A Big Ranting Post about Affective Context

There are generally a huge number of things I would like to talk about on any given day, which would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that they are often all connected. This means that when I come to writing my blog, I’m never quite sure where to start. The problem is that whilst I could simply pick one small area and discuss that, it would make for an exceptionally short post; and writing about everything would make for a very long, albeit engrossing, book. For that reason, you may find that I’ll often discuss many things in detail whilst skimming over others rather quickly, so I’d just like to extend an invitation to anyone reading this blog (I know you’re out there, the stats page tells me so) to question me on any of the subjects I’ve been writing about. You might want me to elaborate on something I’ve written, or perhaps cover something I connected to past subject that I’ve neglected to mention. As always, general comments are welcome and if you’d like to debate any of the points made in my blog feel free to say something in the comments section.

Something I’ve mentioned in previous posts is the affective context model. I have explained parts of this in relation to the effect of emotions on memory, but haven’t fully explained all aspects of how it is seen to work. In my defence, I have told you to watch this video on affective context before now, and if you haven’t it’s your own fault for being lazy (it’s less than ten minutes long and really is quite interesting), but I won’t hold it against you. One thing discussed in the video is the difference between ‘push learning’ and ‘pull learning’.

Push learning is the kind of learning we’re used to experiencing in formal education and is based on the idea of providing a student with the necessary theory to perform a certain task so that they might be less likely to fail at said task. This is a tried and tested form of teaching that has been proven time and again to be almost invariably worthless. Think how often you might tell a child not to touch a hot oven or pan and then find them almost immediately going to do just that. You can say don’t go in there, or don’t do that, or don’t eat those, or don’t poke that; but in the end people need to understand why. I recall a story about my brother who, whilst on a school trip to a farm, was warned about the electric fences around the farm and told not to touch them or he would be electrocuted. He then proceeded to run straight for the nearest fence, arms outstretched, to discover what this ‘electrocuted’ felt like. He didn’t like it. Admittedly he was very young at the time (4 or 5 years old maybe) but that’s not to say adults don’t do the same thing.

As an adult we have a better understanding of the world, but that comes from our experiences throughout life. I know not to stick my finger in a plug socket because I’ll be electrocuted, and although I’ve never experienced that level of electrocution, I have experienced smaller electric shocks that allow me to imagine the possible magnitude of such a shock. Let me pose his hypothetical situation: If Ricky Hatton walked up to you in the street and punched you in the face, what would you do? Hit him back? Run away? Cry? Well I can’t say this with any authority but I’m not ashamed to admit that, were I in that situation, I imagine I would most likely to be struggling to regain consciousness. Maybe you’ve been punched before, maybe you’ve been punched really hard, but have you ever had a world class boxer smash his bare fist into your head? I doubt it. You would have no frame of reference and so my advice of “Don’t go out there, Ricky Hatton will punch you in the head” could well be ignored with the thought that you might just be able to walk away with a bit of a bruise.

So push learning is when we’re taught, in school, how to work out the length of one side of scalene triangle before we even know what we’ll need that information for. The only place this form of learning takes place is in schools and is a result of a system in which a learning establishment is expected to churn out students to specification. Like a production line. And not even a Six Sigma production line.

Pull learning on the other hand is the way in which we naturally learn. This is about providing the affective context or reason for something before you teach the method. As a baby you see food, you want food, but you don’t have the necessary language to communicate that. You reach for your food and mum says “do you want your food?” before giving you what you want. This process is repeated and with each variation of the sentence one word is consistently used until you learn that ‘food’ means that tasty stuff you put in your mouth to fuel the poop machine. This is something that is observable and proves the value of affective context. In fact, this is such an effective method of learning language that it is the basis of the Rosetta Stone series of language software. You can see their explanation of this on their website here. This way of learning is constant throughout our lives and we will always remember things better if we can understand why we need to know them. A common example of this is when you are introduced to a new person. How often have you found yourself in a situation where you have just been introduced to someone only to forget their name almost immediately? This is most likely down to the fact that your brain basically doesn’t know why it needs to remember that information, and you might find yourself thinking the same thing. “Who is this guy? What is he talking about? I don’t care about the mating habits of the common earth worm. Maybe I can fake a heart attack and he’ll just get bored and leave.” On the other hand if your friend came to you and said “I know a guy who is a [insert your dream job here]. He might be able to give you some pointers on how to get a job in the industry” You suddenly have an affective context, a reason to remember this person. In this case you may learn the person’s name before you’ve even met them.

In the past the pull method has been used to teach in the form of apprenticeships where an apprentice would be expected to perform and observe, first hand, different aspects of a job. It was only after performing and observing this job for some time (and failing in the process) that they would gain an affective context for the theory that would then be taught to them. People need to know why they are learning something for them to be able to take it on board.

One last example: When I was 9 years old, I found an enthusiasm for playing the piano. I played a few irritating and repetitive little ditties that I’d made up by pressing random keys, and a couple of short tunes that other members of my family had been willing to show me, including the first few bars of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. My mum, wanting to encourage this, asked her friend to give me a few lessons (about half a dozen). She was a qualified piano teacher and, as I suppose she might have always done, she began by teaching me the scales. Fair enough, when you’ve never played a piano properly before, you can appreciate the value of knowing the scales at least. Plus they sounded very melodic compared to most of what I’d been playing. Despite this, my favourite piece was still the Moonlight Sonata and I was keen to learn how to play it. I noticed that my mum’s friend had the sheet music for this and I asked her if she would teach me how to play it. I was told that it was too complex for me and that my hands wouldn’t be able to stretch enough to reach all the notes. I argued that I could already play the first few bars, but it wasn’t good enough and, despite all my attempts to increase my hand span to be able to play the piece (my left hand span is still over a centimetre larger than my right), she ultimately never taught me to play the Moonlight Sonata. I know, boo hoo me. I got bored of the simple beginner tunes I was playing and eventually gave up.

Some years later, when I was about sixteen, I saw a boy playing the piano. He was playing a boogie song and it sounded awesome. I wished that I could play that and felt like I’d made a big mistake by giving up my piano playing. When I got home I decided to see what I could remember. I could remember my scales at least. Armed with that base and a renewed sense of enthusiasm I began playing again. This time I taught myself. I learned to play by ear, listening to music and simply figuring out how to play it myself. I realised how to construct chords from the scales I’d learned and suddenly I was almost playing proper tunes. After a little bit of encouragement from my mum, I was convinced to take up some more lessons, but this time I took a different route. I was terrible at reading music and found that side of the whole thing very boring, but I had a knack for improvisation. So I took up Jazz piano lessons. The Jazz exams involved playing the beginning and ends of songs as written in the book, but the middle section was improvised. Now I was playing things I wanted to play. This teacher was much more open to my musical choices and allowed me to play whatever I wanted, including the Moonlight Sonata. It took some time, since I had to learn the sheet music off by heart (I still couldn’t read it fast enough), but I did learn to play the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. My teacher noted the fact that for someone who hadn’t even completed their grade 1 exam yet, it was pretty impressive to see me play at a grade 5 level. I eventually got my jazz piano grade 1 certificate with a distinction but gave up the lessons when I had to move away.

Over the years, I may have forgotten how to play specific pieces, but I’ve never forgotten how to play the piano, I’ve never forgotten how to play my scales, or find chords, or play a tune I’ve heard. That, to me, is the power of affective context.