Paola Acosta: “Advances in Industry?: Learning, Pedagogy, and Brain Development”

The industry of the social sciences  has grown during the decades and advances have been made to help society grow. At the beginning of psychological advances many things that are now considered bizarre was used for many explanations regarding mental health. Many psychological theories have helped shape the industry of psychology.Theorist like Jean P. Piaget and Michael Merzenich were responsible for innovative theories regarding learning and how how the brain changes and grows. In analyzing varies text like Redesigning the Brain and A Model For Open Systems of Education we see the relationship between both text as both theorist produce new ideas and solutions that can help with learning disablities. This changes the industry because before these theories the brain was considered a fix organ, where it does not change overtime and we barley knew of the understanding of learning.  Merzenich and Piaget’s theories worked with children to understand what the brain knows at certain ages and how human beings come to learn. Merzenich especially has produced treatment in the industry in rewiring the brain and understanding the relationship between autism a social disorder and language impairment. Piaget’s theory on the other hand uses his research to create strategies on how to teach and how to learn.

The plasticity of the brain is the ability for the brain to keep changing or, to keep advancing and growing. Menzenich developed this theory that our brains are like plastic that even if some of our brain neurons get damaged with practice and focus our brains can change and develop new skills. He claims these findings can be used towards psychological diseases such as Schizophrenia to help rewire the way it thinks. Before Merzenich’s discovery, scientist believed that the way was fixed, that it was just the way it was and no change occurred. This was an incredible advance to the industry of not only psychology but also internal medicine as there was hope for rehabilitation with dedication and commitment. Menzenich’s greatest accomplishment however, was the creation of a research/treatment lab called ScienceWorks built in 1996, which catered to using neuroplastic research to helping people find solutions to their brain rewiring. One of the most significant programs was called Fast ForWord  developed for children with learning disabilities and language impairments. This program was designed as an educational video game that helped the children on their visual attention skills, to help distinguish different sounds as well as rewiring their brains with positive reinforcement. This treatment that Menzenich developed helped children that were struggling with distinguishing sounds and autistic children with activities involving keeping time as autistic children tend to spend too much on a specific activity or object. From these treatments Merzenich concluded that Autism is related to a language impairment. He discovered something called BDNF and this is growth factor that helps our brain gain information, focus and remember new information. Autistic children lack the production of this growth factor according to Menzenich and this is why they are unable to learn new skills or adapt in social situations. “Merzenich calls the nucleus basalts and the attention system the “modulatory control system of plasticity.”…that, when turned on, puts the brain in an extreme plastic state” (Diodge 80).  When we pay attention to certain activities our brain becomes moldable and we are able to learn new things. With this new finding autism can be looked at from the perceptive that the problem with learning has to do with the fact that the brain is not getting stimulated to learn because the attention factor is not there.

Piaget was responsible with for a cognitive theory on learning and development of children and this helped the structure of teaching and also the understanding learning ,therefore understanding learning disabilities. Piaget conducted research on children’s knowledge and why they knew what they did. With this came questions like how did they know and then this can help design that we help children learn in a classroom. He concluded that learning is not just sitting and looking at something and just knowing. Many factors play into the role of learning and if one of those components are missing than there can be a problem with learning and not just memorizing information. This was also one of his key observations that there is a difference between just learning and memorizing. He also says that children must learn with social interactions. This is why in many elementary schools children are encouraged to work together and are sat in tables with peers rather than desk. “ A second principle suggest the importance of social interactions among children…Teachers and teacher trainers often advocate committee work or discussions among pupils” (Kamii, 200). These interactions can help with one of Piaget’s theory on development when he explains the property of language transmission. This is when a child learns language from hearing words and sounds from his/her environment. A school is a way for children to be exposed to all sorts of language transmissions and getting a chance to interact with other students gives them a chance to learn new things. We also see concepts that were contradicting to Piaget’s theory like the idea of giving kids objects and activities to promote free play. Although Piaget agrees that children learn with their senses, he argues that age has a lot to do with the learning. You can’t expect a child to know adult concepts. Learning is a building block but learning with blocks is not ideal.

In both text we see examples on psychological advances towards the field with theories that can explain and treat many conditions that are seen today. Piaget’s and his cognitive theories gave us the functions of the brain with learning. This for psychologist and educators creates a guide as to how to teach in order to maximize learning. Merzenich gave us the idea of rewiring the brain and this for the psychological industry was important because it gave way for the beginning of understanding the brain as ever changing. This information is later important because programs were redesigned to help recuperate the brain, giving it a chance to learn new things from research made by Merzenich. These theories were developed in the 20th century but with technology and social sciences advancing consistently new theories and developments are set to be made very soon which can lead to more solutions not only in the social science world but also in other areas as well.