Curing the Closure Addiction

Closure: a long established concept in psychology. I have posted several items on it. Now comes a theory on the neurological basis of closure. And some evidence to support it. The theory was based on earlier findings that binding sites for natural opiates increase in density along, a part of the brain involved in image recognition and processing.
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“The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. …

In a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging trials with human volunteers exposed to a wide variety of images, Biederman's research group found that strongly preferred images prompted the greatest fMRI activity in more complex areas of the ventral visual pathway.

Biederman also found that repeated viewing of an attractive image lessened both the rating of pleasure and the activity in the opioid-rich areas.

Biederman: “Without thinking about it, we pick out experiences that are richly interpretable but novel."
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In other words, quest questions followed by closure. The present data only bear on visual closure, but Biederman thinks the theory applies widely. There is plenty of psychological support for the notion that people seek novel, but interpretable, experiences and lose interest once they achieve interpretation (closure).

So there we have it. Explanation of why people like to play games, solve puzzles, and generally learn things when the control the process. And when they don’t know the outcome till they get there.

And now we understand the function of formal education. It is to cure people of this addiction to discovering things on their own. The first step is to tell them what they are supposed to know up front. Much more efficient. They don’t waste time finding out things that the experts already know. This strategy keeps them from finding out that they can discover things that the experts do not already know. You can see why that strategy would take hold with the experts.

Another step, of course, is to help people with boredom management. As things become more familiar, they don’t deliver that high. If you tell people the outcome in advance, the will get plenty of practice at boredom. If they manage it in a classroom acceptable way, they will be “good students.” If they don’t, the probably be diagnosed as ADD or AD/HD. Then they can take medication to help them with boredom management.

Now this effort will not completely cure people of their addiction to discovering things on their own. It will, however, let us shift the activity to socially disfavored activities such as games, puzzles or heroin.

But there may be a rent in this garment. Suppose some people take on the puzzle of how to remain curious in an educational system that is designed to cure curiosity. Now that is a question to be curious about. A quest question.