2. AUDITORY COGNITIVE DELAY

T H E P R O C E S S

1. A question is asked of a child, such as might be asked in class.

2. EXAMPLE. THE QUESTION? What was the date of the battle of Agincourt? ACTION (the child engages the brain and tries to remember the answer).

3. The auditory (hearing) nerve transmits the question to the brain, which seeks the memory part of the brain, the hippocampus.

4. A message is sent to the Cortex (where the memory is stored) and the cortex searches back in time to when that question was taught, and hopefully very quickly gives the answer, if the child has been taught that date. It might be prudent to say ‘in 1415 there was a battle between the French and the English which took place in Northern France when the English long bow was the principal weapon on the battlefield.’

5. However, the child’s memory is full of both necessary or interesting memories and unnecessary or uninteresting memories, and cannot discern so their mind becomes clogged with the unnecessary items of information while it searches for the answer to the question, but the brain cannot easily/quickly find the answer. So the child often blurts out the wrong answer, because in trying to answer the question there is too much crammed into the memory to easily track and locate the answer, often without engaging the memory due to the difficult struggle to wade through all the necessary and often unnecessary images and pictures remembered from life, that are held there – texts, messages, emails, problems at school or home, emotions, worries, anxiety, secrets, etc. We have all seen these, but where is the answer to the question? Can it be lost forever or is it so confused by a ganglion of other confused and often unnecessary memories that the human being just cannot be bothered to strive for the answer, which is why any answer is blurted out; a very common action in the classroom, and in life in general! NB. Asking that question in a different way to the first method used by the teacher, will certainly be much more difficult for a child to answer than the teacher who uses the second method.

6. Is it not incumbent on the recipient of the question to take time to wade through such ‘stuff’ and eventually find the answer? In today’s electronic, and anxiety-filled world, there is so much other ‘stuff’ stored in the memory that correct answers don’t come easily, particularly in front of a class, but children feel they have to give an answer even though they have not struggled to get the correct answer out of the ‘clutches’ of the ball of confused brain cells, so any answer is called out! Simply, the human is very often unable (because of the cluttered memory) to recall from memory what they have been taught, in response to the question asked.

7. The wrong or right answer depends then on the amount of ‘clogging’ in the subconscious. The less clogging, the less material to wade through and therefore the greater the chance that a correct answer will be forthcoming.

8. Remember, the subconscious does not tell lies! In that respect, consider this scenario? A teacher teaches that there are 2 cms. in an inch, to a young class. The children live with that throughout their education until, at a later stage they are taught that there are actually 2.54 cms. in an inch! They may have difficult in selecting which is correct as deep in the subconscious the former is entrenched and perhaps to the brain, is the correct answer! This is a huge study that I am embarking on because I feel it is connected to the reason that in my view, students sitting examinations are engaged in an outdated, flawed and child-unfriendly system that is contrived for the masses, but leaves behind some of the most amazing and potentially brilliant children! The system is therefore archaic!

EXPLANATORY DIAGRAM – AUDITORY COGNITIVE DELAY (ACD)