http://www.otherlobe.com/2009/04/147/ A Blog About Experiential Education, Social Media, and the Brain... Sun, 05 Sep 2010 00:39:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 http://www.otherlobe.com/2009/04/147/comment-page-1/#comment-68 Jim Stellar Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:37:55 +0000 http://www.otherlobe.com/?p=147#comment-68 Vanessa, Thanks for the comment. This is particularly relevant since a post we are doing together is about to go up. I won't anticipate it here, but I want to raise the general question about the linkage between the logic circuitry of nonverbal cue perceptual systems and the logic circuits that provide us with our ability to talk about and cognitively think about matters. This issue gets back to that quote we cited in the "About" section of the blog from Pascal, "The heart has reasons of which reason does not know." Folks with better developed nonverbal cue processing (whether learned or unlearned) are probably better at making the most out of their co-op experiences, but are they better at learning from their experiences on co-op? Also, how do we help them get the most out of that learning, perhaps by reflection? -Jim -Jim Vanessa,
Thanks for the comment. This is particularly relevant since a post we are doing together is about to go up. I won’t anticipate it here, but I want to raise the general question about the linkage between the logic circuitry of nonverbal cue perceptual systems and the logic circuits that provide us with our ability to talk about and cognitively think about matters. This issue gets back to that quote we cited in the “About” section of the blog from Pascal, “The heart has reasons of which reason does not know.” Folks with better developed nonverbal cue processing (whether learned or unlearned) are probably better at making the most out of their co-op experiences, but are they better at learning from their experiences on co-op? Also, how do we help them get the most out of that learning, perhaps by reflection?
-Jim
-Jim

]]> http://www.otherlobe.com/2009/04/147/comment-page-1/#comment-67 Vanessa Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:00:12 +0000 http://www.otherlobe.com/?p=147#comment-67 I somehow missed this Globe article (too much homework) but I have some points to make. First, I liked the article in the Globe but I do think they over simplified the literature a bit, I'm guessing, for the sake of the audience. The connection between emotion and intelligence of any sort is much more complex than the ability to correctly perceive emotions and other nonverbal cues. In fact, from the literature cited in the article, it is unclear whether the significance lies in the practice of decoding nonverbal cues, or through practice itself. It s unclear also from the article if perception or expression of nonverbal cues need to be improved, as research in the nonverbal communication literature has found that one does not reflect the other. Further, there are certain populations of children and students that are better at perceiving nonverbal cues, such as musicians, dancers, and even athletes. It would have been interesting if the article had made more reference to these programs, as it is not the case that they don't already exist, just that they may need more attention and funding. Further, people in general are pretty good at perceiving nonverbal cues (at least they are better than random guessing), so the question lies in what provides people with a perceptual advantage? My own research has looked at this, and I have found a distinct relationship between experience and perceptual accuracy, with regards to dancers compared to non-dancers. Definitely an interesting topic nonetheless! I somehow missed this Globe article (too much homework) but I have some points to make. First, I liked the article in the Globe but I do think they over simplified the literature a bit, I’m guessing, for the sake of the audience. The connection between emotion and intelligence of any sort is much more complex than the ability to correctly perceive emotions and other nonverbal cues. In fact, from the literature cited in the article, it is unclear whether the significance lies in the practice of decoding nonverbal cues, or through practice itself. It s unclear also from the article if perception or expression of nonverbal cues need to be improved, as research in the nonverbal communication literature has found that one does not reflect the other. Further, there are certain populations of children and students that are better at perceiving nonverbal cues, such as musicians, dancers, and even athletes. It would have been interesting if the article had made more reference to these programs, as it is not the case that they don’t already exist, just that they may need more attention and funding. Further, people in general are pretty good at perceiving nonverbal cues (at least they are better than random guessing), so the question lies in what provides people with a perceptual advantage? My own research has looked at this, and I have found a distinct relationship between experience and perceptual accuracy, with regards to dancers compared to non-dancers. Definitely an interesting topic nonetheless!

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