November 10, 2024 • 25 mins
Do 'brain-training' apps or mindfulness exercises really boost our capacity to learn? Professor Iroise Dumontheil shares her research into why we differ in our ability to control our attention, thoughts and behaviour. Hear how these differences impact on our learning and whether cognitive training enhances outcomes in education. Discover how insights from cognitive neuroscience might reshape the future of education by enabling personalised learning.
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Carly Godden (00:00):
This podcast was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people,
the Woi-wurrung and the Bunurong. We'd like to pay respects
to their elders, past and present and emerging.
From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
of Melbourne. This is PsychTalks.
Nick Haslam (00:22):
Hello and thanks for joining us again for another episode
of PsychTalks. I'm Professor Nick Haslam, a social psychologist. Normally,
I'd be accompanied by Associate Professor Cassie Haywood, an applied psychologist.
But unfortunately, she's not able to come here today. In
this episode, we're putting the microscope on cognitive development. In particular,
we'll focus on what's called executive functions, how these executive
(00:44):
functions evolve and what their impact on us is exactly.
And to help us, we're joined by Professor Iroise Dumontheil.
Hello and welcome to PsychTalks, Iroise.
Iroise Dumontheil (01:01):
Thanks for having me.
Nick Haslam (01:02):
So just to start off, can you say a little
bit about your background? How you came to be in Melbourne?
Iroise Dumontheil (01:06):
Yes, I'm French originally, but I spent a lot of
my university time in the UK, except for a few
periods of Postdoc in Stockholm in Sweden, which I enjoyed
very much, and after 20 years or so in London,
I migrated to Melbourne last year.
Nick Haslam (01:23):
So, Iroise, your work is deeply rooted in an area
called developmental, cognitive neuroscience and educational neuroscience.
Iroise Dumontheil (01:30):
Yes, so developmental cognitive neuroscience is the study of brain development. So,
we use new methods of brain imaging to look at
the brain structure and brain function and how these changes
during development allow the development of cognitive capacities. So being
able to remember more things, attend better and things like that.
(01:50):
While educational neuroscience is trying to link this research to
educational research and teaching practices to see whether what we
are learning from developmental cognitive neuroscience can be informative for
education
Nick Haslam (02:03):
Sounds very cutting edge. And I imagine researchers in these
fields study a whole range of different brain functions. But
one concept that stands out in your own work is
executive functions. Could you explain what these functions are and
how they develop during childhood and adolescence?
Iroise Dumontheil (02:18):
Yes, so cognitive control or executive function- so executive, it's
a bit like the CEO in a company. They coordinate
other aspects of cognition like perception, attention, action to achieve
your goals. And they're particularly important when we're faced with
situations where your routine behaviours (automatic thoughts) are not sufficient,
so what you do normally does- is not enough. So,
(02:40):
for example, if you're driving home but your usual route
is blocked by roadwork, then you need to cancel your
normal route, or inhibit it and instead plan an alternative route.
And so executive functions that have been studied in particular
include working memory, which allow us to keep information in
mind and manipulate it. For example, if you're trying to
(03:00):
calculate how to split the bill at the end of
the dinner, you have to kind of think of how
many people are there, and I can think about all
these numbers. Or inhibitory control, which allow us to stop
an automatic or dominant behaviours or thoughts like you keep
wanting to eat some cake. Or cognitive flexibility, which is the
ability to shift between goals or rules or tasks. So,
(03:21):
like a kid will speak differently to their friend or
to their teacher to their parent or grandparent and developmental
cognitive neuroscience research in the last 25 years or so
have shown that executive functions and the brain networks that
support executive functions continue to mature well into adolescence.
Nick Haslam (03:39):
I wish you hadn't mentioned cake. So these executive functions
why are they so crucial for educational outcomes?
Iroise Dumontheil (03:46):
Because they allow us to think and behave in novel contexts.
And usually everything we learn is new. So, in a
broad way, executive functions help children pay attention also to
what the teacher is saying not be distracted, remember to
do their homework and manipulate abstract thoughts. So, all this
enables them to be in the right place mentally, to
learn at school. But also, when we learn new things,
(04:09):
it's a novel situation. We have to kind of figure
out what to do, how to maintain that in our mind.
And that's all really relevant for the educational context.
Nick Haslam (04:18):
Right. So kids can't just sit in a classroom and
be sponges, in other words.
Iroise Dumontheil (04:21):
No, they have to attend. So if they are looking outside,
listening to their friend, they are not going to be
listening to what the teacher is saying. And so, they
are not going to learn that particular concept at that time.
Research suggests that teachers have to repeat the same thing
at least three or four times because one time the
kid is looking for something in their bag, another time
they are talking to their friend, and one time they
heard the teacher.
Nick Haslam (04:40):
Makes sense. So how about STEM disciplines like science and
mathematics in particular?
Iroise Dumontheil (04:45):
Yes. So if we take the example of arithmetic because
often we talk about maths. But really, in cognitive neuroscience research,
we look at arithmetic, which is like a simpler, more
limited part of maths. There is evidence that when children
first learn arithmetic, facts like four plus six equals 10
or four times six equals 24. They use the frontal
parts of their brain, which are very much involved in
(05:08):
executive functioning. Well, when these facts become well learned, so
they are more automatized, then we see increased activation in
the parietal regions at the back of the brain. So
we have to have this shift between when something is new,
we use a frontal cortex. When something is kind of automatized,
it's the back of the brain. But then, if you
ask an adult to calculate, you know 35 times 12,
(05:28):
then they will need to decompose this multiplication into different bits,
and they will need to keep that information in mind.
So they will need them working memory to to solve it.
So working memory helps us manipulate new concepts, new facts
and integrate them with existing knowledge we already have. And
that's really what is the key component of learning. And
what education is striving to do is to make connections
(05:52):
between old and new knowledge and executive functions really allow
us to do that because we're keeping in mind the
new bit, the old information and consolidating them and linking
them together. And those links is what helps us remember
it long term.
Nick Haslam (06:06):
Are there differences between individuals and groups?
Iroise Dumontheil (06:09):
Yeah, so like most human traits, there are a lot
of individual differences in executive function abilities. Some of them are,
you know, who have a genetic origin, Um, but also
environmental origins. For example, one of my students, Roisin Perry.
She's analysing a cohort trying to look at markers of
socioeconomic status, how different markers might predict development of executive function.
(06:33):
And a lot of research has been done looking at
very early childhood and low SES children tend to be
less ready to start school. But we were looking at adolescence.
So how long would this influence continue to last, and
she found that markers like parental occupation and very low
family income influence developmental trajectory of executive functions into adolescence
(06:56):
as well.
Nick Haslam (06:56):
So, do these environmental effects on executive functions matter for
academic achievement?
Iroise Dumontheil (07:01):
So, there is evidence that children of higher working memory
tend to do better in arithmetic and even adolescents. Again,
we've found that those kids who had better working memory
at age 11/12 tended to do better in the UK
in these GCSEs. So the age 16 standardised test in maths,
science and English, even when you control for earlier academic achievement.
(07:21):
So how much information you can keep in mind and
manipulate over the course of adolescence continues to affect how
well you're doing at school.
Nick Haslam (07:29):
So given those really interesting individual differences, what should teachers
do if the students they've got in their classroom vary
a lot in the maturity of their executive functions and,
of course, other aspects of their cognitive development as well?
How can they enhance learning for all at once? How
can you personalise education?
Iroise Dumontheil (07:49):
This is a very big question, so and that's one
of the key aims of educational neuroscience. How can we
help teachers with that first identify the strengths and weaknesses
of certain children and how to help them according to
their strength and weaknesses? And teachers are already very aware
of the fact that children in a single classroom vary
(08:10):
hugely in their abilities in different domains, whether that's literacy, numeracy, science, art,
music and sport. But because of individual differences in executive function,
some children may be more easily distracted by things like
decorations in a classroom or by a chatty school friend.
Or they might not be able to remember four instructions.
So an example we give is like if the teacher says,
(08:32):
"Put your English book down, take your math notebook, a
blue pen and come sit on the floor." Some kids
are just lost after the two first instructions, and it
might be like wandering around looking like they're lost or
not attending. But it was actually too much information, or
they might not be able to solve mental arithmetic problems
at the same age as others. And all this will
impact their learning because if they keep missing out on
(08:53):
some information, gradually, you can get behind. So, what we're
trying to think about is how we can help teachers
be more aware of these particular executive function differences and
how that might impact children in the classroom. So, for example,
you know, not gives as many instructions. And sometimes if
you have a routine that helps children because again, when
(09:15):
it's automatic, you don't need your executive functions in the
same way. But a bigger question for education is whether
we want education to permit every child to reach their
full potential or for all children to achieve a minimum
goal standard level. And these two goals lead to quite
different approaches and to teaching groups of children with varied abilities.
(09:36):
And it's not really a question for developmental, cognitive neuroscientist
or educational neuroscientist to answer. It's a society question, but
it will affect what advice we might give on how
to help children and how to teach in the classroom.
Nick Haslam (09:50):
So are these advances that you're making finding their way
into teacher training yet or that down the track a bit?
Iroise Dumontheil (09:55):
There is a push to do that, but it's very hard. First,
teacher training is not very long. Well, it depends. Different
countries do it very differently. And in some countries like Finland,
it's a masters. You have a kind of very long training,
and they cover actually a lot of that. And they
do very well in PISA and things like this. In other countries,
it's very condensed. In one year, you do learn bits
(10:16):
about teaching, and you actually also practise- start practising teaching
so you don't have time to actually put too much extra.
But there is really a push and kind of, working
with Faculty of Education teacher training to see how much
we can actually insert into the teacher training, removing maybe
some facts actually, what we call "neuro myths". So things
(10:38):
about learning styles or using 10% of our brain, if actually we can
kind of get rid of some of that and replace
them with maybe more, not necessarily cognitive neuroscience based but
developmental psychology knowledge about learning development that would be useful
for teachers. But it's going to be a slow, a
slow progress.
Nick Haslam (10:57):
You've done a lot of work on what you call
cognitive training. So what forms does that take? And does
it show promise in improving educational outcomes? What does the
evidence say?
Iroise Dumontheil (11:06):
Well, one form of cognitive training is a sort of
brain training games that became really popular maybe 10 years ago.
But they're still very present in the app world, and
they all claim to benefit your cognition. So that's kind
of one form of it. And because executive functions were
associated with so many outcomes and, you know, educational achievement
but also mental health, researchers thought that if we exercised
(11:29):
executive function with this type of games, then by repeatedly
playing these games that tax your executive function, make it
work hard, for example, remembering, you know, number of words, locations,
objects in a gamified way to make it more engaging.
Then we would improve executive function and then down the
line we would improve arithmetic, academic outcome, mental health outcomes,
(11:52):
et cetera. Unfortunately, meta-analysis of this type of research indicate that,
for example, in the case of working memory, performance on
the games themselves improve. Performance on other types, similar working
memory tasks improves, too, and that's what we call near transfer,
so you can improve working memory. But unfortunately, there is
(12:12):
no what we call far transfer, so improving work memory
doesn't lead to improvement in reasoning or maths. So this
is very disappointing, but because that would have been great
if kids are doing badly in maths because they've got
poor work memory, we train this work memory using games,
and then they do better in maths. And what it
suggests is that the learning and the brain, the way
(12:34):
the brain supports learning is in specific ways. So we
learn about maths, maybe working memory for maths facts, manipulating
numbers so we don't have these domain general working memory
capacity that once we improve, it improves everything. So we're
finding it's hard to generalise skills to other domains.
Nick Haslam (12:54):
So, the brain is not just one big, powerful computer?
Iroise Dumontheil (12:56):
No, it has these specialised connections that support specific type
of thinking.
Nick Haslam (13:02):
Can you say more about your own research work on
learning games?
Iroise Dumontheil (13:06):
Yes, so we have colleagues at the Centre for Educational
Neuroscience at the University of London in the UK. We
were interested in trying a different approach because these games
weren't working and it rested on two elements. So first,
because general training did not help, we embedded our learning
game within the specific context of maths and science to
(13:27):
have this specificity. And second, in addition, to have some
repeated practise, we engaged children's metacognition. And so meta cognition
is our ability to think about our thoughts. It means
that we can reflect on what we're doing and how
we're doing it. So it's kind of thinking about thinking.
If we're about to do a task that we think
is going to be difficult, then we will engage more
(13:49):
cognitive control, more executive functions to focus more. If we
feel we haven't memorised our lesson well enough, we'll go
over it again. So this is kind of this insight
into our thoughts and behaviour. Or if we feel we're
driving too fast and the road is slippery, we'll slow down.
There is some evidence that if you prompt children to
reflect on their performance, they'll engage executive functions in a
(14:10):
more mature manner. A current hypothesis in the field of
brain training and cognitive training is that if we incorporate
metacognitive reflection in those training programs, kids will become more
flexible in the way they're engaging executive function as a
function of how hard the task is and that will
lead to improvement in performance because they'll be able to
(14:32):
reflect that, "This is hard. Now I need to think more.
I can apply these tips and tricks that I've been practising."
And it might also improve the far transfer so they
might be able to apply their learning in a different context.
So that's kind of the background. So our project focus
on the fact that there are many concepts in science
and maths that are counterintuitive. So as an example in science, dolphins.
(14:56):
They're not fish, but they have fins and they live
in the water, so they kind of look like fish.
In maths, children learn that five is bigger than three,
but then they learn negative numbers and minus five is
now smaller than minus three. So they really have to
kind of keep going over things that are a bit counter,
what they've just learned before. So our intervention had two components.
(15:16):
One was to make children aware of the fact that
there are so many concepts in maths and science that
are counterintuitive. Where the first response that comes to your
mind is incorrect. So, for example, if I ask you
what do cows drink?
Nick Haslam (15:28):
I want to say milk, but I thought I stopped
and thought.
Iroise Dumontheil (15:30):
Exactly. So the second way was to encourage children to
stop and think when they're solving maths and science problems,
to give them time to inhibit their incorrect, intuitive response
and favour the correct reasoning. So we called our intervention
"stop and think" to really use a bit more time
to think about the correct answer.
Nick Haslam (15:49):
Good advice for life in general, I reckon. "Stop and think." So,
did this approach work? Could you show far transfer?
Iroise Dumontheil (15:55):
So first we were interested, whether we had any improvement
in maths and science. So, this was run as a
really large trial. What we call randomised control trial, in
the UK in 7/8 year olds and 9/10 year olds.
And it was the teacher was running the intervention. And
what we found was that after 10 weeks training, there
was improvement around two months of progress in science and
(16:16):
one month in math. And these were assessed with standardised
math and science test, not specifically the counterintuitive problems that
we had covered in the training. So that suggested some
near transfer to other types of maths and science problems.
And we also found that the 9-to-10-year-olds were the ones
who benefited the most. Maybe because they have better metacognition
(16:39):
or better inhibitory control, and that enabled them to make
the most of the training. In terms of far transfer,
it was interesting, anecdotally, that some teachers reported that some
children transferred to "stop and think" approach to other school
subjects like reading. And I think that's quite interesting. And
we don't know whether it's the intervention itself because it
was metacognition or because it was the teacher doing the intervention.
(17:03):
And so that was like within the whole class, they
could kind of keep talking about it. And maybe the
teacher could say, "Oh, look here, you should stop and
think about your answer as well when you're, you know,
reading comprehension, you're understanding that text. What's the question? You
have to go back and find the answer." Again, the
first thing comes to mind might not be the correct answer.
Nick Haslam (17:20):
That's super encouraging then, and it's very impressive that a
2.5 month intervention can lead to an additional two month benefit.
So very promising indeed. Do you think we will see
mainstream education becoming increasingly gamified based on work like this
or do you think cognitive training will be used more selectively? Primarily,
let's say, for kids who are having particular problems with
(17:42):
executive functions?
Iroise Dumontheil (17:43):
I think mainstream education is already quite gamified. So, for example,
my son's primary schools, both previously in London and now
in Melbourne. They had children use mathematics and English apps
in the classroom, and then they also encourage their use
at home. And so, rather than being domain general like
the cognitive training we were talking about, these apps are
(18:04):
specific to numeracy and literacy, so they would likely be
more beneficial than the general apps I was talking about before.
And one key advantage of this type of program going
back to the issue of individual differences in children is
that quite often like a lot of brain training games,
they are what we call adaptive, so they get harder,
the better you do. And so there's this concept in
(18:26):
developmental psychology that's called the zone of proximal development, and
the idea is that you learn most when you're doing
something right at the level where it's quite difficult but
you can still do it, some of it. If it's
too easy, you don't learn. If it's too hard, you
don't learn, either. You get quite frustrated, and you can't,
you don't want to do it anymore. So if done well,
this adaptive program so you know you don't want the
(18:47):
progress to be too slow or too fast. It means
that children can really practise at a sweet spot of
difficulty for them and that would maximise their learning. So
that's really an advantage in terms of having these apps
instead of the whole class and the teacher is saying
what's two times eight and some children know that very
well and others don't. Then they can do that by
themselves at the right level. However, I'm quite conflicted about
(19:09):
these apps because of the lack of research carried out
on them. So there are many different apps out there.
Only a few of them have been designed by researchers
and built on our cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience research, but
also I'm conflicted because in general, you know there is
a move to try and minimise screen time in children,
and if we let them do this work on screen
(19:30):
at school, and at home. And then it's really hard
to say, Don't spend too much time on your screen
because they're like, "Oh, well, I'm doing my maths." So
I think we still need more evidence
Nick Haslam (19:40):
Beyond cognitive training, what other sorts of interventions can improve
learning outcomes in schools? I know you've researched effects of
physical exercise and mindfulness. What's the current state of evidence
about that sort of intervention?
Iroise Dumontheil (19:52):
Yes, so basically, you can have a whole range of
different ways to try and improve mental health, cognition. And
mindfulness was another approach where educational practice went ahead of
the research. In the UK, for example, a lot of
schools started trying to implement mindfulness training. Um, when not,
you know, any research had been done at the time. So,
(20:12):
I've done myself very small-scale research on this trying to
understand whether mindfulness meditation training may work in the same
way in adolescents and in adults, and whether it might
improve executive function, particular attentional control and resisting to emotional distractions.
So this is because if you know, some of you
might not have done mindfulness meditation before, but you might
(20:34):
be told you need for five minutes to focus on
your breath, and then your mind wanders because it always wanders.
And then you have to bring it back to the breath,
notice it and bring it back to the breath. So,
you have to be able to control what you're tending towards. So,
I was interested in this in the aspect of executive
control training. What we found is that both adolescents and
adults showed improvement in attentional control, and adolescents only also
(20:58):
showed less brain activity in response to emotional distractions. So,
we found some positive effects on these two measures, but
they were small effect. And it's not the fact that,
you know, everything improved. Interestingly, adolescents actually preferred a relaxation condition,
which was a control condition because they felt that maybe
had more immediate effects. So, this is very small scale.
(21:20):
But in the UK, they run a very large trial
called the Myriad Trial. And what they did was that
secondary school teachers were trained to incorporate mindfulness meditation training
in the social and emotional curriculum at the schools, and
the key outcome measures they use were risk for depression, social,
emotional and behavioural functioning and wellbeing. And so, whether you
(21:43):
have kind of emotional problems, really, how well- more mental health focused
maybe than what we did. And the results after two
years showed no beneficial effect of the intervention compared to
teaching as usual. And in fact, some of the secondary
outcomes were worse after mindfulness training than teaching as usual.
So this is really showing that training all secondary school
(22:03):
children in one go, this kind of what we call
universal intervention, and mindfulness is not the right approach. It
might still be that some individual teenagers might still benefit,
but not kind of the fact that we should do
it for everything.
Nick Haslam (22:15):
How about physical exercise?
Iroise Dumontheil (22:17):
One of my former PhD students, Dr Fotini Vasilopoulos, was
very interested in physical education and, you know, healthy body
is also very important. We talk about healthy body, healthy mind,
and many westernised society currently experience high obesity rates and
including in childhood. And that's really a big issue. So
there is interest in physical activity per se and also
(22:37):
in whether physical activity might benefit not just the body
but also cognition. So Fortini ran a meta-analysis of physical
intervention in primary school children and what she found is
that they were they had beneficial impacts. But again, there
was some specificity. So, for example, what we found is
that vigorous physical activity in aerobic physical activity. So you're
(23:00):
kind of working quite hard, you kind of have to
breathe harder, led to improvement in executive functions. While physical activity
combined with academic instructions, for example, they have these activities
when you ask the children to do three plus five
and then they had to calculate it and then they
have to make the corresponding number of jumping jacks. So,
they have, like, some sport but they are also doing some
(23:20):
maths at the same time. That benefited maths achievement. So,
depending on what you might want to train, you might
want to do a different type of intervention. However, the
quality of the studies varied quite a lot, so, there's
still low certainty of the evidence, low strength of this evidence.
Nick Haslam (23:36):
So impressive that you're looking at all these different dimensions
even in your own work, not just as a field. So,
looking ahead, where do you see the field of educational
neuroscience heading? What do you think the next decade of
research is going to lead towards?
Iroise Dumontheil (23:50):
Well, educational neuroscience is still in its early days, really. So,
if you think about how biological discoveries took decades, if
not a century, to impact medical practise, then you know
there's a long road ahead, so you can think- I
think it's a good analogy to think about it that way.
So progress, I think, will be made through continued and
(24:10):
increased partnership between teachers and educational researchers, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists. However,
teachers have got very little spare time to do more
training work or to work with teenage researchers, and that's
really a limit. I think I'd love to work with
more teachers and say, you know, what do you need?
What's your problem? But having this two way street and
(24:33):
working with teachers, they just don't have time. I'm involved
in the society, called the International Mind, Brain and Education
Society and trying to link up these different field of
research and practise to try and improve our understanding and
how we can apply it. So gradually we'll be building
evidence for which educational practise works best and why so
(24:56):
some of them may be existing educational practise, but we need-
we want to understand "Why does this one work better
than another one?" And ground that in our understanding of
the learning brain.
Nick Haslam (25:05):
Such important work. Thanks so much for talking to us today, Iroise.
And good luck with your work.
Iroise Dumontheil (25:10):
Thanks for having me.
Nick Haslam (25:12):
You've been listening to PsychTalks with me, Nick Haslam. We'd
like to thank our guests for today. Professor Iroise Dumontheil.
This episode was produced by Carly Godden with production assistance
from Mairead Murray and Gemma Papprill. Our sound engineer was
Jack Palmer. Thanks for tuning in to PsychTalks, and we
still have more to come in this series. So, see
you again soon. Bye for now.
This podcast was made on the lands of the Wurundjeri people,
the Woi-wurrung and the Bunurong. We'd like to pay respects
to their elders, past and present and emerging.
From the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University
of Melbourne. This is PsychTalks.
Nick Haslam (00:22):
Hello and thanks for joining us again for another episode
of PsychTalks. I'm Professor Nick Haslam, a social psychologist. Normally,
I'd be accompanied by Associate Professor Cassie Haywood, an applied psychologist.
But unfortunately, she's not able to come here today. In
this episode, we're putting the microscope on cognitive development. In particular,
we'll focus on what's called executive functions, how these executive
(00:44):
functions evolve and what their impact on us is exactly.
And to help us, we're joined by Professor Iroise Dumontheil.
Hello and welcome to PsychTalks, Iroise.
Iroise Dumontheil (01:01):
Thanks for having me.
Nick Haslam (01:02):
So just to start off, can you say a little
bit about your background? How you came to be in Melbourne?
Iroise Dumontheil (01:06):
Yes, I'm French originally, but I spent a lot of
my university time in the UK, except for a few
periods of Postdoc in Stockholm in Sweden, which I enjoyed
very much, and after 20 years or so in London,
I migrated to Melbourne last year.
Nick Haslam (01:23):
So, Iroise, your work is deeply rooted in an area
called developmental, cognitive neuroscience and educational neuroscience.
Iroise Dumontheil (01:30):
Yes, so developmental cognitive neuroscience is the study of brain development. So,
we use new methods of brain imaging to look at
the brain structure and brain function and how these changes
during development allow the development of cognitive capacities. So being
able to remember more things, attend better and things like that.
(01:50):
While educational neuroscience is trying to link this research to
educational research and teaching practices to see whether what we
are learning from developmental cognitive neuroscience can be informative for
education
Nick Haslam (02:03):
Sounds very cutting edge. And I imagine researchers in these
fields study a whole range of different brain functions. But
one concept that stands out in your own work is
executive functions. Could you explain what these functions are and
how they develop during childhood and adolescence?
Iroise Dumontheil (02:18):
Yes, so cognitive control or executive function- so executive, it's
a bit like the CEO in a company. They coordinate
other aspects of cognition like perception, attention, action to achieve
your goals. And they're particularly important when we're faced with
situations where your routine behaviours (automatic thoughts) are not sufficient,
so what you do normally does- is not enough. So,
(02:40):
for example, if you're driving home but your usual route
is blocked by roadwork, then you need to cancel your
normal route, or inhibit it and instead plan an alternative route.
And so executive functions that have been studied in particular
include working memory, which allow us to keep information in
mind and manipulate it. For example, if you're trying to
(03:00):
calculate how to split the bill at the end of
the dinner, you have to kind of think of how
many people are there, and I can think about all
these numbers. Or inhibitory control, which allow us to stop
an automatic or dominant behaviours or thoughts like you keep
wanting to eat some cake. Or cognitive flexibility, which is the
ability to shift between goals or rules or tasks. So,
(03:21):
like a kid will speak differently to their friend or
to their teacher to their parent or grandparent and developmental
cognitive neuroscience research in the last 25 years or so
have shown that executive functions and the brain networks that
support executive functions continue to mature well into adolescence.
Nick Haslam (03:39):
I wish you hadn't mentioned cake. So these executive functions
why are they so crucial for educational outcomes?
Iroise Dumontheil (03:46):
Because they allow us to think and behave in novel contexts.
And usually everything we learn is new. So, in a
broad way, executive functions help children pay attention also to
what the teacher is saying not be distracted, remember to
do their homework and manipulate abstract thoughts. So, all this
enables them to be in the right place mentally, to
learn at school. But also, when we learn new things,
(04:09):
it's a novel situation. We have to kind of figure
out what to do, how to maintain that in our mind.
And that's all really relevant for the educational context.
Nick Haslam (04:18):
Right. So kids can't just sit in a classroom and
be sponges, in other words.
Iroise Dumontheil (04:21):
No, they have to attend. So if they are looking outside,
listening to their friend, they are not going to be
listening to what the teacher is saying. And so, they
are not going to learn that particular concept at that time.
Research suggests that teachers have to repeat the same thing
at least three or four times because one time the
kid is looking for something in their bag, another time
they are talking to their friend, and one time they
heard the teacher.
Nick Haslam (04:40):
Makes sense. So how about STEM disciplines like science and
mathematics in particular?
Iroise Dumontheil (04:45):
Yes. So if we take the example of arithmetic because
often we talk about maths. But really, in cognitive neuroscience research,
we look at arithmetic, which is like a simpler, more
limited part of maths. There is evidence that when children
first learn arithmetic, facts like four plus six equals 10
or four times six equals 24. They use the frontal
parts of their brain, which are very much involved in
(05:08):
executive functioning. Well, when these facts become well learned, so
they are more automatized, then we see increased activation in
the parietal regions at the back of the brain. So
we have to have this shift between when something is new,
we use a frontal cortex. When something is kind of automatized,
it's the back of the brain. But then, if you
ask an adult to calculate, you know 35 times 12,
(05:28):
then they will need to decompose this multiplication into different bits,
and they will need to keep that information in mind.
So they will need them working memory to to solve it.
So working memory helps us manipulate new concepts, new facts
and integrate them with existing knowledge we already have. And
that's really what is the key component of learning. And
what education is striving to do is to make connections
(05:52):
between old and new knowledge and executive functions really allow
us to do that because we're keeping in mind the
new bit, the old information and consolidating them and linking
them together. And those links is what helps us remember
it long term.
Nick Haslam (06:06):
Are there differences between individuals and groups?
Iroise Dumontheil (06:09):
Yeah, so like most human traits, there are a lot
of individual differences in executive function abilities. Some of them are,
you know, who have a genetic origin, Um, but also
environmental origins. For example, one of my students, Roisin Perry.
She's analysing a cohort trying to look at markers of
socioeconomic status, how different markers might predict development of executive function.
(06:33):
And a lot of research has been done looking at
very early childhood and low SES children tend to be
less ready to start school. But we were looking at adolescence.
So how long would this influence continue to last, and
she found that markers like parental occupation and very low
family income influence developmental trajectory of executive functions into adolescence
(06:56):
as well.
Nick Haslam (06:56):
So, do these environmental effects on executive functions matter for
academic achievement?
Iroise Dumontheil (07:01):
So, there is evidence that children of higher working memory
tend to do better in arithmetic and even adolescents. Again,
we've found that those kids who had better working memory
at age 11/12 tended to do better in the UK
in these GCSEs. So the age 16 standardised test in maths,
science and English, even when you control for earlier academic achievement.
(07:21):
So how much information you can keep in mind and
manipulate over the course of adolescence continues to affect how
well you're doing at school.
Nick Haslam (07:29):
So given those really interesting individual differences, what should teachers
do if the students they've got in their classroom vary
a lot in the maturity of their executive functions and,
of course, other aspects of their cognitive development as well?
How can they enhance learning for all at once? How
can you personalise education?
Iroise Dumontheil (07:49):
This is a very big question, so and that's one
of the key aims of educational neuroscience. How can we
help teachers with that first identify the strengths and weaknesses
of certain children and how to help them according to
their strength and weaknesses? And teachers are already very aware
of the fact that children in a single classroom vary
(08:10):
hugely in their abilities in different domains, whether that's literacy, numeracy, science, art,
music and sport. But because of individual differences in executive function,
some children may be more easily distracted by things like
decorations in a classroom or by a chatty school friend.
Or they might not be able to remember four instructions.
So an example we give is like if the teacher says,
(08:32):
"Put your English book down, take your math notebook, a
blue pen and come sit on the floor." Some kids
are just lost after the two first instructions, and it
might be like wandering around looking like they're lost or
not attending. But it was actually too much information, or
they might not be able to solve mental arithmetic problems
at the same age as others. And all this will
impact their learning because if they keep missing out on
(08:53):
some information, gradually, you can get behind. So, what we're
trying to think about is how we can help teachers
be more aware of these particular executive function differences and
how that might impact children in the classroom. So, for example,
you know, not gives as many instructions. And sometimes if
you have a routine that helps children because again, when
(09:15):
it's automatic, you don't need your executive functions in the
same way. But a bigger question for education is whether
we want education to permit every child to reach their
full potential or for all children to achieve a minimum
goal standard level. And these two goals lead to quite
different approaches and to teaching groups of children with varied abilities.
(09:36):
And it's not really a question for developmental, cognitive neuroscientist
or educational neuroscientist to answer. It's a society question, but
it will affect what advice we might give on how
to help children and how to teach in the classroom.
Nick Haslam (09:50):
So are these advances that you're making finding their way
into teacher training yet or that down the track a bit?
Iroise Dumontheil (09:55):
There is a push to do that, but it's very hard. First,
teacher training is not very long. Well, it depends. Different
countries do it very differently. And in some countries like Finland,
it's a masters. You have a kind of very long training,
and they cover actually a lot of that. And they
do very well in PISA and things like this. In other countries,
it's very condensed. In one year, you do learn bits
(10:16):
about teaching, and you actually also practise- start practising teaching
so you don't have time to actually put too much extra.
But there is really a push and kind of, working
with Faculty of Education teacher training to see how much
we can actually insert into the teacher training, removing maybe
some facts actually, what we call "neuro myths". So things
(10:38):
about learning styles or using 10% of our brain, if actually we can
kind of get rid of some of that and replace
them with maybe more, not necessarily cognitive neuroscience based but
developmental psychology knowledge about learning development that would be useful
for teachers. But it's going to be a slow, a
slow progress.
Nick Haslam (10:57):
You've done a lot of work on what you call
cognitive training. So what forms does that take? And does
it show promise in improving educational outcomes? What does the
evidence say?
Iroise Dumontheil (11:06):
Well, one form of cognitive training is a sort of
brain training games that became really popular maybe 10 years ago.
But they're still very present in the app world, and
they all claim to benefit your cognition. So that's kind
of one form of it. And because executive functions were
associated with so many outcomes and, you know, educational achievement
but also mental health, researchers thought that if we exercised
(11:29):
executive function with this type of games, then by repeatedly
playing these games that tax your executive function, make it
work hard, for example, remembering, you know, number of words, locations,
objects in a gamified way to make it more engaging.
Then we would improve executive function and then down the
line we would improve arithmetic, academic outcome, mental health outcomes,
(11:52):
et cetera. Unfortunately, meta-analysis of this type of research indicate that,
for example, in the case of working memory, performance on
the games themselves improve. Performance on other types, similar working
memory tasks improves, too, and that's what we call near transfer,
so you can improve working memory. But unfortunately, there is
(12:12):
no what we call far transfer, so improving work memory
doesn't lead to improvement in reasoning or maths. So this
is very disappointing, but because that would have been great
if kids are doing badly in maths because they've got
poor work memory, we train this work memory using games,
and then they do better in maths. And what it
suggests is that the learning and the brain, the way
(12:34):
the brain supports learning is in specific ways. So we
learn about maths, maybe working memory for maths facts, manipulating
numbers so we don't have these domain general working memory
capacity that once we improve, it improves everything. So we're
finding it's hard to generalise skills to other domains.
Nick Haslam (12:54):
So, the brain is not just one big, powerful computer?
Iroise Dumontheil (12:56):
No, it has these specialised connections that support specific type
of thinking.
Nick Haslam (13:02):
Can you say more about your own research work on
learning games?
Iroise Dumontheil (13:06):
Yes, so we have colleagues at the Centre for Educational
Neuroscience at the University of London in the UK. We
were interested in trying a different approach because these games
weren't working and it rested on two elements. So first,
because general training did not help, we embedded our learning
game within the specific context of maths and science to
(13:27):
have this specificity. And second, in addition, to have some
repeated practise, we engaged children's metacognition. And so meta cognition
is our ability to think about our thoughts. It means
that we can reflect on what we're doing and how
we're doing it. So it's kind of thinking about thinking.
If we're about to do a task that we think
is going to be difficult, then we will engage more
(13:49):
cognitive control, more executive functions to focus more. If we
feel we haven't memorised our lesson well enough, we'll go
over it again. So this is kind of this insight
into our thoughts and behaviour. Or if we feel we're
driving too fast and the road is slippery, we'll slow down.
There is some evidence that if you prompt children to
reflect on their performance, they'll engage executive functions in a
(14:10):
more mature manner. A current hypothesis in the field of
brain training and cognitive training is that if we incorporate
metacognitive reflection in those training programs, kids will become more
flexible in the way they're engaging executive function as a
function of how hard the task is and that will
lead to improvement in performance because they'll be able to
(14:32):
reflect that, "This is hard. Now I need to think more.
I can apply these tips and tricks that I've been practising."
And it might also improve the far transfer so they
might be able to apply their learning in a different context.
So that's kind of the background. So our project focus
on the fact that there are many concepts in science
and maths that are counterintuitive. So as an example in science, dolphins.
(14:56):
They're not fish, but they have fins and they live
in the water, so they kind of look like fish.
In maths, children learn that five is bigger than three,
but then they learn negative numbers and minus five is
now smaller than minus three. So they really have to
kind of keep going over things that are a bit counter,
what they've just learned before. So our intervention had two components.
(15:16):
One was to make children aware of the fact that
there are so many concepts in maths and science that
are counterintuitive. Where the first response that comes to your
mind is incorrect. So, for example, if I ask you
what do cows drink?
Nick Haslam (15:28):
I want to say milk, but I thought I stopped
and thought.
Iroise Dumontheil (15:30):
Exactly. So the second way was to encourage children to
stop and think when they're solving maths and science problems,
to give them time to inhibit their incorrect, intuitive response
and favour the correct reasoning. So we called our intervention
"stop and think" to really use a bit more time
to think about the correct answer.
Nick Haslam (15:49):
Good advice for life in general, I reckon. "Stop and think." So,
did this approach work? Could you show far transfer?
Iroise Dumontheil (15:55):
So first we were interested, whether we had any improvement
in maths and science. So, this was run as a
really large trial. What we call randomised control trial, in
the UK in 7/8 year olds and 9/10 year olds.
And it was the teacher was running the intervention. And
what we found was that after 10 weeks training, there
was improvement around two months of progress in science and
(16:16):
one month in math. And these were assessed with standardised
math and science test, not specifically the counterintuitive problems that
we had covered in the training. So that suggested some
near transfer to other types of maths and science problems.
And we also found that the 9-to-10-year-olds were the ones
who benefited the most. Maybe because they have better metacognition
(16:39):
or better inhibitory control, and that enabled them to make
the most of the training. In terms of far transfer,
it was interesting, anecdotally, that some teachers reported that some
children transferred to "stop and think" approach to other school
subjects like reading. And I think that's quite interesting. And
we don't know whether it's the intervention itself because it
was metacognition or because it was the teacher doing the intervention.
(17:03):
And so that was like within the whole class, they
could kind of keep talking about it. And maybe the
teacher could say, "Oh, look here, you should stop and
think about your answer as well when you're, you know,
reading comprehension, you're understanding that text. What's the question? You
have to go back and find the answer." Again, the
first thing comes to mind might not be the correct answer.
Nick Haslam (17:20):
That's super encouraging then, and it's very impressive that a
2.5 month intervention can lead to an additional two month benefit.
So very promising indeed. Do you think we will see
mainstream education becoming increasingly gamified based on work like this
or do you think cognitive training will be used more selectively? Primarily,
let's say, for kids who are having particular problems with
(17:42):
executive functions?
Iroise Dumontheil (17:43):
I think mainstream education is already quite gamified. So, for example,
my son's primary schools, both previously in London and now
in Melbourne. They had children use mathematics and English apps
in the classroom, and then they also encourage their use
at home. And so, rather than being domain general like
the cognitive training we were talking about, these apps are
(18:04):
specific to numeracy and literacy, so they would likely be
more beneficial than the general apps I was talking about before.
And one key advantage of this type of program going
back to the issue of individual differences in children is
that quite often like a lot of brain training games,
they are what we call adaptive, so they get harder,
the better you do. And so there's this concept in
(18:26):
developmental psychology that's called the zone of proximal development, and
the idea is that you learn most when you're doing
something right at the level where it's quite difficult but
you can still do it, some of it. If it's
too easy, you don't learn. If it's too hard, you
don't learn, either. You get quite frustrated, and you can't,
you don't want to do it anymore. So if done well,
this adaptive program so you know you don't want the
(18:47):
progress to be too slow or too fast. It means
that children can really practise at a sweet spot of
difficulty for them and that would maximise their learning. So
that's really an advantage in terms of having these apps
instead of the whole class and the teacher is saying
what's two times eight and some children know that very
well and others don't. Then they can do that by
themselves at the right level. However, I'm quite conflicted about
(19:09):
these apps because of the lack of research carried out
on them. So there are many different apps out there.
Only a few of them have been designed by researchers
and built on our cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience research, but
also I'm conflicted because in general, you know there is
a move to try and minimise screen time in children,
and if we let them do this work on screen
(19:30):
at school, and at home. And then it's really hard
to say, Don't spend too much time on your screen
because they're like, "Oh, well, I'm doing my maths." So
I think we still need more evidence
Nick Haslam (19:40):
Beyond cognitive training, what other sorts of interventions can improve
learning outcomes in schools? I know you've researched effects of
physical exercise and mindfulness. What's the current state of evidence
about that sort of intervention?
Iroise Dumontheil (19:52):
Yes, so basically, you can have a whole range of
different ways to try and improve mental health, cognition. And
mindfulness was another approach where educational practice went ahead of
the research. In the UK, for example, a lot of
schools started trying to implement mindfulness training. Um, when not,
you know, any research had been done at the time. So,
(20:12):
I've done myself very small-scale research on this trying to
understand whether mindfulness meditation training may work in the same
way in adolescents and in adults, and whether it might
improve executive function, particular attentional control and resisting to emotional distractions.
So this is because if you know, some of you
might not have done mindfulness meditation before, but you might
(20:34):
be told you need for five minutes to focus on
your breath, and then your mind wanders because it always wanders.
And then you have to bring it back to the breath,
notice it and bring it back to the breath. So,
you have to be able to control what you're tending towards. So,
I was interested in this in the aspect of executive
control training. What we found is that both adolescents and
adults showed improvement in attentional control, and adolescents only also
(20:58):
showed less brain activity in response to emotional distractions. So,
we found some positive effects on these two measures, but
they were small effect. And it's not the fact that,
you know, everything improved. Interestingly, adolescents actually preferred a relaxation condition,
which was a control condition because they felt that maybe
had more immediate effects. So, this is very small scale.
(21:20):
But in the UK, they run a very large trial
called the Myriad Trial. And what they did was that
secondary school teachers were trained to incorporate mindfulness meditation training
in the social and emotional curriculum at the schools, and
the key outcome measures they use were risk for depression, social,
emotional and behavioural functioning and wellbeing. And so, whether you
(21:43):
have kind of emotional problems, really, how well- more mental health focused
maybe than what we did. And the results after two
years showed no beneficial effect of the intervention compared to
teaching as usual. And in fact, some of the secondary
outcomes were worse after mindfulness training than teaching as usual.
So this is really showing that training all secondary school
(22:03):
children in one go, this kind of what we call
universal intervention, and mindfulness is not the right approach. It
might still be that some individual teenagers might still benefit,
but not kind of the fact that we should do
it for everything.
Nick Haslam (22:15):
How about physical exercise?
Iroise Dumontheil (22:17):
One of my former PhD students, Dr Fotini Vasilopoulos, was
very interested in physical education and, you know, healthy body
is also very important. We talk about healthy body, healthy mind,
and many westernised society currently experience high obesity rates and
including in childhood. And that's really a big issue. So
there is interest in physical activity per se and also
(22:37):
in whether physical activity might benefit not just the body
but also cognition. So Fortini ran a meta-analysis of physical
intervention in primary school children and what she found is
that they were they had beneficial impacts. But again, there
was some specificity. So, for example, what we found is
that vigorous physical activity in aerobic physical activity. So you're
(23:00):
kind of working quite hard, you kind of have to
breathe harder, led to improvement in executive functions. While physical activity
combined with academic instructions, for example, they have these activities
when you ask the children to do three plus five
and then they had to calculate it and then they
have to make the corresponding number of jumping jacks. So,
they have, like, some sport but they are also doing some
(23:20):
maths at the same time. That benefited maths achievement. So,
depending on what you might want to train, you might
want to do a different type of intervention. However, the
quality of the studies varied quite a lot, so, there's
still low certainty of the evidence, low strength of this evidence.
Nick Haslam (23:36):
So impressive that you're looking at all these different dimensions
even in your own work, not just as a field. So,
looking ahead, where do you see the field of educational
neuroscience heading? What do you think the next decade of
research is going to lead towards?
Iroise Dumontheil (23:50):
Well, educational neuroscience is still in its early days, really. So,
if you think about how biological discoveries took decades, if
not a century, to impact medical practise, then you know
there's a long road ahead, so you can think- I
think it's a good analogy to think about it that way.
So progress, I think, will be made through continued and
(24:10):
increased partnership between teachers and educational researchers, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists. However,
teachers have got very little spare time to do more
training work or to work with teenage researchers, and that's
really a limit. I think I'd love to work with
more teachers and say, you know, what do you need?
What's your problem? But having this two way street and
(24:33):
working with teachers, they just don't have time. I'm involved
in the society, called the International Mind, Brain and Education
Society and trying to link up these different field of
research and practise to try and improve our understanding and
how we can apply it. So gradually we'll be building
evidence for which educational practise works best and why so
(24:56):
some of them may be existing educational practise, but we need-
we want to understand "Why does this one work better
than another one?" And ground that in our understanding of
the learning brain.
Nick Haslam (25:05):
Such important work. Thanks so much for talking to us today, Iroise.
And good luck with your work.
Iroise Dumontheil (25:10):
Thanks for having me.
Nick Haslam (25:12):
You've been listening to PsychTalks with me, Nick Haslam. We'd
like to thank our guests for today. Professor Iroise Dumontheil.
This episode was produced by Carly Godden with production assistance
from Mairead Murray and Gemma Papprill. Our sound engineer was
Jack Palmer. Thanks for tuning in to PsychTalks, and we
still have more to come in this series. So, see
you again soon. Bye for now.
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