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Usually that means something that sparks your interest and holds it close to the edge of your abilities, encouraging you to push yourself to greater mastery. You are attracted to what holds just the right amount of challenge for you right now. The Goldilocks effect has to do with learning at all ages. Babies indicate what all of us are like in our most basic form. That’s because infants aren’t burdened with cultural and patterned responses. Babies are a great way to study human behavior. They also, according to the study, actively seek out the most reliable information and can predict what will happen next based on what they’ve seen. Babies self-regulate by choosing the amount of novelty and complexity that’s right for them at the time. Turns out this isn’t a contradiction at all. Other times they prefer to look at unfamiliar items.
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Sometimes babies prefer to look at familiar items, like a toy from home. For years researchers have noticed a contradiction. The study focused on how babies make sense of our complex world. Instead we’re drawn to and best able learn from situations that are “just right.” It’s the educational equivalent of Goldilocks on a porridge-testing quest. This concept is now being called the “Goldilocks effect.” According to a study published in the journal PLoS ONE, humans are cued to ignore information that's too simple or too complex.
#The goldilocks effect free
I wrote these words in my book Free Range Learning (affiliate link). This is not only an expression of autonomy, it’s a clear indicator that each child is equipped with an learning guidance system of his or her own. Often children seem to reject what they aren’t ready to learn, only to return to the same skill or concept later with ease. They actively espouse the right to gain skill and comprehension in a way that’s necessary for them at the time. Young children seem to recognize that knowledge is an essential shared resource, like air or water.