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from the Recent Reflection blog... FeedWind

Motivation and Anxiety

According to Hebb's classic formulation (1955), optimal "hedonic tone" or sense of well-being, and hence performance in learning, is achieved at a moderate level of arousal. Too little arousal leads to boredom, and too much to anxiety, both of which inhibit effective performance.

 

A link to Hebb's original article And an even older source (1908); the related Yerkes-Dodson law, which states broadly that increasing anxiety enhances performance up to a point, but then inhibits it

 

For more than you wanted to know on this go here There are parallels in this with my Skeleton and Shell model

The so-called "accelerated learning" movement, on the other hand, argues that learning is best achieved in a state of minimal anxiety and relaxation. However, in the words of one of their sites: "Accelerated Learning is a proven method of increasing the absorption of knowledge." That is a rather limited conception of learning, so even if Lozanov's (its founder's) theories are correct their applicability may be limited.

This topic exposes some of the major limitations of using the web as a research library. You will get many “false positives” (people hyping their educational snake oil), and quite a few “false negatives” (people illegitimately rubbishing stuff on the basis of their own prejudices). You may get some true positives (which people want to tell you about), but true negatives are rare, because the language is that of "failure" to demonstrate an effect.

Don't trust. Triangulate. And that goes for this site as well!

Also see the page on "Innovations" And that on "What Works"

A fuller discussion of motivation should also cover Deep and Surface learning.