The Older You Get, the Faster Time Goes By...Here's Why!

Child: “I’m bored.  We’ve been here for HOURS…”  or, “Are we there yet?”

Grandparent: “He’s getting so big!  Time is just flying by!”

( ( ( ( perception ) ) ) )

Just as your eyes visually “saw” movement due to the size of the brackets, your brain uses perception as one basis for allocating time.  

What is perception? 

(My definition) It is the act of paying attention to something that is happening through the senses.  I say "senses" because information is first processed through some aspect of the five senses.

A great book published in 1969 (an oldie but goodie) called Information-Processing Approaches to Visual Perception (Ralph Haber) talks about receiving an incoming sensation as a continuum of thought.  

• An incoming sensation leads to a perception, which then leads to a memory being made, which ultimately leads to a thought. 

He states that the boundaries for input into the brain are defined by attention (pg 168) and that 

“when attention must switch channels, an increment of TIME is added to the time required to process (the sensation)” (pg 168).

So what does this mean?  

Pay attention to create meaning in order to make a lasting memory!  When you are bored, you don't pay attention because nothing is interesting to you...

The above bracket illustration shows how your brain recognizes the specific sequence of changing bracket size and immediately attaches the idea of movement to that specific organized pattern; You've seen it done before.  Therefore,

Repetition is a developmental process for the appearance of the perception and increases clarity regardless of meaning (275)

Another explanation from Auditory Perception of Speech (1977) by Derek Sanders highlights another aspect of perception as it relates to our experiences.  He found that we "perceive the world" by how we individually process it, NOT as it actually is.  And, it is unique to each individual because it is processed, or perceived through that person's developed common system of information patterning (1).

Simply put, you have to find "it" interesting, or "stimulating," in order to be "stimulated" to pay attention!

Your brain recognized the brackets as a code for showing movement and then made a “prediction” of what I was getting at in the illustration.  This prediction then automatically enhanced your rate of perception (8).

As adults, you have more experience in recognizing patterns and generating predictions (8), so your working memory (conscious thinking) automatically decreases the attention given to the “incoming signal" therefore "making" time pass "quickly" due to the lack of attention needed in your daily life.  Seeing the grandkids in spaced, timed intervals is actually drawing your attention to noticeable changes in your patterned perceptions. 

We perceive things by how we have processed it (155).

If a child thinks something is boring, they will turn off their attention.  This "tuning out" is them not allocating attention which then attaches meaning to any activity.  As adults, our brains automatically recognize things/events as “been there, done that.”  The recognition of information then leads to less conscious attention given due to your mature ability to subconsciously draw on “more sophisticated predictions” (153).

When “time is flying by,” what should I do?

1. Change your perception… pay attention to the details!
1. Build a new awareness and notice how things are different in a situation
2. Be happy!  The feeling of happiness actually allows information into the brain regions for processing.  Processing makes memories.
2. De-routine, de-automate, experience!
1. Start with a good experiential stimulation, then add a happy emotional stimuli,  and get long term memory storage
2. Talk yourself through things, be aware of what and why you are doing something (metacognition)
3. Remember often!
1. Repetition actually increases the ability to recall it due to the strong brain connection "pathways"
2. Use visuals (you “scrapbookers” have the best idea, especially if you are a visual learner!)
3. Talk about it (great for you auditory learners who process things by discussing)

What I find fascinating, is that this information is not “new;” the Bible details the best way to learn, remember, and retrieve through specific Bible verses, the parables and even the format of the Psalms.

¹⁸ “ You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. ¹⁹  You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. ²⁰  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, ²¹ so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth.

Deuteronomy 11: 18:21

            

the best from the best

I am a homeschooling mom of 4 kids who does not like to teach.  Sounds a bit odd, doesn’t it?

This all came about as my survival strategy to cope with homeschooling.  Two years into homeschooling, I was reading rote discussion questions to my oldest son and he was not “finding” the answers from the short text he had just read independently.  My response was for him to read it aloud to me so I could emphasize the answer as I read it with him.  Even with my exaggeration he was not “getting it.”  I was baffled.  Then it hit me: I had not taught him reading comprehension strategies that I used automatically.  I was the teacher!  Learning is not an innate ability that just materializes!  Even in writing this, it seems silly that I did not put two and two together sooner.  But I am a self-taught learner so I didn’t understand why he didn’t teach himself what he needed to know.  Isn’t this what most employers want in an employee? It had been my survival technique for all my job placements.  I then began to unravel how or why I am a self-taught learner so that I could teach my kids to teach themselves.  I have loved every minute of learning the best from the best.

It wasn’t until I started teaching my only daughter, the third child, how to read that I really internalized someone’s struggle to learn and the feeling of self-defeat.  The basic skills of reading (of which I had no clue) that my boys seemed to grasp without difficulty were just not coming together for my daughter.  I also knew that she has always had ear issues.  I scheduled an ENT appointment and over time I summarized that her hearing was unreliable due to changes in fluid.  At the time of her wanting to read, most of the time she could hear, but because of so many issues, she did not trust her ability to hear.  So I did what I do best to fix "it:" I started researching.   

I love the public library: free education from access to the state’s database of books all at my fingertips!  And, I have a great librarian, Ms. Sue, whom works with me in processing all of my requests.  I started with what I know: Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences model (bluewafflebreakie.wordpress.com) and then I let the website search engine guide me to new book discoveries that spun off of that topic.  I spent hours every night when the kids were sleeping pouring over books from the 1950s through to this decade amassing a huge repertoire of knowledge long forgotten.  I ingested scientific studies, college course load texts (taken from online syllabuses), training manuals, psychological cases, vocational methodology (an interest from my previous career), and online websites.  My initial goal was to find compensatory strategies to assist my daughter in whatever disability I was sure she had due to her learning issues.  I became so focused on self diagnosing her so that I could find a curriculum that would teach her to learn to read.  Then, I became so discouraged that I didn’t even want to teach her for fear of making “it” worse. 

About that time of year, I went to the annual homeschooling convention (a home school mom’s mini-vacation resort destination) and listened to the speaker Candace H., a neuro-developmentalist (Liberty Consultants).  Previously, I had started reading about brain based learning practices so my pump was primed for her methodologies.  What she said startled me: any learning issue is an issue of disorganization. Her CT based business specializes in finding where the brain has detoured or stopped progressing through the developmental processes and then they rewire it with structured activities so that it becomes organized.  That took me a while to digest.  I had focused my research on compensating, not correcting.

I began my process for working through things: staring at the trees and walking the gardens in my yard.  Over a period of a year, the connections were forming in my mind on how it all goes together to impact a person’s learning, from preferences to processes.  I began to study more intensely memory and where each process was occurring in the brain.  I will be doing more research on my theory that if you feed the brain region with the nutrients it needs to optimize the learning experience, then you will be doing less work more effectively.  No longer was this self directed project about learning and applying compensatory strategies to correct or bypass issues, it emerged to form a big picture with details on how to learn effectively and efficiently in any domain.  Without realizing it, my journey had followed what I have found to be the best “map” for learning!  Somewhere along the way, I had subconsciously assimilated and taught myself to learn how to learn.  My one caveat I have found, however, is that I am deficient in retrieving information from my memory. Therefore, my hesitancy to share this journey was stifled by my inadequacy to share confidently my research due to the embarrassment of not being able to remember the details.  I am, by the way, a thirty five year old self discovered dyslexic!

The progression of this blog is intended to mirror how to learn.  I will include all of my research and given credit to every author along the way because this information is not new.  I’ve used my dyslexic insight and material reasoning to connect and organize it in a manner that maximizes learning anything.  The first section will give the big picture.  I will preload key words and topics and then end the section with a fine detail script.  The second section will focus on what I have found to be the foundation for all learning.  I will discuss the sub-skills and the developmental process for mastery of each skill.  Neuroscience will highlight the nutrition and brain regions.  The third section will focus on the tool needed for effectiveness, or automaticity.  Here I will describe and provide strategies for the disorganized brain.  Lastly, a detailed, visual outline will show how to increase efficiency.  In other words: learn comfortably, easily, and quickly from the best, for the best.