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Suggestopedia and reprogramming

brumsen

Critical Thinker
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I am not sure that this is the best forum to put my question in, but anyway:

Recently I stumbled upon this website where the claim, in essence, is that people can be 're-programmed' by listening to audio tapes. The claims are impressive: if people listen regularly to statements that "research" has shown belong to the mindsets of "the most successful people", then they can change radically. They will be able to: sleep better, get rid of anxiety and depression, stop smoking, lose weight, get really organized, etc.

This would be a learning method which in language learning is known as suggestopedia, and apparently has good results (though this is not uncontroversial).

Now if you google a bit, and look at the website itself, it looks like fairly questionable marketing. However... I'd like to keep an open mind....
Moreover, I've noticed that when I help kids with their maths schoolwork the largest part of my "miracle cure" just seems to consist in saying, over and over again, "you see now that you can do it?" "did you see how easy that was?" "As far as I can see you understand these things and don't need so much help" etc etc. Pretty much the same method: repeating positive statements so that the subject starts to believe in it and becomes 're-programmed'.

So I guess my questions are these:
- what are your opinions on suggestopedia methods in teaching?
- might it be successful in re-programming people so that as a result they become happier, stop being depressed and anxious, and become rich?
 
OK, that's real open-minded and obviously evidence-based. Thank you for such a wealth of information.
 
brumsen said:
- what are your opinions on suggestopedia methods in teaching?
Click to expand...

From skimming the wiki article, it looks like it has appeal in the area of being immersive. But that it neither new nor unique to this suggestowhateveritis. If you really want to learn something fast, just work with it more. Want to be better at math? Do more math related stuff. Want to be better at learning a new language? Put yourself in that culture, or try to put yourself in an emulation of that culture at least.

- might it be successful in re-programming people so that as a result they become happier, stop being depressed and anxious, and become rich?
Click to expand...

No.
 
Mitchell314 said:
If you really want to learn something fast, just work with it more. Want to be better at math? Do more math related stuff. Want to be better at learning a new language? Put yourself in that culture, or try to put yourself in an emulation of that culture at least.
Click to expand...
What you say is true: these things will speed up learning. But as any teacher will know, there are many barriers that can prevent people from learning efficiently. Take away the barriers, and they will learn a lot faster.
Just my experience with teaching maths: it is not just and only a matter of doing more maths.

Now take a depressed person. You can put a lot of effort into telling that person that life isn't all that bad, but they won't take it on board (quite the contrary, often). Obviously there is some barrier mechanism. Now what if that barrier (perhaps not in all cases, but, who knows, in quite a few persons) could be taken down - or diminished - by suggestopedic methods?

Supposing that one can learn to be happier, to loose weight, stop smoking, be successful in business etc; why couldn't barriers in such learning be removed or diminished in the same way as with languages or math?

The suggestopedic method would not imply that all the learning is taken care of by suggestion, and that no work at all need to be done anymore. The claim is not that learning without any effort is possible.
 
brumsen said:
What you say is true: these things will speed up learning. But as any teacher will know, there are many barriers that can prevent people from learning efficiently. Take away the barriers, and they will learn a lot faster.
Click to expand...

While I don't disagree that there are impediments to learning, I don't agree that simple repetition or praise alone is enough to remove them.

You state that your 'miracle cure' is to reinforce a student's mindset that they are achieving, and that it is easy. How are you so certain this is the sole cause of their improvement?

I appreciate that research supports praise and positive reinforcement over punishment and negative reinforcement when it comes to learning, however I'm not convinced that this is quite what the site is advocating. First of all, there are so many alarm bells ringing over the nature of this site, my head feels like a fire station. It's the uneducated, homeless down-and-outer coming up with a brainwave (one undiscovered by experts) that revolutionised his life...a story commonly invoked for scams.

Suggestive learning, btw, doesn't have much going for it at all. It is practically a pseudoscience - advocates of it claim it's a combination of hypnosis, NLP etc., and invoke explanations of brain wave alteration and improvements in biochemistry to describe how it works. None of which has evidence supporting it at all, I'm afraid.

I'm afraid when it comes to education, there is no easy fix. Sure, teachers could benefit from reinforcing kids positively when they demonstrate the right method or give the right answer, but that's most certainly not the same thing as suggestopedia.

Athon
 
athon said:
While I don't disagree that there are impediments to learning, I don't agree that simple repetition or praise alone is enough to remove them.
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I wouldn't say that all impediments could be removed this way. Just that perhaps in many cases it could help a lot.

athon said:
You state that your 'miracle cure' is to reinforce a student's mindset that they are achieving, and that it is easy. How are you so certain this is the sole cause of their improvement?
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I'm not. But I observe simply that it constitutes by far the largest part of what I'm doing.
Mind you, I'm talking about bright pupils here. Won't work with all.


athon said:
First of all, there are so many alarm bells ringing over the nature of this site, my head feels like a fire station. It's the uneducated, homeless down-and-outer coming up with a brainwave (one undiscovered by experts) that revolutionised his life...a story commonly invoked for scams.
Click to expand...
I agree. But it could just be crappy marketing. Of course it's a pack of lies. But as long as that makes him sell his products...
I do not believe that it might work on the basis of his stories. I believe there might be other reasons - which I've given - to think so. And I was wondering if anyone here had experiences with that kind of thing.

athon said:
Suggestive learning, btw, doesn't have much going for it at all. It is practically a pseudoscience - advocates of it claim it's a combination of hypnosis, NLP etc., and invoke explanations of brain wave alteration and improvements in biochemistry to describe how it works. None of which has evidence supporting it at all, I'm afraid.
Click to expand...
I'm not altogether sure about the exact claims being made, but it seems fairly clear that they claim it is NOT hypnosis or NLP. (The scientific basis of hypnosis, btw, is not all that shaky is it?)
As I understand it, the repetition would serve its purpose if eventually you were actually to come to believe that these statements are true of you. No mysterious stuff about brainwaves and the like; just changing thought patterns. And changing thought patterns is surely possible; that's what cognitive therapy is about. Question is, will repeating these statements in your ear do the same? My experience with helping school kids with maths is that, who knows, they might.

athon said:
I'm afraid when it comes to education, there is no easy fix. Sure, teachers could benefit from reinforcing kids positively when they demonstrate the right method or give the right answer, but that's most certainly not the same thing as suggestopedia.
Click to expand...
Miracle cures don't exist. Cures do.
What if, just if, this type of repeated positive reinforcement were more effective, or as effective as, taking prozac (to take the case of depression)?

I'd like to see real research on that. I do not have the means to do it.
 
brumsen said:
Now what if that barrier (perhaps not in all cases, but, who knows, in quite a few persons) could be taken down - or diminished - by suggestopedic methods?

...

Supposing that one can learn to be happier, to loose weight, stop smoking, be successful in business etc; why couldn't barriers in such learning be removed or diminished in the same way as with languages or math?
Click to expand...

This is a pretty big assumption, but I guess that IF these things did work for being generally happier, more prosperous, stopping smoking, and losing weight, then of course they would probably also work for reducing anxiety/improving performance in a given subject area. The problem is that there is no real evidence that I could find that they did anything at all. I could just as easily say that IF a pill could be developed that could help you lose weight, be happier, or stop smoking then there might also be a pill that could reduce anxiety/improve performance in a subject area. I've always hated the extraordinary claims quotation, but here's a place where you'd need some pretty extraordinary evidence to back up the statements made.

brumsen said:
I'd like to see real research on that. I do not have the means to do it.
Click to expand...

Agreed.
 
brumsen said:
I wouldn't say that all impediments could be removed this way. Just that perhaps in many cases it could help a lot.
Click to expand...

Possible, but not probable. I see no reason at all to believe that there is something to the site's claim, or to that of suggestopedia. Until I see something supporting it, I feel it's merely speculation and wishful thinking.

I'm not altogether sure about the exact claims being made, but it seems fairly clear that they claim it is NOT hypnosis or NLP. (The scientific basis of hypnosis, btw, is not all that shaky is it?)
Click to expand...
I remember reading some articles on this sort of stuff during my education degree. Some teaching-mag' that had an interview with somebody who hinted at the power of suggestion. What stuck in my mind was that they alluded to hypnosis working on the power of suggestion, and NLP etc., so why not suggestion in teaching? It felt very 'subliminal' to me. While I don't recall the author stating it was strictly how 'teaching by positive suggestion' worked (which was how I think he/she phrased it), the vague hand-waving towards those fields was what stuck in my mind.

Of course, in itself it's another symptom of pseudoscience - vagueness of a claim. For what it's worth, I still don't know clearly what the hell it is. Even having more of a look into it now, I can't say I understand what they're rabbiting on about. It seems to be more than just positive reinforcement, with hints of something to do with subconscious suggestions...yet not being NLP or hypnosis...meh...

If I'm working too hard at figuring out what a claim is, then they need to work harder at explaining it.

As I understand it, the repetition would serve its purpose if eventually you were actually to come to believe that these statements are true of you. No mysterious stuff about brainwaves and the like; just changing thought patterns. And changing thought patterns is surely possible; that's what cognitive therapy is about.
Click to expand...
Of course. But there is more to CT than just saying sentences over and over in front of a patient. And with teaching, there is more to assisting a student in learning than feel-good repetition. A lot more. Before you could even say it was in itself helpful, you'd need to isolate the variables and test it. I know of studies which focus on the nature of reinforcement in students, but again, I'm not sure that this is what the claim is concerned with. I also know of studies that have found that simply thinking positively isn't effective in changing outcomes (standing in front of the mirror saying 'I'm a great person' or something similar actually seems to have the opposite effect).

Question is, will repeating these statements in your ear do the same? My experience with helping school kids with maths is that, who knows, they might.
Click to expand...
Again, positive words of support in rewarding good work is always better than punishment for bad work. Given this is a tape, I don't think that's the case here.

Miracle cures don't exist. Cures do.
What if, just if, this type of repeated positive reinforcement were more effective, or as effective as, taking prozac (to take the case of depression)?

I'd like to see real research on that. I do not have the means to do it.
Click to expand...
When you can nail down the claim, we'll look into it further. Right now, I haven't got the patience to play speculation games. :)

Athon
 
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When I was in graduate school, one of my classmates was a Bulgarian woman who was trained in suggestopedia. From talking to her about the method, I was never able to figure out what 'suggestion' had to do with it at all. Most of what she described seemed like ordinary foreign language instruction, but with a few differences:

They always used music in class--generally slow classical, and tried to make the classroom environment as stress-free as possible. To me, this just seems like good common sense;

New vocabulary was first presented in a timed manner. I can't remember what the exact timing was, but it was something like 8 seconds between words, I think. I have a colleague who is currently working on a doctoral thesis on ideal timing and vocabulary retention. I'll have to talk to him some more about this.

Afterwards, new material is reinforced with a variety of games, role-plays etc. (This part is pretty much standard practice in language teaching now).

I remember she also talked about how there was a lot of deliberate misinformation about the method published in English, because the Soviets were using it to train spies and they didn't want the US to know what they were up to.

My overall impression is that it seemed like a set of good, fairly standard classroom practices, wrapped in woo. Maybe there's something to the timing thing, but I'd be very surprised if the method could produce results much better than average.
 
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