational learning imprints itself on the brain just like active learning. Always more going on than meets the eye……
Yes indeed. Another thoroughly unscientific study, closer to home, illustrated that a child who skips around the edge of the class room absorbed the facts of the life cycle of a Mosquito, whereas when sat cross legged on the mat failed to grasp the life cycle of the butterfly.
I think that’s probably anecdotal!
Cheers
Absolutely! When I was younger, I was quite quiet in the classroom; preferring to watch and listen than take control (though I think I also feared making mistakes and getting things wrong so openly). Teachers would always say in my reports that I needed to “contribute more to the class” and I was “too shy/need to be braave” etc. and so, naturally, what I got from that was that I was quiet (which of course stayed with me until my late teens when I realised I wasn’t). When in fact, it was only this year through reading ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’ (by Elaine Aron) that I learned a little more about my ‘passiveness’ (I’d like to think of it as ‘active passiveness’- as paradoxical as that sounds!) and that I wasn’t being shy or quiet, I just genuinely prefered/prefer to observe and learn in order to minimise stimulation and risk therefore, being overstimulated which through experience has led to being anxious, going red in front of people, etc.
Anyway, this is quite a long-winded way for what I wanted to say: I AGREE
I don’t know much about autism, but do autistic act differently when they feel/seem to be over-stimulated?
Sonia x
*… do autistic children act differently…
Yup, I’ve noticed that.
I learned that lesson quite well when a student I had allowed to sit in our quiet corner to calm down followed right along with a listening activity I was having the class doing (listening to a story and marking off Xs when they heard a target word). I asked the kids how many of whatever word it was, and he piped up with the right answer without hesitation.
Gershon Blackmore, one of the first people that I met in the community of autistic people and allies active on the Internet, way back in 1994, used to have a tag-line on his posts to the St. John’s University Autism listserv that read:
CAUTION: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE MORE CONSCIOUS THAN THEY APPEAR
Oh, absolutely. Sometimes I think my son learns more passively than I do actively.
Kai’s teachers have all mentioned that he seems to retain information better when it would appear he is not listening at all. I think the auditory input is more effective if he is not distracted by attempting to make eye contact, or even to look at the teacher. I make a point of telling this to everyone who works with him so they don’t waste too much time forcing him to look at them. So far, so good.
When I was at an orientation workshop thing for my college, and the people leading it discussed with us that part of the philosophy of the school is to recognize that people learn things in all kinds of different ways, and that we absorb information in different ways, and some students learn best if knitting in class, for instance. That was when I felt it was confirmed that I had selected the right college for me.
Very true. M is like this as well. I think I am too. I don’t always have to be looking to be learning. The more pressure M has to always be looking and engaged the more an outburst is likely.
I often find it hard to listen to people and look at them at the same time. If I’m paying especially hard attention I will stare at an inanimate object or close my eyes altogether. Drove my mother nuts. Took her forever to learn that me looking at her (or most other attentional body language) and listening to her had no actual relationship.
Now if only you could convince my former professors I wasn’t ignoring them. I cannot process multiple language imputs. It bothers me greatly, but it is what it is (my mom has a similar issue, that I know of). I can read/write OR listen/speak. I cannot do both. Consequently, I find note-taking very difficult in classes, because I get so caught up in writing I can’t listen. I tended to draw, because it gave me something to do with my hands, and listen intensely. It offended some of my professors, and all explanations that I was learning quite a bit were ignored.