The Southwest Voice

larger view larger view

I think it is safe to say that most people believe they learn from their mistakes. I know I have learned more than a few lessons from mistakes. I think it is also safe to say that positive feedback feels pretty empowering. According to a recent article in The Journal of Neuroscience, areas of the brains of adults and children strongly respond — specifically in the basal ganglia, just outside the cerebral cortex — when we get positive remarks like, “Great job!” or, “You got it!”

As it turns out, not everyone learns from their mistakes. Developmental psychologist Dr. Eveline Crone and her colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab suggest that children under 12 are not processing negative input to the degree they process positive input. So when parents or teachers tell youngsters about the deficiencies in a project or paper the brain does not respond. Comments like, “Got that wrong” or, “You’re not doing this right” essentially falls on deaf ears. Tell them what they did right, however, and the brain lights up!

According to a ScienceDaily.com article on the study, the brain control centers of children 12 and 13 years old (as well as adult brain control centers) are more strongly activated by negative feedback and much less by positive feedback.

What that means to me as a junior high English teacher is that I will continue to closely edit my students’ papers and continue to require them to rewrite with corrections while also giving them plenty of daily comments on what they do right in class. It also means my colleagues teaching younger grades, and loads of parents, are doing a great job focusing on the positive with their little ones.

 — Peggy Dewane-Pope is an eighth grade teacher at Stonecreek Junior High School in the Panama-Buena Vista Union School District.