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Entry tags:
Learning Disorders
The Globe Magazine ran an article today about spanking, which is one of those polarizing subjects I don't really take sides on, mainly because "spanking" is an ambiguous term that can mean everything from "light swat that doesn't pink the skin" to "repeated assault with a cudgel until it breaks", and partly because people on both sides tend to make claims I don't find credible. Given that in the 70s and early 80s better than 94% of Americans spanked their children (data pulled from article), and I interact with many of these children as adults, I can't say there are many who spanking "warped." At the same time, while "spare the rod, spoil the child" makes for a catchy adage, I can't think of a single time when I learned to do or not do a thing because of punishment or threat of punishment; the lesson I took and still take is "hide it better."
Apparently, I am not unusual in this. Skinnerian conditioning just doesn't work on people outside a lab setting, not in a straight line "learn exactly this lesson from this stimulus." We're too complex, and our worlds are too. I can't even seem to learn "don't try to grab things out of the oven without a hot pad," and that's a perfect application of pain (burning) following an undesirable behavior without delay and without exception. And, indeed, according to the article, experiments on spanking have shown it's entirely ineffective. Entirely. Hundreds of experiments, hundreds of studies. Spanking doesn't work. Parents who spank their children often think it's wrong to do so, but also view it as "the nuclear option" that will get through to a toddler when nothing else will. And yet it doesn't. (There is a single study on the other side, but it has never been published; it is not rigorous enough to pass peer review.)
Of course, the other punishments won't get through either. It turns out to be nearly impossible to punish a toddler. You can hurt them. You can make them sad. But they won't learn "no" from it, not for a really long time. They will eventually, but it is like teaching tricks to a cat. There's no point in escalation of punishment, and there's no point in getting angry about it. Toddlers simply require an almost unbelievable amount of repetition before "no" sinks in. It's easy to forget, because they learn "yes" behaviors so quickly - new words, new motor skills, new perceptual and social techniques.
It makes sense to me that this would be true. The kind of learning a toddler does requires great courage and outlandish levels of perseverance. In order to learn to walk, you have to fall down and hurt yourself over and over again, and be completely unfazed by this. It will take months and maybe years of trying and failing before you can so much as say the names of the people you depend on for everything, and during your failed attempts you will be alternately misunderstood, ignored, shhhhhed, and treated as embarrassing. You will do it anyway. To do the kind of learning necessary to develop into an adult, you have to be basically immune to negative feedback.
I suspect this is applicable to adults as well - that the frame of mind that learns "yes" quickly would learn "no" very slowly, and the mindset that learns "no" quickly would only gradually accept a "yes." When I am on my guard against risk, I'm going to require overwhelming proof before I deviate from what I already know will work. We already know that people in stressful situations adhere more strongly to routine, to such extremes that they might burn to death rather than climbing out a window when the door is blocked. Which is not to suggest a "no" state of mind does not have its place; I probably don't need to keep bugging my boss when my boss has asked once to be left alone, and "ouch, you're hurting me, stop" doesn't need further experimentation.
On the other hand, in my creative life, I am nearly immune to "no." My rejection notices certainly run into the hundreds, and possibly into the thousands if one includes auditions and elevator pitches. Yet I continue to write things and to show them to strangers or place them on the internet or read them on stage, where they should theoretically subject me to ridicule. I should, by now, have learned that I am not a good writer, and yet I continue to think that I am a good writer and that people will like what I create. This is also valuable, theoretically. It is more unambiguously valuable if I'm trying to learn a new language, where I'm going to sound like an idiot for a very long time and make the same mistakes over and over and over, or if I'm trying to build up a muscle, or if I want to pick up a new instrument.
Would punishment or mockery help me learn Italian or learn to stand on my head or learn to play the ukelele faster? I'm going to say no. No and no and no. I do sometimes wonder if this has gone awry with my narrative work, which I keep advocating with a certainty that borders madness.
Apparently, I am not unusual in this. Skinnerian conditioning just doesn't work on people outside a lab setting, not in a straight line "learn exactly this lesson from this stimulus." We're too complex, and our worlds are too. I can't even seem to learn "don't try to grab things out of the oven without a hot pad," and that's a perfect application of pain (burning) following an undesirable behavior without delay and without exception. And, indeed, according to the article, experiments on spanking have shown it's entirely ineffective. Entirely. Hundreds of experiments, hundreds of studies. Spanking doesn't work. Parents who spank their children often think it's wrong to do so, but also view it as "the nuclear option" that will get through to a toddler when nothing else will. And yet it doesn't. (There is a single study on the other side, but it has never been published; it is not rigorous enough to pass peer review.)
Of course, the other punishments won't get through either. It turns out to be nearly impossible to punish a toddler. You can hurt them. You can make them sad. But they won't learn "no" from it, not for a really long time. They will eventually, but it is like teaching tricks to a cat. There's no point in escalation of punishment, and there's no point in getting angry about it. Toddlers simply require an almost unbelievable amount of repetition before "no" sinks in. It's easy to forget, because they learn "yes" behaviors so quickly - new words, new motor skills, new perceptual and social techniques.
It makes sense to me that this would be true. The kind of learning a toddler does requires great courage and outlandish levels of perseverance. In order to learn to walk, you have to fall down and hurt yourself over and over again, and be completely unfazed by this. It will take months and maybe years of trying and failing before you can so much as say the names of the people you depend on for everything, and during your failed attempts you will be alternately misunderstood, ignored, shhhhhed, and treated as embarrassing. You will do it anyway. To do the kind of learning necessary to develop into an adult, you have to be basically immune to negative feedback.
I suspect this is applicable to adults as well - that the frame of mind that learns "yes" quickly would learn "no" very slowly, and the mindset that learns "no" quickly would only gradually accept a "yes." When I am on my guard against risk, I'm going to require overwhelming proof before I deviate from what I already know will work. We already know that people in stressful situations adhere more strongly to routine, to such extremes that they might burn to death rather than climbing out a window when the door is blocked. Which is not to suggest a "no" state of mind does not have its place; I probably don't need to keep bugging my boss when my boss has asked once to be left alone, and "ouch, you're hurting me, stop" doesn't need further experimentation.
On the other hand, in my creative life, I am nearly immune to "no." My rejection notices certainly run into the hundreds, and possibly into the thousands if one includes auditions and elevator pitches. Yet I continue to write things and to show them to strangers or place them on the internet or read them on stage, where they should theoretically subject me to ridicule. I should, by now, have learned that I am not a good writer, and yet I continue to think that I am a good writer and that people will like what I create. This is also valuable, theoretically. It is more unambiguously valuable if I'm trying to learn a new language, where I'm going to sound like an idiot for a very long time and make the same mistakes over and over and over, or if I'm trying to build up a muscle, or if I want to pick up a new instrument.
Would punishment or mockery help me learn Italian or learn to stand on my head or learn to play the ukelele faster? I'm going to say no. No and no and no. I do sometimes wonder if this has gone awry with my narrative work, which I keep advocating with a certainty that borders madness.