Curiosity Created the A

For the longest time I could never quite figure out why the tests I studied the least for I always ended up getting the best grades in. Some days I even considered not studying at all for my hardest classes to see if maybe I would get a better grade. It took some time to realize that maybe I wasn’t crazy, maybe other people go through the same exact thing.

Have you ever wondered why regardless of the amount you study you can’t quite get that A you have been longing for? On October 2, 2014, The Cell Press Journal Neuron provided insights into what happens in our brain when curiosity is piqued. Results around the process of learning are underrated, typically going unnoticed. Most students who don’t receive the acknowledgement they were looking for feel really let down but don’t understand why. Most people can suggest studying more or studying using different techniques, but every brain learns information uniquely.

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The study was conducted by having participants curiosity piqued “to learn the answers to a series of trivia questions.” Following their ratings they were presented with the questions, “a14 second delay before the answer was provided, during which time the participants were shown a picture of a neutral, unrelated face.” The final test was a “surprise recognition memory test for the faces that were presented.”

The conductors in the experiment strongly believe that they were able to abstract three major discoveries. The null hypothesis, curiosity and learning had no correlation, was proven wrong by the alternative hypothesis, curiosity and memory are correlated. However, this discovery was really distinct in this situation since face recognition is not associated to the trivia questions but the curiosity aroused triggered the interest in the faces.

The scientists discovered two more findings.  “We showed that intrinsic motivation actually recruits the very same brain areas that are heavily involved in tangible, extrinsic motivation,” says Dr. Gruber. They also discovered that when curiosity is added to learning there is “increased interactions between the hippocampus and the reward circuit.”

Overall, being the audience to this discovery I am really curious but also really cautious. Studying the brain is really tricky and in these sort of studies there could be a lot of confounding variables. It doesn’t state anywhere that this was a well designed experiment with lots of participants which means that lurking variables could still very well be present. Participants in the study could be affected for personal reasons and could be giving different levels of attention to the survey. Also the participants aren’t receiving a reward for remembering faces. Most students work for a good grade level, which creates an incentive. None of these factors can be measured which makes the data unreliable. On top of all of that, chance can’t be eliminated.

If I were to conduct a similar study I would conduct it with several different trials with lots of randomly allocated participants to reduce error. The researcher could also do a variety of tests, not just ones with faces. Maybe they could do more trivia questions with numbers, letters, colors, etc.

Another issue with this study is the insufficient data released. Cell Press did not show the questions asked and the faces presented. It still remains a question on how many questions were asked, number of participants, how they picked the participants or the corresponding p-value to the result: all significant factors in respect to the validity of the study.

Even if this study isn’t that reliable it helped me take a step back from my learning and wonder why I tend to do better in certain classes than others. It certainly wasn’t my study habits because I think by college I have tried almost every one in the books. I realized that my grades typically reflect how the material, class, or teacher can grab my attention. Some say college is at a whole new extreme compared to high school but if you are like me college could be easier. For the first time in your life you control what you are learning, when you go to class, and where you are learning it. When you control your learning accommodations it is amazing what it can do for your studies.

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