现在你看到了吧：有关注意力的大脑科学将如何改变我们的生活、工作与学习方式

www.brainpickings.org : Now You See It: How the Science of Attention is Changing Work and Education | Brain Pickings

译者： 洛阳伽蓝记 2011年08月25日 17:09 原作者： 玛利亚•帕波瓦

这是让人精神为之一振的建设性意见，闪烁着我们急需的对于数字时代教育之未来的一线乐观主义微光，《现在你看到了吧》又在关于教育的7本必读书的基础上增添了一本，并为媒体不停叫嚣的我们注意力已遭受致命腐蚀的这一说法提供了一种令人信服的解毒剂。

译文：对于互联网正如何改变着我们的大脑以及这种学习方式的新文化对于教育的未来意味着什么，已经说得太多了。但是，很多对话讨论都散发着对技术梦魇的杞人忧天气息，从阿尔文•托夫勒的《未来的冲击》，1970年代曾拍成纪录片，由韦尔斯作旁白，到尼古拉斯•卡尔的关于如今数字时代之注意力的简化论式断言。但是注意力的真相，它对科技与教育之交汇点的影响，似乎要涉及比他们声称的多得多的层面，也要复杂得多——并且，如果杜克大学认知神经科学中心的创立者凯茜•戴维逊是对的，那就不用太担心了。这就是戴维逊在她的新书《现在你看到了吧：有关注意力的大脑科学将如何改变我们的生活、工作与学习方式》中阐明的——这是一组引人入胜的沉思：“注意力失明”这一奇特现象（哈佛大学著名的看不见的大猩猩实验可以作为例证）是如何造成了我们文化中的一种严重分裂：我们无法把数字时代带来的巨大变化和学校与工作场所因循的旧规调和起来。

 “当我们专注已知事物时，就会错过我们有必要注意到的新东西。为了重新学习，首先需要忘记——这样的过程需要一种新的理念，即不把知识看成一种东西，而是看成一种过程，不是看成一个名词，而是看成一个动词”

                                     ——凯茜•戴维逊

在另一个著名的试验中，戴维逊，那时是杜克大学的教务长，将iPods 设为2003级所有大一新生的学术课程的一部分。尽管这个试点工程一开始时被普遍嘲笑，但是随着学生们发现了一些明智而且富有创新性的方法来使用他们的iPods 之后，批评者们很快就哑口无言了：这些使用方法有的针对课堂有的针对实验室，从合作完成小组项目到向全世界播放关于莎士比亚的研讨会等等，不一而足。

戴维逊把从这些实验中得来的领悟当作一块透镜，从中检视注意力的本质与演进过程，她指出教育系统是建立在对于什么是“注意力”、注意力如何反映智力等问题非常僵化的预设答案之上的。在这样的系统中，那些不符合这些预设，注意力与众不同的学生会被认为是有缺陷、不走正轨、方枘圆凿、格格不入的。但是神经科学提出了越来越多的证据表明，我们的心智集中注意力的方式有无数种，且往往是非线性、同时进行的。这意味着学术界与工作场所应顺应其发展，从而超越20世纪的教育与工作的流水线作业模式。（流水线与工厂其实是一种我们熟悉的比喻，在肯•罗宾逊爵士关于改变教育范式的深刻思考中已经用过）。

这是让人精神为之一振的建设性意见，闪烁着我们急需的对于数字时代教育之未来的一线乐观主义微光，《现在你看到了吧》又在关于教育的7本必读书的基础上增添了一本，并为媒体不停叫嚣的我们注意力已遭受致命腐蚀的这一说法提供了一种令人信服的解毒剂。

Now You See It: How the Science of Attention is Changing Work and Education | Brain Pickings

www.brainpickings.org : Now You See It: How the Science of Attention is Changing Work and Education | Brain Pickings

推荐人： cutecobra 2011年08月24日 20:01

How attention blindness has produced one of our culture's greatest disconnects, the inability to reconcile the changes induced by the digital age with the conventions of yesteryear's schools and workplaces.

Much has been said about how the Internet is changing our brains and what this new culture of learning means for the future of education. While much of the dialogue has been doused in techno-dystopian alarmism, from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles in the 1970s, to Nicholas Carr’s reductionist claims about attention in today’ digital age. But the truth about attention, as it relates to the intersection of technology and education, seems to be a lot more layered and complex — and, if Cathy Davidson, founder of Duke University’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, is right, a lot less worrisome. That’s precisely what Davidson illustrates in her new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn — a fascinating meditation on how “attention blindness,” the peculiar phenomenon illustrated by Harvard’s famous invisible gorilla experiment, has produced one of our culture’s greatest disconnects, the inability to reconcile the remarkable changes induced by the digital age with the conventions of yesteryear’s schools and workplaces.


As long as we focus on the object we know, we will miss the new one we need to see. The process of unlearning in order to relearn demands a new concept of knowledge not as thing but as a process, not as a noun but as a verb.” ~ Cathy Davidson

In another famous experiment, Davidson, then provost at Duke, gave the entire 2003 freshman class iPods as part of their academic curriculum. Though the pilot project was at first widely derided, it quickly silenced the critics as students found intelligent and innovative ways to employ their iPods in the classroom and the lab in everything from collaborating on group project to podcasting a conference on Shakespeare around the world.



Davidson uses the insights from these experiments as a lens through which to examine the nature and evolution of attention, noting that the educational system is driven by very rigid expectations of what “attention” is and how it reflects “intelligence,” a system in which students who fail to meet these expectations and pay attention differently are pigeonholed somehow deficient of aberrant, square pegs in round holes. Yet neuroscience is increasingly indicating that our minds pay attention in a myriad different ways, often non-linear and simultaneous, which means that the academy and the workplace will have to evolve in parallel and transcend the 20th-century linear assembly-line model for eduction and work. (The assembly and the factory are in fact a familiar metaphor from Sir Ken Robinson’s insightful thoughts on changing educational paradigms.)

Refreshingly constructive and glimmering with much-needed optimism about the future of education in the digital age, Now You See It makes a fine new addition to these 7 essential books on education and offers a well-argued antidote to the media’s incessant clamor about the deadly erosion of our attention.

Thanks, Jake