The Power of Mindful Learning (5 page)

Gender differences may also be a factor in whether new
skills are learned in an absolute or conditional manner. Lori
Pietrasz and I conducted a study to explore this question.6 We
hypothesized that one reason males typically outperform
females on athletic tasks might be a difference in the way they
process instructions. In general young girls are taught to be
"good little girls" which translates into "do what you are told."
To be a "real boy," on the other hand, implicitly means to be
independent of authority and "don't listen to all you are told."
This difference should be especially salient in sex-typed activities such as sports. Our hypothesis was that motivation to be a
good girl would lead to taking in information about the basics
in an absolute or mindless way. Similarly, being a bit rebellious
was expected to result in conditional or mindful learning.

To eliminate much previous learning, participants were
instructed in how to play a novel game: Smack-it ball. The
game is similar to squash except that a small racket that fits like
a baseball mitt is worn on both hands. Half of the males and
half of the females were instructed in how to use the rackets
either in conditional or absolute language (eg. "one way to hold
your hand might be . . ." vs "this is how to hold your hand").
After practicing the game, we surreptitiously changed the ball
to one that was quite a bit heavier and thus required different
body movements. We noted performance at this time. It was
expected that the instructions would not differentiate the male groups because they were assumed to conditionalize the instructions no matter how they were given by us. Females on the
other hand were expected to be trapped by their original learning-when taught in an absolute manner-and not to adjust to
the changed circumstances (the heavier ball). Thus their performance should be inferior to that of those taught in a conditional way. The findings confirmed our expectations. Moreover,
when females were taught conditionally their performance was
not different from their male counterparts.

It is interesting to consider other sex-typed tasks from this
perspective. While girls outperform boys in early math classes,
the reverse typically becomes the case in late high school and
college. Much of what we are taught about math initally has to
be amended as we approach more advanced topics. Initially
there are numbers; later we find out that there are prime numbers, irrational numbers, different number systems, etc. The
more rigidly we learn the original information, the harder it
may be to open up those closed packages to accommodate the
new information. "Good girls" learn the basics in an absolute
way from the teacher/authority.

The standard two approaches to teaching new skills are topdown or bottom-up. The top-down method relies on discursive
lecturing to instruct students. The bottom-up path relies on
direct experience, repeated practice of the new activity in a systematic way. Although both approaches have their advocates, I sought a third alternative. Rather than imposing an order from
above or repetitively indoctrinating students through practice,
my students and I investigated the effectiveness of activities
that break with these two traditions. This approach could be
called sideways learning. My no-fault cheesecake is an instance
of sideways learning. The basics of cheesecake making were
repeatedly varied, serving as a rough guide for making the cake
rather than a rigid formula.

Sideways learning aims at maintaining a mindful state. As
we saw, the concept of mindfulness revolves around certain psychological states that are really different versions of the same
thing: (1) openness to novelty; (2) alertness to distinction; (3)
sensitivity to different contexts; (4) implicit, if not explicit,
awareness of multiple perspectives; and (5) orientation in the
present.' Each leads to the others and back to itself. Learning a
subject or skill with an openness to novelty and actively noticing
differences, contexts, and perspectives-sideways learningmakes us receptive to changes in an ongoing situation. In such a
state of mind, basic skills and information guide our behavior in
the present, rather than run it like a computer program.

Mindfulness creates a rich awareness of discriminatory
detail. Theories that suggest that we learn best when we break
a task down into discrete parts do not really make possible the
sort of learning that is accomplished through mindful awareness of distinctions. Getting our experience presliced undermines the opportunity to reach mindful awareness. Sideways
learning, however, involves attending to multiple ways of carving up the same domain. It not only makes it possible to create unlimited categories and distinctions to differentiate one task
from another, but it is essential to mobilizing mindfulness.

Can novices be jostled into mindful awareness? How can a
situation release our full mental resources and increase our ability to learn and retain complex skills? One pilot study (discussed later) suggests that expertise is not dependent on a
particular hierarchical assimilation of basic skills, but that
greater effectiveness and mastery may be accessible through
inventive transformations of the routine.

Much traditional training, such as developed and organized
training in classical piano, leads many people to believe that
technique is identical to the internalization of some set of rules
for correct performance. Yet the observations of critics evaluating a performer often raise questions about this assumption.

Certain players seem almost exclusively absorbed in the
action of their fingers over the piano keys, as if forgetting how
the rest of the body participates in playing and contributes to the
support of the hands. If a pianist is preoccupied with the voluntary, manipulable end of the spectrum of neurological possibilities, this preoccupation resounds in the music. The performance
sounds calculated, not shaped from a spontaneous response.
Hence critics often comment on virtuosos who, for all their technical brilliance, are unfeeling, or mechanical, or characterless, and
so on. Walter Gieseking, a well-known German pianist, asked
his students to learn the music away from the piano, so as to do
away altogether with attention to technique and correctness.

In such players there may be a lack of smooth coordination
between agile hands and a motionless or inexpressive trunk. The energy generated for striking the keys is isolated! In a truly
great performance all technical skills are transformed into a
unique, context-sensitive, one-of-a-kind experience. This raises
the question of whether technique, assimilated through hours of
drill, is the essential or even the primary ingredient of mastery.

Expertise, of course, involves several dimensions. First,
some element of genetic endowment may differentiate initial
aptitude. Animals are born with the ability to walk and quickly
manage to accomplish complex tasks requiring balance, acute
perception, or navigational ability, a feat that humans could
never emulate. Among humans, the existence of prodigies in
domains such as music, mathematics, and chess indicates that
the initial mental organization of some individuals can predispose them to rapid and relatively untutored mastery.9 To
explore approaches to learning basic skills, it is necessary to
look at skills that are more generally spread across the population, leaving aside the possibility that the truly gifted are different from the rest of us in ways genetically determined.

Clearly, some experience is necessary to acquire complex
skills. Yet imagine a coach or piano teacher prescribing a set
amount of practice, every day. To claim that any particular
amount of time on a task is sufficient to learn that skill overlooks
the state in which such practice is approached. How much piano,
or golf, or tennis can one learn while daydreaming about some
other activity? Pressed to its logical extreme, this teaching
method would rely solely on moving the body, with the assumption that the mind would follow. If so, one could learn while
asleep simply by having one's body moved in the proper patterns.

Although certain therapies have actually made use of some
version of this mode (body therapies or neurolinguistic programming), full mastery is not their goal. Recognizing the difference between going through the motions and moving one's
body in awareness brings us into the domain of mindfulness.

J.R. Anderson has described three stages of experience that
result in the acquisition of a new skill.10 The cognitive stage
involves first taking in enough information about the skill to
permit the learner to perform the desired behavior in at least
some crude approximation. This stage often involves self-talk,
in which the learner rehearses information required to carry out
the skill. The associative stage involves smoothing out performance. Any errors in the initial understanding of the skill are
gradually identified and eliminated in this stage, and at the
same time there is a drop in self-talk. The autonomous stage is
one of ongoing gradual improvement in performance. In this
stage improvement can continue indefinitely.

Paul Whitmore, Douglas DeMay, and I investigated
whether learning can in fact be improved by changing the
mode of the initial learning, the cognitive stage. In a small
study, novice piano players were introduced to a simple Cmajor scale under two conditions, explicitly mindful or traditional practice. People were recruited for the study through
flyers announcing a free piano lesson. They were randomly
assigned to one of two groups. All subjects were given essentially the same instruction in piano, with the following variations. Members of group 1, the mindful instruction group, were
instructed to be creative and to vary their playing as much as possible. These subjects were told: "We would like you to try to
learn these fingering exercises without relying on rote memorization. Try to keep learning new things about your piano
playing. Try to change your style every few minutes, and not
lock into one particular pattern. While you practice, attend to
the context, which may include very subtle variations or any
feelings, sensations, or thoughts you are having." Halfway
through the session they were reminded to try to keep learning
new things, to change the approach every few minutes, and not
to lock into any single pattern. Then the specific lesson was
given, and subjects spent twenty minutes practicing it. The
control group was taught to practice in a more traditional,
memorization-through-repetition style.

The piano playing was taped for evaluation. Two graduate
students in music who had extensive keyboarding and compositional experience rated the playing. In addition, subjects were
asked how well they liked the lessons. The findings of this study
confirmed our hypotheses. In comparison with the control
group, the subjects given mindful instruction in the early steps
of piano playing were rated as more competent and more creative and also expressed more enjoyment of the activity.

Many keyboard masters played the organ while becoming
expert on the piano. Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Glenn
Gould, for example, recommended organ practice to achieve
greater clarity in composing and playing the piano." Yehudi
Menuhin said he thought his violin playing improved after he
took up the viola. To play two similiar but different instruments
at once works against taking one set of basic skills for granted and thereby encourages an alert and mindful state. An awareness of alternatives at the early stages of learning a skill gives a
conditional quality to the learning, which, again, increases
mindfulness.

Because a lot of learning takes place not from exercises planned
by an individual teacher but from a textbook, the question
arises whether a textbook can inform mindfully.

Todd Bodner, Randy Waterfield, and I tested the hypothesis that with slight modifications textbooks could encourage
creative use of learned material.12 We chose a learning situation
that has broad implications for the world of finance. The Series
7 Examination is an exam that every stockbroker, indeed,
nearly every person who wants to be involved in investmentrelated employment, must pass. It is the equivalent of the bar
exam in law and carries with it similar stress and concern for a
passing grade. It is a comprehensive test intended to protect the
investors from people who are not competent to advise them.