Much of today’s naivety when it comes to learning comes from a simplistic and superficial view of the mind. The mind is not a quiver of arrows or a set of tools[1], passive capacity and first aid belts. The mind is fundamentally active and cartographic. It is the representation, creation, moment by moment, of multidimensional and dynamic maps of reality. There are vertical and horizontal maps, semantic and context maps, structural maps, and low- and high-resolution detailed maps. Several consequences follow from this.

Since any map, no matter how detailed, remains a cutout and simplification of reality, the mind is fundamentally selective. Indeed, selectivity is a fundamental feature of the mind at every level and in every mental process. This means that simple stimulation, however creative and interesting it may be, is usually not sufficient for deep learning and transformation.

Stimuli passing through the mechanisms of perceptual interest (dynamic, polychromatic, significant for the perceiver, unusual, irregular, etc.) Stimuli, as a rule, cause focus of attention and excitement, which contributes to memorization, but they will remain significant only to the extent that in which deep semantic networks are called, to the extent that they find their place in the subject’s mental maps.

A second consequence, which follows directly from the first, is that those with such coherent networks, who simply know as many and as many different things as possible, are more willing and inclined to learn.

Furthermore, we can conclude from this why a culture of overstimulation is not also a culture of learning. Vice versa. Precisely because perceptual excitement is the main mechanism of learning, its overestimation leads to insensitivity and increased tolerance to novelty, that is, to cognitive closure.

Another important consequence concerns attention. Mobility is a fundamental feature of attention, an adaptation for animals living in dynamic and diverse environments, often saturated with significant novelty. Compulsive attentional overload only produces exhaustion and insensitivity, as I said above.

In humans, the primary mechanisms that respond to stimuli correspond to non-immersive reflexive mechanisms by which secondary meaning is extracted from life experience. A culture of overstimulation is simultaneously a culture of corrosive immersion, burnout, and superficial learning. Let’s take a closer look at the cartographic nature of the mind. Simply put, the mind creates maps of reality (take this term in its broadest sense).

Cartography (the main principle of which is the similarity of form, isomorphism) manifests itself at the level of the simplest mental processes, such as sensation and perception. Perception is nothing more than an isomorphic and dynamic map of some segments of reality. The dynamism of these maps, which is nothing more than a reflex of the dynamism of the mind, requires the integration of the perceptual map into more complex higher-level maps. For example, the perception of a volume of poetry on the table is for people not only this, but also a segment of structurally more complex maps: a conceptual map (we do not just “see” a volume on the table, but we understand that it is a volume on the table), an affective map (a whole the affective network is activated by perceptual and conceptual maps), structural maps (which look at models of reality, for example, a book lying on a table attracts our attention less than a table standing on a map, etc.). Additionally, each map type generates multiple representations of the same class.

The three-dimensional image is conceptually not integrated only at the level of a separate category. Thus, the book is also a durable object or evidence of affection that triggers the activation of various semantic networks that, however, can (and indeed do) communicate.

On the other hand, the mapping of some processes leads to representations of structures and the discovery of common patterns with other processes, which produces new and new maps through integration. A direct (and, for most, counterintuitive) consequence is that, in a literal sense, nothing really worth studying. There is no conflict between so-called useful knowledge and terrible saying, in vain “Useful”, procedural knowledge, everyday skills, meaningful information in direct practice represent, of course, an important category of knowledge, and no respectable educational system ignores them. But it is unreasonable (and scientifically inconsistent) to put them against “other” knowledge, “useless”, because they endlessly enrich our mental maps, give depth to understanding, flexibility of decisions and intelligence in social relations. Read the entire article and commentary on contributors.ro