Learning and self-esteem

Stephanie West Allen notes

Parents who praise often may be creating "praise junkies": Self-esteem just might be overrated

This excerpt from the new book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children is a fascinating read. I am still thinking about it and I don't even have kids. Be sure to read "Chapter One: The Inverse Power of Praise" (NPR). At that same page is an interview of Po Bronson, one of the book's coauthors.

Well, anyone who has listened to me preach on this subject will hardly be surprised that I agree. And I do have kids, and grandkids.

To restate briefly, there is no significant general relationship between self-esteem and achievement.

True, a particular student may underachieve due to low self-esteem. He assumes he will never achieve anything anyway, so he doesn't try. That must be addressed. His problem is one reason why schools need counselling services.

But in the same classroom, there may be girls who are intensely neurotic over a single error and guys who are laughing at the back of the room because they "showed" Old Lady Jones that they didn't have to learn anything she told them to learn. They failed to pay attention or do any homework, so they got an F-. And they are pleased as punch about their "achievement."

No general theory about the relationship between learning and self-esteem can emerge from the current data.

Mental health: Use of psychiatry as torture

The Falun Gong, a Chinese sect, write to tell me of the use of torture of their members under the guise of psychiatry. I don't doubt it in principle; it was done to Christians in the former Soviet Union.

The difficulty is that if a person is given unneeded psychoactive drugs, the effect can look like mental illness, which helps convince the public that the person really is sick.

The obvious test is to see what happens when the drugs are not given. In real mental illness, the patient will probably get worse, but in a persecution case, they will probably slowly get better.

Opinions differ as to whether Falun Gong is a cult. The sect has some cult characteristics but not others. At any rate, it is good to see psychiatrists beginning to confront these abuses.

Neurolaw: Simulated study stirs debate

In "True Lies" (ABA Journal "Law News Now", October 2009 issue), Mark Hansen reports on a controlled experiment that used neuroscience to determine in a simulation who was "telling the truth" and who was "lying." No surprise this might work in a controlled experiment, but applying it to the real world courtroom poses serious challenges. A key problem is that unless you already know for sure what happened, you don't even know what evidence you should be asking about.

Also, in real life, false positives would be common for other reasons, for example:

The fact that somebody “recognizes” something doesn’t necessarily mean he’s guilty of anything, they point out.

“Just because you recognize Osama bin Laden doesn’t mean you spent time in an al-Qaida training camp with him,” Greely says. “Maybe you just saw his picture on TV or the cover of a magazine.”

Not only that, but some people might be secretly obsessed with bin Laden, and unwilling to admit it. They might have a high level of knowledge and interest in his activities without ever having met him or played a role in the activities. Some of those people might delude themselves that they did. So they falsely confess.

By the same token, he adds, a suspect might recognize a crime scene because he committed the crime in question or because the crime took place at a Starbucks, the inside of which all tend to look alike.

The EEG-based approach also appears to misunderstand the nature of memory, which does not record and recall information like a videotape recorder but changes and adapts over time, other experts caution.

.“Every time a memory is recalled, it is altered,” says University of Akron law professor Jane Moriarty, an expert on scientific evidence.

Experts also say the credibility of this line of research has been undercut somewhat by the hype given to it by Lawrence Farwell, one of its leading proponents.

Neuroscience risks disrepute due to hype about its potential in areas for which it was never designed.

A lawyer friend who addresses serious violence cases pointed out to me recently that, not only is it not always clear what the accused/convicted was thinking at the time of the offence, it is not always clear whether he even was thinking much. If he is a drug addict or serious alcoholic, a blood sample might be more useful than a neuroscience scan for figuring out his probable state of mind (or lack thereof) at the time. He may not remember what he did accurately, which doesn't mean he didn't do it or wouldn't do it again.

If the accused has a mental disorder or is developmentally delayed, neuroscience might help determine whether he is fit to stand trial. But that is medicine, whose results may assist law. I think neuroscience is best to stay close to medicine.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose