We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education.

By M. Immordino‐Yang, Antonio R. Damasio. 2007

1,207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connections between emotion, social functioning, and decision making that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the role of affect in education. In particular, the neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning, are both profoundly affected by and subsumed within the processes of emotion; we call these aspects emotional thought. Moreover, the evidence from brain-damaged patients suggests the hypothesis that emotion-related processes are required for skills and knowledge to be transferred from the structured school environment to real-world decision making because they provide an emotional rudder to guide judgment and action. Taken together, the evidence we present sketches an account of the neurobiological underpinnings of morality, creativity, and culture, all topics of critical importance to education. Our hope is that a better understanding of the neurobiological relationships between these constructs will provide a new basis for innovation in the design of learning environments. Note: The lead author appears twice in this issue of LEARNing Landscapes: first in the reprint cited below, and next, in an accompanying follow-up article that features poetry from her daughter Nora Ming-Min Yang. Immordino-Yang, M.H., & Damasio, A.R. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain and Education, 1(1), 3–10. * Reprinted in Jossey-Bass Reader on the Brain and Learning (pp. 183–198). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8eb0e17979d7faf3119104ce863641d861881872

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

High school teachers’ experience of the educational potential of outdoor teaching and learning (2014, background): “Recent research in neuroscience reveals that emotions and cognition are closely intertwined and that the affective aspect of learning should be taken into consideration (Immordino-Yang, 2011; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).”
Dynamics of affective states during complex learning (2012, background): “…between affective and cognitive states during complex learning are beginning to emerge in the fields of psychology (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Dweck, 2002; Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007), education (Buff, Reusser, Rakoczy, & Pauli, 2011; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Huk & Ludwigs, 2009; Linnenbrink, 2006;…”
Teaching and learning outside the classroom: personal values, alternative pedagogies and standards (2011, background): “(Foundation stage case study, Early Years coordinator) The role of positive affect in making learning accessible for application in other contexts has been recognised (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2007).”
Affect Detection: An Interdisciplinary Review of Models, Methods, and Their Applications (2010, background): “Immordino-Yang and Damasio [124] used evidence from brain-damaged subjects to show that emotions are essential in decision making.”
Situated learning theory and the pedagogy of teacher education: Towards an integrative view of teacher behavior and teacher learning (2010, background): “…pp. 83–84) that behavior is grounded in many parallel bodily systems, and that emotion is strongly linked to the primary decision-making process (see for a more detailed elaboration and a model of the complex relations between cognition, emotion and motivation: Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).”
Malleability, plasticity, and individuality: How children learn and develop in context1 (2019, background): “These interrelationships underlie research findings demonstrating the powerful influence of affective, social, and emotional processes on lowerand higher-order cognitive development and skill acquisition (e.g., Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007; Osher et al., 2016).”
Implications for educational practice of the science of learning and development (2019, background): “While negative emotions like anxiety and distress can block learning, emotion also triggers learning as it affects excitement and attention (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007) and thus should be considered in designing instruction that is mentally engaging.”
How teacher education can make a difference (2010, background): “The gestalt concept concurs with the observation by brain researcher Damasio ( 1994 , 83–4) that behaviour is grounded in many parallel bodily systems, and that emotion is strongly linked to the primary decision‐making process (see Immordino‐Yang and Damasio 2007 for a more detailed elaboration an”
SEARCH: A Meta-Framework and Review of the Field of Positive Education (2019, background): “Whereas educationalists have traditionally viewed learning as a cognitive process, advances in neuroscience and psychology now show that learning is profoundly affected by our emotions (Immordino-Yang and Damasio 2007; Jensen 2008; Fredrickson and Branigan 2001).”
Supporting presence in teacher education: The connection between the personal and professional aspects of teaching (2009, background): “…on awareness of emotional and motivational aspects in addition to cognitive awareness (key principle 3) is characteristic of the core reflection approach, and is based on insights from neurobiology about the strong interrelations between cognition and emotion (e.g. Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007).”