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Education Science

Pioneering Researchers Track Sudden Learning 'Epiphanies' (sciencedaily.com) 30

wisebabo quotes Science Daily: Until now, researchers had not had a good way to study how people actually experienced what is called "epiphany learning." In new research, scientists at The Ohio State University used eye-tracking and pupil dilation technology to see what happens as people figured out how to win a strategy game on a computer. "We could see our study participants figuring out the solution through their eye movements as they considered their options," said Ian Krajbich, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology and economics at Ohio State. "We could predict they were about to have an epiphany before they even knew it was coming."
The original submission suggests, "This might be useful to determine when you are trying to teach a difficult subject to someone who you're afraid might be inclined to just nod their head. Or maybe this is how the Voight-Kampff test works. (Are you a replicant?)"
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Pioneering Researchers Track Sudden Learning 'Epiphanies'

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  • Beautiful moment (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MarkH ( 8415 ) on Sunday April 23, 2017 @11:48AM (#54287471)

    For myself it was algebra taught by nun at secondary school. 'Woot you can divide, subtract, add on BOTH sides of equal sign and is same thing!

    I am firm believer that in maths in particular you need to go as far back as possible to get students to grok core concepts.

    I hate idea that so many students are left behind in maths early on as don't have these core revelations.

    • so many students are left behind in maths early on as don't have these core revelations.

      Here in the US, we are stuck with Common Core [blogspot.com] revelations.

      • Here in the US, we are stuck with Common Core revelations.

        Are people still making a fuss about Common Core now that Obama is out of office?

        • Here in the US, we are stuck with Common Core revelations.

          Are people still making a fuss about Common Core now that Obama is out of office?

          Believe it or not, it wasn't just an anti-Obama talking point, but something people have a legitimate issue with.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Math also needs to be more practical at a young age. No more math tables. Teach length, area and volume before anything else and do lots of practice. Length of your arm, length of your body (height), length of your bicycle, length of a shoe box, area of a shoe box, length of the wings on an airplane

      Grade 1 homework problem: measure the dimensions of your house.

      Grade 2 homework problem: find the area and volume of your house

      Grade 3 homework problem: find the volume of a person and calculate how many peop

      • Grade 3 homework problem: find the volume of a person and calculate how many people can fit in your house.

        Or how many college students can fit into a five-bedroom Victorian? Answer: 13.

        Figuring out an unclaimed $500 long distance phone bill each month was nearly impossible. (My parents gave me a calling card so I wasn't involved with mathematical discussions.) When the city declared that each household could only put out three garbage cans per week (we were putting out seven garbage cans), and no one wanted to pitch in for dumpster service, everyone moved out. The last guy out had the privilege of notifying the

      • Hate to tell you this, but there are right/wrong answers to all of the problems you cited. The only one that might have multiple answers, depending upon how you worded it, is how many people can you fit into your house.

    • by mikael ( 484 )

      I remember my Dad trying to teach me to draw regular cube patterns as something to keep me occupied while on a flight. It's that point when I realize that each loop of lines (either a square, vertical or horizontal parallelogram) actually represented a particular direction.

  • ...nothing appears on the linked page at all!

  • by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday April 23, 2017 @12:15PM (#54287609)

    As a kid, I loved the Coleco Wiz Quiz: The Computer Question & Answer Game [flashbak.com]. Each cartridge book had 1,001 trivia questions. I was on my third cartridge book when I had my first epiphany by noticing a specific pattern between all three cartridge books: the answer for question #1 was the always same, so was the answer for question #2, ..., so was the answer for question #1001. Since I had memorized the sequence for 1,001 questions and answers, it took me 15 minutes to go through the third cartridge book without ever reading the questions and answers. I got each and every question right. My immediate action was to throw the game into the trash, as knowing the sequence took the fun out of learning new trivia questions.

    What I learned from this epiphany was that I could recognize patterns. When I got an Atari 2600 a few years later and started playing video games, I found more patterns and started beating the video games. I would later work at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, different owners, multiple personality disorder) for six years (1997-2004), testing 60+ video games, writing 30,000+ bug reports and leading ten titles through testing. When I got into IT support, I became an expert troubleshooter because I could recognize patterns and find solutions.

    • by tomhath ( 637240 ) on Sunday April 23, 2017 @01:00PM (#54287841)
      The one I remember most vividly was realizing that there's nothing special about solving a double integral. I'd gone to all the classes and did the homework, but it just didn't click. Heading to the first exam I knew I was going to flunk, so I stopped at a bar on the way and had a glass of beer. FIrst question was to solve one involving a function and rotation about the x axis. I looked at it and realized there was really nothing to it; solve the integral of the function, then solve the integral of the rotation. Ended up with a 99% on the test, and have disliked math teachers ever since for forcing students to solve problems by rote instead of by understanding what they're doing.
      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Schools have to teach a range of students, some genetically are more capable of achieving understanding and others are more bound by belief. The believers tend to be the majority and the under standers the minority and that is genetically tied to belief, a belief in reproduction, really quite primitive. You teach believers by rote, it is the way they learn because it is the way they think. Logically there should be separate classes, those with emphasis for understanders and those with a emphasis for more be

    • by illtud ( 115152 )

      Similar, mid-70s.

      I would have been 4/5. We had a game with an square grid (maybe 8x8 or 10x10) where you laid down one of a number of overlays with illustrations on each square. You would have to pair an image from the left side of the grid with an image on the right side. You'd do this with a couple of banana plugs connected by wires to the top of the grid, which had a lightbulb and buzzer. Each image had a hole cut out near the bottom, so you could make contact with the metal pad and hardwired connections

  • this result not only sounds plausible, but probably also has some neurology to back it up . . .
  • From the article they detect you are about to come to an epiphany when your eyes focus more on the 0 (this solution) and become dilated. that is fine when there is a simple thing to focus on.

    This may well be true in limited circumstances, like when learning something physical like playing a game that moving some number but some problems are more abstract, but there are plenty of times I have come up with solutions to problems by doing something else entirely different, even in my sleep (I often think I shou

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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