Embracing Uncertainty: The Power of Curiosity and Exploration in Learning
Today’s world is filled with immediate information. While it is a welcome haven from the discomfort of uncertainty, that discomfort might hinder the process of deep thought. Why is the feeling of uncertainty so aversive? Could it somehow be harnessed into a source of motivation to improve how we learn and think critically? In this pair of talks, two experts in distinct but related fields will combine approaches from psychology and neuroscience to discuss the importance of letting the mind take risks, make mistakes and wonder.
Lisa Son, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University, will begin by sharing her research on metacognition, the process of thinking about your own thinking, and how it can help us learn better. In the quest for perfection and expertise, our learning becomes increasingly errorless at the expense of metacognition and paves the way to impostorism. How can we move past the fear of failure and embrace uncertainty?
Jacqueline Gottlieb, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, will then talk about what happens in the brain when our minds have the freedom to be curious and explore. How we orient our attention is a complex process in the brain with consequences for not just how we find answers, but how we ask questions. Without this mental awareness, how can we improve our thoughts and decisions?
Following the two talks, Jennifer Bussell, PhD, Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, will moderate a discussion and Q&A with the speakers. Audience questions are welcomed, either submitted during registration or live during the event.
About the speakers
Lisa Son, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University, specializes in human learning and memory, and in metacognition. Her research focuses on how accurately people know the “self,” and on the optimization of long-term retention. Receiving a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD from Columbia University, her work has been published in prestigious journals including Psychological Science, Cognitive Science and Educational Psychology Review. Dr. Son has received funding from the U.S. Department of Education and the American Psychological Society for her work with elementary school-aged children, and was, twice, named a Fulbright Scholar to South Korea. Her book, “The Science of Metacognition” (2019, in Korean), has begun to raise awareness on the illusions that occur during learning, and on ways in which to increase performance. Her second book, “Impostor” (2022, in Korean), which she describes as a prevalent metacognitive bias that threatens the well-being of all individuals, including those who have achieved success.
Jacqueline Gottlieb, PhD, is Professor of Neuroscience in the Kavli Institute for Brain Science, and the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, New York. After obtaining an undergraduate degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Gottlieb completed her PhD at Yale University and postdoctoral training at the National Institute of Health, and joined the Columbia Faculty in 2001. Professor Gottlieb is the recipient of numerous awards including the McKnight Scholarship, Klingenstein Fellowship and Human Frontiers research grants. She is the founder and director of the Cluster on Curiosity at the Center for Science and Society and the organizer of two 2023 international conferences, the Creativity, Curiosity and Complexity Conference at Columbia University and the Gordon Research Conference on Eye Movements. She is a pioneer in the study of neural mechanisms of attention control, active information sampling and curiosity in humans and non-human primates.
Jennifer Bussell, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Axel at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute. She studies the neural circuitry underlying information seeking and curiosity in mice and is interested in how the value of knowledge guides behavior. Dr. Bussell received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and her PhD from Rockefeller University. She is the recipient of a Junior Fellowship from the Simons Foundation Society of Fellows and a Women and Science Fellowship and previously worked as a management consultant advising biotechnology companies.
This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series, offered free to the public to enhance understanding of the biology of the mind and the complexity of human behavior. The lectures are hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.